Pa. man clubs family to death with bat, kills self

Source: Associated Press

WARRINGTON, Pa. (AP) — A man clubbed his wife and 7-year-old son to death with a baseball bat before committing suicide on a set of train tracks, authorities said Saturday.

Christopher Moyer called 911 on Friday night to say that he had killed his wife, 39-year-old Irina Moyer, and their son, Dylan, in the family's suburban Philadelphia home, Warrington Township police Officer Ken Hawthorn said.

The 44-year-old Moyer spoke in a "polite and matter-of-fact" way and answered all questions before hanging up, Hawthorn said.

"He identified himself, he said he was the husband, he killed the mother and son, and that he was positive they were deceased and then he hung up the phone," Hawthorn said.



Read more: http://www.wsbt.com/news/wsbt-pa-man-clubs-family-to-death-with-bat-kills-self-20110618,0,99771.story

People who are harming our economy, realize this is their fault....Republicans in Congress sure don't give a dam.....

No offense, but I really hate reading crap like that. Times are tough, but most people don't massacre their families because they got laid off or can't pay the bills (neither of which as far as we know is the case here, anyway). This evil fuck chose of his own free will to murder his family in one of the most violent and cruel ways I can imagine, then, like the sick fuck coward he is, chose a much more painless exit for himself. This has fuck all to do with the economy and everything to do with this heartless piece of shit. Not everything is political.

Things don't happen in a vacuum. During periods like this there are more suicides, more murder-suicides, and more murders because people see their options as more limited, more people are under stress, and more people break under that stress.

And it is fucking heartless to deny that. It makes excuses for the assholes who want to make things worse with their 'austerity' measures, cutting jobs, reducing benefits, limiting unemployment.

EVERYTHING is political, if you have the eyes to see it.

but they do not account for the actions taken here. We have a large amount of evidence of people being stressed and dealing with it in non-violent ways. The reasoning that was used to infer that his actions were somehow suitable given his situation is an overwhelmingly larger factor.

It is a common logical fallacy to take the explanation of how something happens as an excuse for it happening.

Stress alone doesn't explain his actions, and it's not even a question of whether the resulting actions were excusable. Large amounts of evidence demonstrate human's abilities to cope with stresses, without anything near the reasoning that would conclude with this. Another variable played a far more causal role in the results. The fact that such actions are a rare occurrence, while stressful situations are not, points to that.

That isn't claiming that people are making excuses? What he did was anything but suitable - but it IS explainable. And explainations are not excuses.

And how do YOU know anything about his stress? The article says nothing about his level of stress. It mentions a couple of factors, but do you really think that's all there is? He was 40ish, his wife 38, both computer programmers - both would have graduated from college probably with HUGE loan debts just before the dot.com crash shattered their dreams of riding that wave into prosperity, then a ten year recession, followed by yet another crash -
how can you claim that they, or he, had no more sress than anyone else in this economy?

And, if he WAS under no more stress than anyone else, do you REALLY think that everyone reacts to equal levels of stress the same way?

Stress is not a constant - it is not invariable between people, and every individual reacts to stress differently, and to different levels of stress differently. One guy comes back from a tour in Iraq and settles right in. Another comes back - from the same platoon, the same experiences, the same stress - and is incapacitated by PTSD.

Yes. Stress alone CAN explain his actions.

The only excuses I see in this thread are from the people claiming that the bad economy made this guy pick up a baseball beat and beat his wife and child to death.

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Crime is down, through the last recession, through this recession, for the last 30 years. Suicide has been trending down as well. There was a slight uptick in the 24-60 age bracket in the last recession. I see no numbers available at this time to support your claim.

Please cite evidence of your alleged trend.

it has been over for two years. That doesn't mean it is not happening.

As for crime, that is simple demographics. The vast majority of crimes, something like 80%, are committed by 15-24 year olds. With the largest generation moving ever farther from that age group, crime rates will diminish. Simple math.

Check on the stats for crime rates committed by that age group, not for the population as a whole. I will give you odds you will not find any significant decline in THAT crime rate. It is simply the fact that there are fewer 15-24 year olds now than there were 30 years ago that makes it look like a decline in the crime rate.

Granted, it was a milder recession than this one.

Still, you have made a bold statement, that suicides are increasing. Upon what do you base this claim?

People said the same thing about crime, yet it continues to decline, right through the worst economic fuckup of my life.

Not the same thing.

the only way to actually make a claim that crime did one thing or another through that period of time, fairly, is to use the rate.

What other possible measure could one use?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97234406

Further, FBI data backs that up for the recent recession through end of 2009:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/05/crime_down_for_3rd_straight_ye.html

Gotta say I found that interesting, because I had always been told otherwise.

Of course, it's not true, but that doesn't stop people from repeating it. (Reminds me of the "we only use 10% of our brain" myth.)

Another one is that crime and poverty are linked. But when you compare impoverished areas across other demographics, any such correlation disappears (rural v urban being the most often cited.) Poverty doesn't make people criminals, it makes them poor.

“During periods like this there are more suicides, more murder-suicides, and more murders because people see their options as more limited, more people are under stress, and more people break under that stress.”

This is why I just do not understand the mentality of the Uber-rich CEOs. They lay off more and more people just to make a buck. Sure, I want to have more money, but not at the cost of increased alcoholism, domestic abuse and suicides. I could never look my self in the mirror if I inflicted all that human suffering just to make a few more dollars.


Macoy

"District Attorney David Heckler told the Bucks County Courier Times that there are indications that the family may have been having financial problems. The paper said court records indicated that the state filed a lien against the couple's four-bedroom house last fall."

From the article;

"District Attorney David Heckler told the Bucks County Courier Times that there are indications that the family may have been having financial problems. The paper said court records indicated that the state filed a lien against the couple's four-bedroom house last fall.

Neighbors told the paper that the Moyers were nice but kept to themselves. They said Christopher Moyer was a freelance computer specialist who worked from home and believed his wife did similar work at home.

Christopher Moyer married Irina Geller in April 2002 while living in Bensalem, and they bought the home on Redstone Drive a year later, according to court records. The paper said court records show no prior criminal charges against the couple and no history of domestic violence."

You were only one click away from avoiding the ignorance displayed by this statement; "but most people don't massacre their families because they got laid off or can't pay the bills (neither of which as far as we know is the case here, anyway)"

One. Click.

But it really is easier just to picture a monster rather than a desperate confused person. He was not the cause, he was the result. Call him weak or sick, but it is clear that this was the product of adversity as well.

I'm sure there exist no circumstances under which you would ever so cave. Think very hard before you affirm that.

climate of today. to deny that is to believe that our actions happen in vacuum. while "most" people will not chose such a horrible way to deal with financial crisis this man is not alone in his decision.

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If you're going to throw around technical terms and tell others that they "need extensive help," you might want to familiarize yourself with the definitions of the words you're using.

I don't go so far as to say that the economy or the country's policies are to blame, but it seems to me that our country's policies are creating an environment which is not supportive of those who are emotionally on the edge. In countries with better safety nets - better access to mental health care, medical health care, social services, etc. - these things happen less frequently.

Was this man evil, or did he simply lose it? I'm certainly not defending him. Maybe he was evil. This seems like a crime of hysteria, though. It seems like somebody who just totally lost it. Wouldn't an evil person have stayed alive?

edit spelling

It is responses like this that make me sometimes wonder why bother to return to this site. If tough times caused parents to murder their children, it's a wonder anyone survived the Great Depression.

Some sort of increased risk? You know like how high cholesterol causes heart problems? Or is that "different"?

Despite the depression.

Not whether increasing poverty makes the murder rate go up. Even in a situation, as now, with increasing poverty and declining crime rates, it is still the poor who commit most of the crimes.

As you pointed out, we have increasing poverty and declining murder, so obviously poverty does not cause murder. On the other hand, as I pointed out, violence and property crimes come largely from the poor, who have less to lose, and dinner to find, or do you deny that?

Father kills 2 sons and himself, Chula Vista police say

The man was reportedly upset about financial problems and a custody battle. The killings are the third murder-suicide in San Diego County in a month.

Reporting from San Diego -- A distraught father killed his two teenage sons and set fire to the family home before killing himself, Chula Vista police said Tuesday.

The dead were identified as Thomas Fuchs, 49, and his sons Sean, 15, and Kyle, 13.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0622-three-dead-20110622,0,1968215.story

Average rate of death by suicide (per 100,000 population)
1920-1928: 12.1
1929: 18.1
1930-1940: 15.4

The Great Crash of 1929, which suddenly brought economic ruin to thousands of people accustomed to a decade of prosperity, caused an immediate and dramatic spike in suicides. Suicide rates, which averaged 12.1 per 100,000 people in the decade prior to the Depression, jumped to an alarming 18.9 in the year of Wall Street's crash. The suicide rate remained higher than normal throughout the remainder of the Great Depression, then fell sharply during World War II.

http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html

Murder, Suicide Rates Climb When Jobs Vanish and Economy Slows
By Marthe Fourcade and Michelle Fay Cortez - July 7, 2009 19:01 EDT

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Murders and suicides spike with unemployment, U.S. and European researchers said.

The scientists, who combed through almost four decades of European Union records, found that a 1 percent increase in joblessness brings about a 0.8 percent rise in suicide and murder rates. Government programs to help workers offer some protection, they wrote in the July 8 issue of The Lancet.


But I guess the misery of those numbers is too insignificant for you.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aJp2H_Axtn68

It can cause people to do a great many things. When one has lost all hope, and sees nothing but misery, suffering, and humiliation, one might think to spare his family from such a future.

It is wrong, of course, but the worse the economy gets, the more the right-wing noise machine blames the poor for their own suffering, the more of this we will see.

When the evil piece-of-shit 'conservatives' grow a clue, we might have a chance of turning this around. But until then, they will protect corporate greed with their every breath, and continue to let the nation spiral into hell.

By clubbing them to death? Please. If he was motivated by despair and compassion for his family and wished to save them from a life of destitution, he'd have shot them. Or smothered them in their sleep. Or drugged them to death. IOW, he would have picked some "painless" way to end their lives if he was so agonized and distraught that he truly thought death was preferable to whatever life held in store for them. Not that that would make it any better, because he doesn't get to make those decisions for anyone but himself.

But no. He murdered them in an agonizing, sadistic way that guaranteed that they died in extreme pain and horror. Then he chose a relatively painless and instantaneous exit for himself. This "man" is a coward and evil and this time it has nothing to do with the Republicans.

I don't blame you. Not many can put themselves in such a mindset enough to get it.

This man and his actions are the result of evil, not the cause of it. He let it flow through him.

I see that you believe he should have been thinking clearly enough to dispatch them with much more tenderness. That demonstrates quite clearly that you have absolutely no understanding. You have never, ever looked straight into the void. You quite literally do not understand nothing. As I said about the other poster, you do not understand despair and what it can do to a person. It is far easier to believe that 'people' are evil, because, apparently, you can't wrap your mind around the notion that 'conditions' caused by 'evil' make people do horrible things.

And yes, the state of the economy, the favoritism of corporations above human beings, almost certainly contributed to this tragedy. That current state is the fallout of Republican/Conservative/Corporate policies.

If you want to defend Republicans, by all means, give it a shot. But you simply cannot argue with the fact that pro-corporate 'Conservative' policies tend to create great misery.

This tragedy is simply outside of your scope of understanding.

I wish it were also outside of mine, but some of us live with more than we'd like to.

there are many people who deal with horrible things in life , lose hope , but they don't beat people to death.

putting him, her it on ignore as soon as I finish my post here to you. Many years ago when the internet was first starting, I worked the suicide hotline for a small BBS named SHN (Sapient Health Network), who later became WMD, for two years. I took many calls before and after these types of occurrence on a daily basis. Some of the people I had gotten to know well. These people who killed others weren't crazed lunatics like the above referenced person suggests. Most were ostensibly fairly controlled, rationale people who just had snapped. The stress of life had gotten too much. Almost all precipitating factors involved money--and we weren't even in a depression then. I don't work a suicide hotline anymore. But just in my block there have been two such incidence of almost identical situations as described in the Header here. I know three or four people that could snap any day now. And my wife, who has been the DON of a large Nursing Home hears of these situations every week. People are running out of money and are snapping. There is no place to turn. Anyway, Doctor, don't be misled by this poster. Shit happens. And sometimes that shit is spontaneous and uncontrolled--not the fault of some insane coward, which has been suggested. With this person's post I have to evaluate whether I am in the right place or not. Anyway, good day to you.

Please don't go there, I don't care what party this many or his wife were in, if any.

If you had read the post 'more thoroughly', you'd have understood that Tippy meant that "Republicans in Congress" don't give a damn. The clue might have been in the phrase; "Republicans in Congress sure don't give a dam".

It's always fascinating to me that people see or comment upon what is simply not there.

Why did you?

That's interesting. I was unaware of that.

Clubbing your own little kid to death? Really fucked up.

But I'd rather not make assumptions without evidence,

leaving the event a mysterious tragedy, ala Hollis Brown.

What a horrible, protracted, agonizing way to die. You can have all the sympathy you want for a guy who bludgeons his family to death; I'll save mine for his innocent victims.

Of course could also be "evil insane fuck" too...

From untreated or undiagnosed mental illness, to who the hell knows what.

because often in these cases of family murder/suicide, psychiatric medicines are involved.
And esp when they are particularly brutal
There is for example the man who retired, and after retirement he felt at a loss. Not unusual. Many ways one could have approached this. But his family doctor gave him a psychiatric medicine. Two days later he killed his wife, his visiting son and grandson.

These drugs can cause a condition known as akathisia, a feeling of such inner torment, that some people kill themselves bec. they cannot bear it.
In his book Richard Grandpre describes several experiments in which healthy people are given anti-depressants and anti-psychotics and they become murderous and suicidal and they describe the akathisia. When they are taken off the medication the feeling disappears.

Most of the school-shooters were on such medication.

If you want to kill yourself, go ahead. Put clubbing your wife and 7 year old to death in the most brutal way? Err, I wish he were alive so he could die. :mad:

Do you understand what the word means in the context you attempted to use it?

I'll help a little; What did he get from them? I know that people can't fathom the complexities of mental stresses ranging from depression to full-blown mental illness exacerbated by adversity, so I'll just ask;


Did he do it to satisfy himself in some way? Is that what you are trying to say?


If so, how did it 'satisfy' him? I mean... that's the M/O of predators.


Do explain.

And they really want to own one, I'm OK with it.

People are becoming so desperate in this country. Last week a person near here walked into an oncoming tractor trailer truck on the Interstate highway and the obits seem to have at least one "sudden" death reported . . . often a suicide.

You don't remember the days when you didn't hear about a family annihilator murdering his family, even if those days are becoming more and more frequent- no, each one adds a mental '+1' to a tally that you keep, intentionally or not.

He was quiet, funny, smart, maybe a little odd (but weren't we all). He knew me enough to befriend me on Facebook although we never interacted since 1985.

There's nothing to set off alarm bells in his profile or from what I know about him. Sometimes people just ... crack. I hope he and his family find peace.

Even if he was only a tangential contact in your life I still offer my sympathy to you and everyone impacted.




Laura

all have our points at which we can go further. Your acquaintance ostensibly reached his. I hope he and his family are now in a better place.

leave other people out of it. (AND, I say this as someone w/ history of serious depression - there are always choices.)

before himself. of course, i don't know all the circumstances surrounding his desperate decision
but i would bet he had already discovered that there was no one to help his family out. this is what a society without safety nets is like.

Plus he killed himself by throwing himself in front of a train- pretty cruel thing to do to the conductor.

Like a chapter from Masters of Horror - only real. :(

for fuck's sake, keep other people out of it. Do it yourself instead of making other people live with the sound of your body hitting the locomotive for the rest of their lives.

of their train. It really does ruin their life. Virtually all of them struggled with depression after that, couldn't bear going to work anymore, etc. One thing that really haunts me is they all described the feeling of the train going over the body like that of a car going over gravel. I can't imagine going through that, it really is a selfish way to kill yourself.