"My Child Wants to Kill Me"

Source: K. Ramsland

This week in our local court, a girl who’d assisted with her mother’s murder sought to erase the plea deal she’d made three years ago, in which she’d accepted responsibility.

Jamie Silvonek was 14 and her boyfriend, Caleb Barnes, was 20 when he stabbed Jamie’s mother, Cheryl, to death in her car. They buried the body and shoved the car into a pond. The two were arrested and their cellphones confiscated. A series of text messages made it clear that Jamie had wanted her parents dead.

A psychologist described her as a young girl in love, which had warped her sense of reality and fed resentment over her mother’s attempt to end her relationship. In February 2016, Silvonek had accepted a plea deal that got her a 35-year sentence.

“I’m a monster,” she’d stated. “There’s no mitigating factors.” Text messages confirmed that the couple had discussed the murder for a week.

Whether or not there are mitigating factors in this case, as attorneys are set to argue, some children begin fantasizing about murder at an early age, often with their parents as targets. In 2012, the New York Times ran a story about childhood psychopaths. Several experts cited said that signs of psychopathy and callous-unemotional behavior can be detected in children as young as three. Most are coldly manipulative from an early age, especially toward younger children and animals, and some know-how to threaten in the most chilling way.

A girl named Samantha was featured in another story in 2017 in The Atlantic, “When Your Child is a Psychopath.” Around age 6, Samantha was drawing pictures of murder weapons, which she considered using on her stuffed animals as practice for use on people. She flatly told her mother, “I want to kill all of you.” A boy named Carl in this article admitted to his deep fascination with knives and the rage he’d felt as a kid. He'd once bit his mother so hard that it bled, and this had made him feel “completely fulfilled and satisfied.”

No parent wants to believe their child can think such things. But some do.

One of the first double murders of parents by their child in the U. S. involved 11-year-old Wesley Elkins in Iowa. On July 17, 1889, he went looking for help. He said that an intruder had entered the house and killed his parents. He’d just managed to save his half-sister. But his story didn’t add up and he finally confessed.

The skinny little boy who stood just four-foot-eight described in chilling detail what he’d done. He’d gotten up at 2 a.m. and gone down the road to ensure that the coast was clear. Returning home, he’d picked up a heavy piece of wood at the corn-crib. He waited a couple of hours before removing an old muzzle-loader from the kitchen wall to load it. Then he entered his parents’ bedroom. His infant sister slept between them, but this did not deter him. He put the gun barrel near his father’s head and pulled the trigger. When his stepmother woke up, he clubbed her to death. People called him a "natural born criminal."

In some cases, two children commit parricide together. Alex and Derek King, 12 and 13, killed their father in Florida in 2001. It was Alex’s idea, and Derek had acted on it, supposedly under the influence of a child-molesting neighbor. Derek said he’d waited until his father was asleep on the couch before he picked up an aluminum baseball bat and bashed him 10 times on the head and face. The boys then set the house on fire and fled. They didn’t get far.

In West Virginia in 1969, two of the thirteen Bailey children plotted to kill their parents. Susan, 15, enlisted Rodger, 13, in her plan. Angry that her father had forbidden her from seeing her 18-year-old boyfriend (and first cousin), Susan siphoned gas from her father’s truck. With Rodger, she sloshed it around the house, then lit a piece of paper and threw it into the fuel. Charles Bailey, his wife Ruby, and 10 of their children died in the fast-burning fire while Susan and Rodger fled. Rodger spilled the beans to a relative and both kids were arrested. They confessed, but Susan’s competency came into question, and both kids were set free. They were sent to separate foster homes, but Susan ended up in psychiatric care before she eventually got married.

The Freeman brothers also co-committed murder, this one a triple homicide. Their parents, Brenda and Dennis, were scared of them. Even as teens, Bryan and David had grown into hulking six-footers who espoused white supremacist beliefs. They often threatened to kill their parents. Dennis had kept a baseball bat near the bed for protection. One night in 1985, the boys had their cousin, Benny, over. Brenda insisted that he leave. The arguments triggered a shocking spree of violence.

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The next day after a frantic call from a relative, first responders found a bloodstained aluminum bat. In the master they discovered Dennis, his face and head smashed so badly that his brain was exposed. On the basement stairs lay a metal pipe covered with blood and on the floor was Brenda. She’d been bludgeoned and stabbed. Their youngest son had been fatally bludgeoned as well. David and Bryan had fled but were caught and sent to prison. (They’re also petitioning to get their sentences reduced.)

A 25-year study indicates that one in four patricides and 17 percent of matricides are committed by kids under 18. They generally fall into one of three groups: extreme antisocial, psychotic, or abused and traumatized. The latter is the most common reason that children lash out.

We commonly hear that serial killers who murder women have mother issues; their victims are stand-ins for the woman they truly want to kill but can’t. Henry Lee Lucas, famous for falsely confessing to 360 murders during the 1980s, began his killing career with his mother’s murder. Viola came to visit Lucas on January 11, 1960, where he was staying with his sister after several stints in prison. They didn't have a great relationship to begin with. They got into an argument and Lucas grabbed a knife and plunged it into Viola's neck.

Serial killer Edmund Kemper III also killed his mother, but he killed his grandparents first, when he was just 15. His grandmother had made him angry, he later said, so he’d shot and stabbed her to “see what it felt like” and then eliminated his grandfather to “spare” him from discovering her body. He was placed into the California juvenile system but released five years later. The six-foot-nine giant with a genius IQ began killing hitchhiking coeds around Santa Cruz, California.

Shortly after the sixth co-ed murder, Kemper and his mother fought. He decided that she should die as well. On April 20, 1973, he bludgeoned, decapitated, and dismembered her, removing her larynx to shove down the garbage disposal. He then invited her friend over and killed her as well. After he was arrested, he confessed and described how angry he’d been for years with his mother and how each murder had been an expression of it.

However, by the time Kemper and Lucas committed these acts, they were adults. In fact, of those children who decide to act on their homicidal thoughts toward one or both of their parents, three-fourths wait until they’re adults.

While shocking, this type of violence is rare, so it’s difficult to predict. However, threats, rage, callousness, a tendency toward violence, and severe mental illness accompanied by anger and frustration are important cues. There are treatment centers that specialize in handling potentially dangerous kids, and they are depicted in the articles mentioned above.