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Mom kills, dad kills: Two takes on tragedy
By DOUG SAUNDERS
Saturday, March 2, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A1
LOS ANGELES -- The case has all the elements of a media sensation: five children
dead of asphyxiation; a parent charged with first-degree murder in their deaths; the
other parent horrified by the apparent act of homicidal depression that destroyed the
family.
But this is not the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother on trial for the drowning
of three of her five children last year, and who could yet be charged in the deaths of
the other two.
Instead, it is the case of Adair Garcia, 30, charged last week with murder in the
deaths of five of his six children, who died from inhaling the fumes from a barbecue
ignited while they slept.
The Yates trial has become the biggest U.S. media sensation of the year, its every
detail splashed on front pages and analyzed in lengthy TV discussions.
The Garcia case has so far failed to make the front page of any major newspaper,
even in the family's home town of Los Angeles, and has quickly disappeared from
the news. There is only one obvious difference between the two: Ms. Yates is a
mother, Mr. Garcia is a father.
Popular opinion has shown one of its perverse turns. People are obsessed with
mothers who kill their children, while little interest is shown in fathers who do the
same.
The distinction lies deep in human psychology. When fathers kill their offspring, it is
viewed as a serious crime; when mothers do it, it is seen as a deep sickness, one
that garners both sympathy and profound horror.
"Killings by aggrieved fathers are generally done out of jealousy and anger, directed
at hurting the ex-spouse or ex-partner," said Jordan Steiker, a law professor at the
University of Texas. "Our society is very ambivalent in labeling women as murderers.
To make sense of a crime through mental illness is much more common with
women, and especially with mothers," she said in an interview yesterday.
Mr. Garcia's case certainly fits this pattern. Police initially thought that five of
his six
children had died in a terrible accident. Mr. Garcia's mother-in-law, arriving to
babysit
on the morning of Feb. 20, found seven bodies in a bungalow in Whittier, a
neighbourhood in south Los Angeles, and a smoldering barbecue in the living room.
Five children, ranging in age from 2 to 10, were dead after breathing the fumes all
night; a nine-year-old was unconscious, as was their father, Mr. Garcia, found lying
beside the barbecue.
When the horrified mother, Adriana Arreola, showed up on the scene and collapsed
in grief, police began to doubt the case was an accident. The marriage had been on
the rocks; she had moved out for a week, and Mr. Garcia had spoken ominously of
depression and revenge. He was soon charged with five counts of first-degree
murder and one count of attempted murder. He will be arraigned on March 19.
It remains to be seen whether the jury and sentencing judge will treat him differently
from Ms. Yates. Well-established precedent says he will be treated much more
harshly if he is convicted.
Michelle Oberman, a law professor at DePaul University in New Jersey, argues in her
recent book Mothers Who Kill Their Children that juries rarely assign murder
convictions to mothers accused of killing their own offspring, or request tough
sentences such as the death penalty. This, she speculates, is because these cases
are almost always matters of deep clinical depression, generating considerable
sympathy rather than rage.
"Throughout common-law history, juries and judges have tended to agree on one
thing: When a mother kills her child, it is generally different from other forms of
homicide," Prof. Oberman wrote in an opinion article on the Yates case this week.
"Different because these cases are not only about the horror of dead children, but
also about desperate and deeply troubled women."
In Texas, the public is divided between those who wish Ms. Yates would be given
psychological treatment rather than a criminal trial, and those who argue strenuously
that she should be sentenced to death.
No such debate has arisen over Mr. Garcia. Instead, the few Los Angeles citizens
who have noticed the case have expressed mystification. "How do you understand
this?" asked Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lieutenant Don Bear on the day of Mr.
Garcia's arrest. "There really is no way that you can understand this or why someone
would do something like this."
The Los Angeles Times carried Lt. Bear's mystified remarks, along with all other
coverage of the Garcia family tragedy, on page B4.
Copyright © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
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