I found this forum by googling, ‘Why did my brother kill my father?’ The murders, (someone else I loved was killed as well), occurred on Thanksgiving. It’s now January. I’ve been so busy with the funeral, communicating with the IRS, filling out the death certificates, correcting the death certificates, I did not have time to think about it until today.
I walked next to my brother on a mountain trail months ago. I complained to him, “You are a grown man, why don’t you have a job?” We’ve always been close. There has literally been nothing my brother has not confided to me before. After our mother died, I took care of him. He was ten at the time. It’s been twenty years since then.
He dodged my questions about getting a job. He shrugged them off. I grew annoyed. We had driven past thirty different restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores with signs that said, ‘Hiring.’ He was living with family that had even offered to put him through college and place him on their car insurance. I told him he was crazy if he didn’t accept. College would be good for him. I told him I didn’t want a NEET for a brother. I got him to laugh, but he did not tell me he was going to go out and get a job.
Our father had asked me to take my brother out when I visited because he was worried about him. My brother claimed to be scared of the dogs at the table, so he would take his meals into his bedroom and wouldn’t eat with the family. He was drawing symbols on mirrors with sharpie. That, for me, was a concern. I asked him, jokingly, if he was trying to summon a demon. He mumbled he was bored. I got agitated and told him it was creepy, and to stop. He did put the mirrors away. When I came back into his room later he had them out again.
My dad asked me how he was, after I was getting ready to leave. I told him my brother was weird, which at the time, I believed was a result of him being lazy. All he did was game, go on reddit, and post stupid memes on his phone. I didn’t yell at him and I wasn’t as aggressive as I should have been. I suggested to my father that maybe him and our other family members could sit down with my brother at the table and give him an ultimatum. My brother used to take my advice, because he knew I cared about him.
A month later I got a phone call from my sister that two of our family members had been fatally shot by our brother. He hadn’t tried to run after the fact. When I arrived at the house, I stripped the computer. I found my brother’s kindle and went through it. The police had his phone. They told me there’s nothing leading up to this. No calls. No texts. No weird photos. Nothing.
The leading investigator believes my brother is evil. They found a written list of guns in the house. That took planning, which he said is more of a criminal thing than a Schizophrenic thing. Another police officer I spoke to is unsure. My brother expresses very little interest in what is going to happen to him. He asked about the dogs and our surviving family’s welfare, but outside of that, he didn’t seem to know or care that he was in prison. He did insist my father had threatened him with death several times over the years. My father was the most laid back, kind, gentle guy. I knew that was a lie. I told the police officer my brother was lying.
My father was taking care of our other family members. One had suffered a stroke and another had Dementia. It was my father’s idea for my brother to move up with them. My brother wasn’t working and my sister didn’t have a lot of money. She told him to get a job or get out of her house. He stormed out and left all his stuff behind. Now my brother is claiming my father was plotting to kill him, after inviting him up to the house to live there.
A nurse I spoke to told me everything I described sounded like Schizophrenia. The paranoia, self-isolation, belief that one had been abused. I told her how normal my brother was on our walk. She said Schizophrenics can hide their condition, and that they commonly do. I asked about the list of guns and lying to the police. She phrased it politely, but she suggested my brother is a spoiled brat who threw a tantrum. His mental illness didn’t make him commit murder. It only made murder seem like a good idea. He was sane enough to know that this would get him in enormous trouble, and he was sane enough to try and hide it. That was really hard to hear.
Just like with the two police officers disagreeing with one another, I got a second opinion from another nurse. She worked in the ER as well as a psych ward. She suggested it would be crazy to judge someone with Schizophrenia as being ‘evil.’ The concept of evil involves freedom of choice. She went on to tell me that many, many people my brother’s age don’t have jobs and live with their parents. These people argue with their loved ones and get mad and embarrassed. They do all the same things my brother did, not working, playing video games. The difference between a healthy person and my brother is that the healthy people avoid their parents and refuse to get jobs until they are thrown out of the house. A sane person does not resort to murder.
My brother has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder. I have no idea if he did it because he’s evil, or if he’s been Schizophrenic for years and hid it. I am scared for him, and so, so, furious. I go back and forth between feeling devastated and humiliated. I have a company event next week that is going to last a month. A lot of smiling, a lot of networking. This is something I RSVP’d for. It is my job. I have to do it.
Everyone I’ve spoken to has either one view or the other. It’s either he was 100% evil and planned this or he is 100% Schizophrenic and had no choice. It makes no difference to him, because as far as the state is concerned, it’s first degree murder. I was hoping, because I’m on this site, someone could clear this up for me. If there had been no guns in the house, would he have used some other way? Was this inevitable? Someone suggested I took my life in my hands on that walking trail because we were alone on the side of a mountain. My brother killed my father, and I thought he loved him. Why didn’t he shove me off any of the numerous cliffs we were on, when I demanded he get a job? Did he love me a little more? Did people telling him to get a job have nothing to do with him killing anyone?
My sister feels like she handed my father a ticking time bomb. She has a little boy, who my brother loved and took care of. He was so good with our nephew. When our nephew moved up to live with his dad, my brother got quiet and withdrawn. He loved and took care of cats. The cats were another reason my sister said he had to leave. He wasn’t buying them food, but giving them people food, their food. That was another thing we talked about on the walking trail. How dare he give my sister’s food to stray cats? Once again, I made him laugh. I just thought he was being malicious and audacious, giving away my sister’s food to stray animals. Was this another warning sign I should have picked up on?
My brother and I were so close growing up. We thought up stories together. After our mom died, I took care of him and my sister. I can’t connect him with the killer. They seem like two completely different people. I keep wondering how close I came to getting a knife in my back, or being shoved off a cliff. I was walking next to a murderer and we had coffee and talked. I keep going over what we talked about with a fine-toothed comb, but I have nothing. It’s been months and I still have no idea if he chose this. I’m too old to feel like this, but I want to run away. It’s like I’m fourteen again. Might as well be wearing black and posting on Tumblr.