More Excuses for Boston Murdering Mom
Background: Apologies for violent women are standard in the mainstream media–somehow it’s never her fault, and is usually a man’s fault. This time it’s the Boston Herald–a conservative newspaper–making excuses for a murderous mommy. Angela Lopez murdered her two children, but she isn’t bad–she’s a “lost soul” who is “in the throes of despair” because–you guessed it–she is the victim of “abusive men.” To learn more, see my blog post Boston Woman Murders Her Two Kids–and It’s Men’s Fault
First we had an apologia from Jessica Van Sack and Michele McPhee–A life in turmoil: Mystery shrouds slain kids’ murders (Boston Herald, 7/31/07). Now in “Signs ignored too long: Troubled moms unravel despite cries for help”, Boston Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis tells us that the poor murdering mommy was (sigh) a “single mother in free fall, a woman unable to break from a cycle of abuse that began in childhood.” A 30-year-old woman murders her two children and we sympathize because she (allegedly) had a bad childhood. (To Gelzinis’s credit, he does redeem himself to some degree in a subsequent article–stay tuned).
Signs ignored too long: Troubled moms unravel despite cries for help
By Peter Gelzinis
Boston Herald, 8/1/07
The tragedies do not mirror each other exactly. Yet, the sad parallels between the sagas of Angela Lopez and LaVeta Jackson seem all too hauntingly familiar.
Police would come upon each scene in the heat of July, five years apart almost to the day. What awaited them in both cases were the bodies of dead children, along with the added horror of their young mothers whose lives had come apart in a lethal burst of anguish and rage.
Sunday night in Roslindale, the cops were forced to dislodge an air conditioner only to find 10-year-old Dennis Burgos Jr. and his 13-year-old sister, Jasmine, dead in their beds. Nearby was the blood-soaked body of their mother, Angela Lopez, 31.
Homicide investigators have interviewed Lopez, but sources believe she attempted to take her own life by tearing at herself with a knife after allegedly killing her son and daughter. It is unclear whether the children were smothered to death or poisoned.
Yet what’s quickly emerged in the aftermath of Sunday night’s grim discovery is a portrait of a single mother in free fall, a woman unable to break from a cycle of abuse that began in childhood. Nor could she conceal the truth that her life was slipping off the rails from family and friends.
Lopez’s neighbors knew that a chain of events, beginning with the death of a relative, had appeared to overwhelm her. Some tried to offer comfort by assuring her things would change and she would find that perfect someone with whom she could share her life. (more…)
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