Timebombs often hide inside ‘happy’ families
ALAN HAWE’S killing spree has eerie similarities to a case of familicide in New South Wales when family man Geoff Hunt shot his wife Kim and his three children in their beds, plunging his community into a state of stunned disbelief. In echoes of the familial loyalty shown in the wake of the Cavan tragedy, Kim’s only sister described Geoff as ‘incredibly generous and kind-hearted’ after he violently obliterated his family. Everybody liked him. By all accounts the Hunts were a devoted couple.
On their last night, Geoff fed and bathed his children and made their school lunches. They all stretched out on the sofa to watch TV.
At the inquest, his parents said that Geoff had recently become quieter.
The housekeeper agreed, adding that Kim was furious with her husband that day for playing golf instead of being at home.
A terrible car crash had left Kim with a brain injury, which meant she was prone to lashing out verbally and susceptible to mood swings.
But while the atmosphere in the house wasn’t great, there was nothing to suggest what was about to happen.
That police would find Kim’s body outside and a note on the table in Geoff’s handwriting saying: ‘I’m sorry, it’s all my fault, totally mine.’
The inquest held 12 months ago shed light on the family’s emotional life. It discovered that Geoff, despite his cheery persona, was under a lot of stress.
Although asset-rich he was short of cash and worried about managing the harvest while also looking after Kim.
It also revealed that the legacy of Kim’s car accident was more profound than neighbours suspected. Her personality changed and she told a counsellor that she wished she had died in the accident.
Witnesses saw her abuse Geoff over minor matters. One of the children had not coped well with Kim being in hospital for so long; another was showing signs of behavioural difficulties.
A picture emerged of a family, outwardly content but buckling under a myriad of strains.
It was completely at odds with the glowing account Kim’s sister gave of her slow but successful recovery, of her returning to work and of her and Geoff’s happiness at their last get-together.
Familicide or family annihilation is the worst crime imaginable and beyond our human comprehension.
Perpetrators take their secrets to the grave so we know nothing about their state of mind or the chain of events leading to the bloodbath.
RESEARCH is in its infancy, although the facts show that men commit it in greater numbers than women. That there’s always a trigger – often marital separation or a sudden loss of status or wealth. That familicide can be a spontaneous act of evil, although in cases of marital separation, it can be planned – a form of calculated revenge.
That offenders are likely to be men who put up a front to the world and conceal their despair until it boils over. They can also be control freaks. The coroner in the Hunt family case ruled that the savagery was the result of an ‘egocentric delusion’ in which Geoff believed his family would be better off dying than living without him.
The coroner rejected the view that an inquest was unnecessary since the perpetrator was dead.
‘Massacres must not be swept under the carpet merely because they occur in the home of the deceased, at the hands of a family member,’ he said.
The community and the younger generations of both families had a right to know if anything could be done to avert the tragedy.
He didn’t state the obvious, which is that inquests can also help us understand familicide.
In the Hunt case, it uncovered how the combination of hidden problems and a deluded personality that put a timebomb at the heart of what seemed an outwardly happy family.