But the devout Christian continued to gamble and drink and appeared to be unravelling. His mood spiralled downwards further when someone crashed into his taxi cab and he found work as the manager of a call centre instead. He wanted to reconcile with Giselle and complained to anyone who would listen that he wasn’t getting as much access to his sons as he would have liked.
On Saturday 3 May 2008, he took the children – Paul age six and Jay age two – to the Campsie Fells, a local beauty spot, for an outing in the car, promising that he would buy them toys and sports gear. When they arrived, he parked and stabbed them before slashing their throats and putting their blood-soaked bodies in the boot.
The 46-year-old phoned his ex-wife that lunchtime and said ‘You’ll regret what you did to me in this life.’ After hanging up, he poured petrol on himself and the car and set it alight, also slashing his own throat. He was discovered close to death, with terrible burns, and rushed to the nearest hospital.
When he recovered, he was transferred to Barlinnie Prison. In November 2008, despite not entering a formal guilty plea, he admitted stabbing his two sons to death. Lawyers said that they were awaiting tests which would establish his state of mind and that he would be sentenced the following month. But by then his mental health had further declined and sentencing was deferred.
In January 2009, the child killer was jailed for a minimum of 21 years at Paisley High Court, the judge commenting that it would have been 28 years if he hadn’t pleaded guilty.
BRIAN PHILCOX
Karate expert Brian enjoyed an 18-year marriage which only ended when his wife died of cancer. Afterwards, he raised so much money for cancer charities that he was named Man Of The Year.
He remarried, but was incensed when his second wife Evelyn (known as Lyn) left him in 2006 after eight years of marriage. But Lyn could no longer stand the beatings that he was meting out to her teenage son from her first marriage, Ryan. Increasingly fearful of her martial-arts trained husband, she moved in with her mother who lived close to the family home. Statistically, this decreased her risk of becoming a victim, as violent men are more likely to assault ex-partners who live alone.
But Philcox continued to terrorise his wife, often turning up at her mother’s house late at night and banging on the windows. Presumably this frightened the couple’s biological children, Amy aged seven and Owen who was only three. This anti-social behaviour aside, he was a good father and would regularly play football with the children during access visits. They spent several days a week with him.
The courts fixed a hearing for Monday 16 June 2008 to decide whether or not 37-year-old Lyn would get the house in Runcorn, Cheshire. As the day approached, Brian’s mood darkened and he told a neighbour that he’d lost his wife, was losing his kids and was going to lose his house. He added ‘I’d rather burn it down than give it to that bitch.’ That same week, he phoned Fathers4Justice in a distressed state, asking about the likelihood of his being able to obtain child custody.
On Friday 13th, 52-year-old Philcox, who was chairman of the Federation of English Karate Organisations, collected the couple’s children as arranged in his Land Rover. He was supposed to return them the following day. Unknown to anyone at this stage, he had left a hoax bomb in the family home and had sent another to a relative, believed to be his stepson Ryan.
On the Saturday, he took the children on a steam train ride at Snowdonia. Later that day, he was seen, parked off the A470 in Wales, smoking in his vehicle: presumably the children were in the backseat or playing nearby at this time. When he didn’t return with Amy and Owen as planned, Lyn phoned the police.
The following morning – Father’s Day – Philcox phoned her and said ‘I’ll make the papers, just you see. I’ve left you a present.’ He then gassed himself and the children in his Land Rover, which was parked in a lay-by on an unclassified road – a steep track flanked on both sides by heavy foliage – in Conwy Valley, North Wales. All three died of carbon monoxide poisoning. They were found by a traumatised walker at 3pm.
Shortly afterwards, bomb disposal experts blew up a hoax bomb in a controlled explosion at Brian Philcox’s marital home. They did the same to the second hoax bomb which he’d sent to a relative.
Sadly, the case echoed another murder-suicide in Wales by a vengeful husband five years before…
KEITH YOUNG
Keith, a farm labourer, was 24 and living with his common law wife and their daughter when he met 14-year-old Samantha. They met in secret for the next six years until she became pregnant with his child in 1996, whereupon they set up home together in Cheshire.
Over the next few years, the couple had four sons but the relationship was often stormy and Keith hit her on several occasions. She forgave him and they married in 2001. But the violence continued and she left him and moved into a council house near the marital home in Weaverham.
Keith was given access to his sons on Wednesdays and every second weekend, but he proved to be such a good father that he was given additional access. Secretly, however, he wanted to return to the marriage and told his estranged wife in March 2003 that he loved her more than he loved the children and didn’t want one without the other. But, remembering the times that he’d assaulted her, she sensibly refused to reconcile.
He made vague threats, stating that, if she started divorce proceedings against him, ‘things would go with a bang and you would be left wondering what happened.’ He also told friends that he planned to commit suicide and take the boys with him, but apparently no one took him seriously or warned Samantha. He was enraged when he found out that she’d started a new relationship and become pregnant, realising that he would never win her back.
On 26 March 2003, the 38-year-old arranged to take his sons – Joshua age seven, Thomas age six, Callum age five and Daniel age three – out in his Jeep. In the early hours of the morning, when he still hadn’t returned, Samantha phoned his mobile. He answered and immediately snapped ‘Save your breath.’
She asked where he was and he replied ‘You don’t need to know.’ He was actually parked in the Horseshoe Pass, near Llangollen, North Wales, and had the boys in the back of the Jeep, dressed in their pyjamas and wrapped in quilts. He also had a petrol lawnmower with its engine running in the Jeep.
Samantha asked where the boys were, and he said that they were in the back of the vehicle. He asked her if she could hear the mower’s engine and she replied that she could.
Desperate to save her children, Samantha said that she’d abort her pregnancy and reunite with him, but her husband replied ‘It’s too late. You would have me arrested.’
‘It’s not too late,’ 28-year-old Samantha said.
Keith Young replied: ‘It is too late. Dan’s dead.’ (The three-year-old was first to expire.)
Samantha asked to speak to her other children, and Keith put seven-year-old Joshua on the phone and told him to say goodbye to his mother and tell her that he loved her. The petrified seven-year-old did just that.
‘Where are you?’ Samantha asked for a second time and Keith replied that another of their children had died. Seconds later he said that a third boy had died and that he himself was feeling sleepy. She then heard his breathing deepen markedly.
The distraught young mother phoned the police who tracked down the position of her husband’s mobile phone and traced the vehicle within two hours. They smashed the windows to reach the boys, but all four children, and their father, had died of carbon monoxide poisoning and couldn’t be revived.
When Brian Philcox gassed his children on Father’s Day 2008, Samantha (who now has a daughter) offered to speak to Lyn Philcox in an attempt to comfort her. Samantha said that she had seen psychologists and counsellors but that this hadn’t helped, that the pain never goes away. She echoed the views of every sane person in the country when she said ‘It doesn’t matter what happens between a couple – the children should never be the victims.’
CHRISTOPHER TOWNSEND
This father, who designed
sets for television programmes including Casualty, fought a bitter battle for guardianship of his son Charlie Bob after his marriage broke up. On Wednesday 23 April 2008, he left a court hearing in a rage, aware that he was unlikely to get full custody. He went to his local pub and told friends that the system stank, that it was prejudiced against fathers. They were aware that he wasn’t coping and that the custody fight had taken a lot out of him.
Christopher always looked after his son on Wednesday nights, so that Wednesday evening he took the six-year-old to his £320,000 semi-detached home in Long Ashton, outside Bristol, as usual. At 6am, passers-by saw flames coming from the house and alerted the fire brigade. They found that 51-year-old Christopher had hanged himself in the garage and that Charlie Bob was dead in an upstairs room.
CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS
Enraged that his ex-wife Valerie had a new boyfriend, Christopher Hawkins, 47, arranged an access visit with his four-year-old son, Ryan on the day after what would have been his 17th wedding anniversary. When his 14-year-old daughter, Donna, arrived to collect the little boy, Hawkins locked her in, apologised then began stabbing her with a carving knife. She collapsed and he told her ‘I’ve got to kill Ryan now.’ He went to the four-year-old and stabbed him nine times with the knife, the blade twice piercing his heart. Meanwhile, a horrifically-injured Donna managed to open the door and crawl into the street.
Paramedics arrived promptly at the house in Slaithwaite, near Huddersfield, to find that Ryan had bled to death. Donna was still alive but had been stabbed in her mouth, chest, abdomen, liver and extremities, a total of 13 injuries. Her father had also carved a chunk out of her arm. She was rushed to intensive care where her mother took up a vigil at her bedside. Thanks to skilful surgery, she survived. Hawkins’s 16-year-old daughter, Natalie, was out of the house so escaped the vengeful attack.
Meanwhile, Hawkins went to his local (the pub where he’d been manager until his marriage failed) for a drink and told staff and customers what he’d done then took refuge in his local church. Arrested, he admitted stabbing both children, saying that he did it because his wife had started an affair with a work colleague shortly before leaving him. He later alleged, during his eight-day trial at Leeds Crown Court, that he’d been hearing voices and said that he could no longer remember anything.
But the jury didn’t believe his version of events and the judge (who praised Donna’s courage) accused him of crying crocodile tears. On 5 March 2008, he was sentenced to a minimum 21-year term with another 12 years, for his attack on his daughter, to run concurrently. As he was led away, he looked up at his daughters in the public gallery and called ‘I love you, Donna. I love you, Natalie.’ His ex-wife later said that Donna would remain psychologically scarred by her ordeal at her father’s hands.
SHAHAJAN KABIR
Facing deportation from Britain back to his native Bangladesh because he had been refused political asylum – he had already overstayed his visa by eight years – Kabir failed to snatch his 10-month-old baby son in Carlisle town centre in autumn 2003. The 40-year-old, who was estranged from the baby’s 20-year-old mother, Lorna Martin, then decided that, if he couldn’t have baby Hassan, then no one could.
Taking a knife from the curry house where he worked in Carlisle, he followed Lorna, her mother Pauline and Hassan in his pushchair, into a branch of Greggs bakery on 21 October 2003. Smiling, Kabir bent down and cut three times at his son’s throat, slitting it from ear to ear before he was disarmed by a passer-by. Lorna and her mother were also wounded by the knife-wielding illegal immigrant.
In court, Kabir claimed to be suffering from depression and said that his life was over now that his son was dead. He was sentenced to a minimum of 13 years but this was later increased to 16 years by the Appeals Court, which took into account how traumatised various members of the public had been at witnessing the baby’s death.
As the following cases show, American fathers are just as likely to seek revenge on their ex-wives by murdering their children, a crime which seems to be slightly on the increase.
MICHAEL JOSEPH PASSARO
Passaro’s first wife died when she was hit and killed by a car whilst attempting to assist others at the scene of an accident. He remarried, but his second marriage failed. Working by day and taking nursing classes at night, 36-year-old Passaro brooded on his failed relationship and blamed it on Karen, his ex-wife.
To get back at her, he decided to burn himself and their two-year-old daughter Maggie to death. He wrote a suicide note to Karen on 23 November 1998, saying that he hoped that she would ‘live in pain for the rest of her life,’ then strapped his daughter into his van outside her Myrtle Beach home. But, when he was badly injured, Michael Passaro’s life force kicked in and he jumped from the vehicle. Unfortunately, his toddler daughter had already expired due to her horrific burns.
In 2000, a now-recovered Passaro pleaded guilty to murder and arson and was sentenced to death. He later waived his appeals, saying that he wanted to die, that life imprisonment equalled a death sentence to him. But his wishes were ignored by anti-death-penalty campaigners who petitioned to save his life.
Passaro remained steadfast in his desire to die and was executed by lethal injection on 13 September 2002.
PATRICK GLEESON
Embittered by the break-up with his partner Edna Smith, unemployed Patrick Gleeson went to court and asked for his child maintenance payments to be reduced, claiming that he had financial problems. He returned to court complaining that his ex was preventing him from seeing the children as often as he wanted: he later applied to the court for full custody.
On 22 November 2002, he had an access visit in which he took his children – Ashley, five, and her three-year-old brother Joshua – out for a burger. He was supposed to return them in the evening but phoned and asked Edna if he could keep them for another three days. Reluctant to make him angry, as he had a violent temper, she agreed to this. She had no idea that he’d bought a .25 Beretta handgun in Chicago a few weeks before.
Gleeson took the children to the house in Illinois which he shared with his girlfriend, Dena Fuglseth. Sometime during the next couple of days, he shot her through the head, leaving her body behind the basement trapdoor. He also shot both of his children through the head with the same weapon: their blood was later found on a mattress in Dena’s home so he may well have killed them as they slept.
For reasons that have never been made clear, he put his offspring’s corpses in his van and dumped them in the Des Plaines River before driving down to Florida. Meanwhile, Edna had reported that Patrick hadn’t returned the children and they went to Dena’s house to find her dead. A huge manhunt was launched, and the crime was featured on America’s Most Wanted. Police feared a violent showdown, but a passing motorist reported the location of his vehicle to the authorities and Gleeson was found sleeping in his van. He surrendered peacefully.
He later made a statement saying that he loved Dena and that they would ‘be together someday in heaven.’ He had similar supernatural hopes for a reunion with his children, writing Edna a letter which said ‘tonight they sleep with angels, safe, secure and protected from you.’ He wrote another five pages of vitriol to the desolate Edna, saying that the dispute over visitation rights had hurt him and the children but that she would ‘never lay another hand on Ashley or Josh.’
Charged with three counts of murder, using a firearm and kidnapping, he is destined to die in prison.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TEMPORARY INSANITY
Occasionally a parent will murder a child during a psychotic episode, a temporary break with reality. Though psychotics often believe that their children are possessed, they don’t fit into the ‘heaven can’t wait’ category as they weren’t religious zealots to start with.
ALBERTO IZAGA
Millionaire businessman Alberto Izaga was devoted to his wife Ligla and two-year-old daughter Yanire. The Spanish-born executive worked in London for insurance giant Swiss Re and the fam
ily lived in a luxurious Thames-side apartment with views of the Houses of Parliament. Well-liked at work and beloved by his relatives, he told colleagues that his little daughter was ‘the most precious treasure on Earth.’
But, during an American holiday with his wife, Mr Izaga was clearly under stress. The couple went to a cinema in New York but the only seats available were for Bug, a horror film with religious imagery in which cockroaches crawl under people’s skin. It was an unfortunate choice of viewing for someone already feeling anxious and pressurised and may have reminded him of his religious upbringing at a Jesuit university.
A few weeks later, in late May 2007 during a trip to Geneva, he couldn’t sleep for three nights and colleagues noted that he was constantly on edge. Yet, rather than relax, he went to hear a motivational speaker who talked about leaving his family for considerable periods of time and pushing himself to achieve his goals. Though already a high flyer with a degree in law and business studies and a top executive position, Alberto Izaga was profoundly affected by this rhetoric. The next evening, back in London, he went out for a meal with his wife – but, as they approached the restaurant, he began talking to himself and gesticulating wildly.
The couple returned home and, at 4.30am, the 36-year-old sat up in bed and began punching the pillow. He started to talk about the motivational speech and proceeded to ramble about the Jesuits and about the film Bug. He also said that his firm was part of a secret sect which were trying to take over the financial world. He was sweating profusely and, at one stage, broke down in tears. Ligla phoned a friend for help, and the friend overheard some of Alberto Izaga’s psychotic breakdown. He was screaming, in his native Spanish, ‘Bitch, die, you bastard, die. I’ve killed the daughter. She’s disappeared now. It’s finished. It’s over.’ At this stage, Yanire was still asleep in her cot.
Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents Page 14