It sounds pretty ugly He killed the adults first. According to one report, he stabbed everyone multiple times and there was blood everywhere. It was heartbreaking to read that the wife suffered defensive wounds trying to protect her children.
http://www.mytelus.com/ncp_news/article.en.do?pn=canada&articleID=2930414
It's difficult to fathom how this can occur.
I couldn't help but think that something more had come out within the family. The instant I heard he waited for the tenant to come home, and killed her first, my mind screamed 'affair'. He killed everyone who could have 'known' what it was that set him off, and left the baby to live, because she didn't know whatever it was that set him off. Just my gut reaction from the order of it.
I doubt any of us can really understand what goes through a person's head when they're in the mindset to kill in any circumstance other than self defense - especially when it's their loved ones. The price of true understanding would be far too high: we'd have to walk in their shoes, feel what they feel, conclude what they conclude.
I've wondered if we don't all have the hidden (even to ourselves) capacity to commit such atrocities - what is that horrible trigger that takes an apparently once normal functioning person to such an unimaginably heinous place in their head? Is it something they're predisposed to? Is it a cumulative thing that could happen to any one of us given the same set of circumstances?
I've been wondering about that poor little baby too - will she be raised by family? Will she be forever imprinted with the knowledge of what happened to her parents and siblings?
These tragedies are never over when the media packs up and migrates to the next tragedy... this incident will envelope this family for a lifetime - several lifetimes probably.
It horrifies, it boggles. Ultimately all we can do is send our most compassionate heartfelt wishes for healing for the family members left behind. :---(
I don't know about it being all that difficult to understand ... Josh was suicidal, but he wasn't going to let his family go on without him, so he killed them too. End of story. Well, not exactly, he had to wait for Amber to come home and murder her first because if she came home after everyone (except Anna) was stabbed, there was a slight possibility that someone could have survived. I see this as a very selfish, arrogant act by a man that thought his family would be better off dead than without him. He apparently had some strong religious beliefs, so it's quite possible he believed in an afterlife where murderers and people that commit suicide are re-united with their family in heaven.
I don't know about it being all that difficult to understand ... Josh was suicidal, but he wasn't going to let his family go on without him, so he killed them too. End of story. Well, not exactly, he had to wait for Amber to come home and murder her first because if she came home after everyone (except Anna) was stabbed, there was a slight possibility that someone could have survived. I see this as a very selfish, arrogant act by a man that thought his family would be better off dead than without him. He apparently had some strong religious beliefs, so it's quite possible he believed in an afterlife where murderers and people that commit suicide are re-united with their family in heaven.
I don't think there is any rational explanation for this debacle. The guy went completely friggin looney. The stories his neighbors tell about how wonderful the guy was, was obviously a bloody charade that could no longer be maintained by the killer when he finally broke and slaughtered everyone close to him. Leaving Anna alive was just one more thing about the total chaos that was his mind in his final minutes.
I think it goes a bit deeper then just some religious issue, as there have been friends/family who have reported that days prior to this occuring, he was apparently hearing voices and all that good stuff, he claimed to his father that he was having a nervous breakdown..... so to me this sums up to an untreated mental condition that might have very well kicked into full swing faster then anybody could have known and thus, there was little time to treat it.... since his parents were getting ready to fly to see him when this all occured. Religion might have had something to do with the way he reacted to this mental condition that occured, but religion didn't create it.
Added:
And if you want to link it or direct it to Religion being responsible, then you're going to get into some muddy water in regards to what created those voices and who's voices he was hearing.... which get's more into a religious debate.
Unless the child was protected by the mother, which the autopsy reports claim (She had injuries which could be related to defending someone) and perhaps he might have figured he already killed the child (thereby the child was roaming around the house alone.)
I have another theory but I'll leave that one for now.
I don't think there is any rational explanation for this debacle. The guy went completely friggin looney. The stories his neighbors tell about how wonderful the guy was, was obviously a bloody charade that could no longer be maintained by the killer when he finally broke and slaughtered everyone close to him. Leaving Anna alive was just one more thing about the total chaos that was his mind in his final minutes.
Unless the child was protected by the mother, which the autopsy reports claim (She had injuries which could be related to defending someone) and perhaps he might have figured he already killed the child (thereby the child was roaming around the house alone.)
I have another therory but I'll leave that one for now.