Joni: I'm Dr Joni Johnson a forensic psychologist and private investigator. I'm also

someone who has an up-close and personal relationship with suicide, so I'll be bringing a personal slant as well as a professional perspective to this topic. I'm also delighted to introduce my co-host Jacque Jamason, who has been a mental health professional for 25 years. After losing her daughter14 years ago at the hand of her ex-wife, she has dedicated her personal time and her professional resources to educate and help people who've experienced murder-suicide, in order to prevent and help them heal and move forward so good to see you again Jacque.

 

Jacque: Thanks Joni. Thanks for having me well.

 

Joni: This is our show, so I'm really excited to talk about this topic because we've had many conversations about the fact that even though both of us are mental health professionals, I knew so little about this topic before we started working together.

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Jacque: Right. And I learned about you through someone else in the industry and reached out to you, and I'm so happy that I did we were able to connect and come up with the idea of actually bringing this forward into the world. So I appreciate that.

 

My daughter died in 2014, and I'm also a licensed mental health counselor for the last 25 years, as was my ex-partner, who actually survived the suicide. As I went through the process of healing and I was looking for a therapist, I really struggled finding someone who has experienced in this. And over the years, as I've healed, I have been able to come forward and start to talk about education and awareness and even potentially some red flags that we can start to maybe identify when it comes to not only suicide, but murder-suicide. So I really appreciate, you, know the platform and the opportunity to talk about these things

 

Joni: Well I've been really, kind of, blown away by some of the stories that I've heard in talking to people who have gone through this. And I actually became interested in this topic, as a writer,, you know,, I always researching different forensic psychology topics. And I just kept coming across murder-suicide. And what was kind of ironic about it was that I have done I think at this point probably thousands of suicide risk assessments in so many different settings and I've certainly done violence risk assessments and yet I never saw that really interplay between the two. And in talking to so many people who who've gone through this it seems like this is something that kind of falls through the cracks in terms of support, in terms of understanding the unique risk factors, and as mental health professionals kind of understanding how to evaluate somebody's risk for this.

 

Jacque: Absolutely I mean that's what I'm definitely learning through all of this. As a professional in the mental health industry, I was feeling a little bit embarrassed and ashamed of actually not catching red flags until it was way too late, right? So, for me looking backwards at my relationship I definitely see the red flags, the signs, from the very beginning. And as I've also researched and talked to other professionals, who are professors, even, in domestic violence, but yet who have lived through relationships where they have suffered domestic violence it has made me aware that this can happen to anyone and there is so much work that we need to do around identifying, not only identifying, but also speaking out, sharing, and maybe coming up even with a realistic safety plan. Right now, if you call the domestic violence hotline, which is a great resource by the way, they will provide some safety Alternatives with suicide as well right we have the 998 hotline the National Suicide Hotline. But I feel like sometimes we don't speak out as partners, as family members, as friends for whatever reason maybe out of fear. I know for me, I wanted to protect my spouse, I wanted to protect myself, I wanted to protect our reputation in the community. And while I wasn't really conscious of that at the time, I still felt it.

 

Yet, I was so afraid to speak to anyone, and a part of that was because I was afraid of the consequence from her, so not with physical violence, but with covert manipulation. And so I just believe that there's so much work to be done here there's so much research and education and awareness that needs to happen around murder-suicide.

 

Joni:, you know,, you touched on one thing that really resonated with me and that is: how we as mental health professionals can have so much shame around things that happen in our families or to us. And I think that's a unique burden in some respects, and what I mean by that is when you think about physicians I mean if a physician got cancer I don't think anybody would be like well you're a doctor,, you know,, you should have been able to prevent that from happening. I mean, that doesn't make sense. And yet, most of mental health professionals I know have had some trauma in their lives, and that was that played a factor in them becoming mental health professionals. And yet, it does seem like when we have these skeletons in our closet, or we think of them as in our closet, or we have something tragic happened to us there is a sense I think that other people will judge us or we we're judging ourselves that we should somehow have some kind of x-ray vision. Because there are red flags about many things suicide, homicide, and yet, not always. And even if there were, we can certainly see them after the fact. But they're much harder to see at the time. And then the other part of it that you mentioned Jacque is the fact that we have our emotions tied up in that relationship often times and so even if we know things, or we see things, it's scary to think about doing something different, or reaching out for help, or even, you know, telling on someone. I mean there's all kinds of feelings I think people have in these situations.

 

Jacque: Right, and so, when I think about that then I really realize that we have the skills, we have the knowledge, we've been educated on all of this. sSo it must be 100 times, a thousand, times harder for people who aren't educated, who don't have the coping skills, who don't have the background and the education about mental health. We have that and we still miss it sometimes. Or we still don't speak, we still can't find our voice, we're still afraid. So think about the people who don't have that.

 

Joni: Absolutely,, you know,, and you'd mentioned calling a domestic violence situation. So, when I first began looking at this topic and kind of going “What's going on?” “Why am I seeing you, know children, who are murdered, for example, by their families or family members?” I started looking at, you know, well how often does this happen and, you know, I found I guess a couple of things, you know.

 

One is that it's certainly not common.

 

Between a thousand and 1500 people lose their lives every year in the United States due to murder-suicide.

 

Of the about 600 incidents of murder-suicide that can result in multiple loss of lives, about 15% of those involve children.

 

I think that's just mindboggling that we don't see more awareness or more people talking about some of the things that lead to murder-suicide.

 

The other thing is that I don't know about you, but the little bit I had heard about murder-suicide before I began doing some research on it were things like it's often a suicide pact among two people who are elderly. And they make some kind of agreement with each other. Or some altruistic motive, and I know that there's been some research I know there's Thomas Joiner who does some research in this area, and there's all kinds of motives but when you really step back and you look at murder-suicide it's so incredibly diverse in terms of who does it, yes there's no question of the fact that about I think it's about 65% of murder-suicide incidents involve some kind of domestic violence history. So we know that that is the most “common.” But we can talk about murder-suicide in terms of a child who murders his family, or a child who murders a parent, or a mass shooter who goes into a school and shoots people. I mean, it's really incredibly diverse. And I'm wondering if that's why there hasn't been more, you know, kind of cohesion in the research, and training, and awareness - because it is so spread out. What are your thoughts about that?

 

Jacque: I think you're right, and I think that's why it's going to be so good that we're going to be talking to people here on this platform, on this podcast, who come from all different varied backgrounds. Who experienced family members, and friends, or peers. Who they lost through murder-suicide for very different reasons. And I think you're right, absolutely, I think because when there's a murder-suicides, let's just say a school shooting for instance, the focus is more on security and gun violence or gun safety or gun awareness, whatever it is. And I think we lose the murder-suicide piece somewhere along the way. We tend to only see the headlines about murder-suicide when it's, maybe, a husband whose wife divorces him and so, you know, he goes off the deep end and he's the main suspect or if he lives, or if not, you know, we just hear about that. And so I think that's sort of what people maybe think about, but there's just so much more and there's so many varieties. So yeah, I agree.

 

Joni: The other thing that comes to mind for me, when we're talking about some of the, maybe, ideas we've had about murder-suicide from a mental health perspective is this, I don't know if you if you were taught this, but I remember when I was in graduate school there was this thinking that, you know, there were kind of internalizes and there were externalizers. And so it was almost like people who would commit suicide would never commit murder. And people who would commit murder people are never going to commit suicide. And we certainly know that that is not true. As a matter of fact, we know that in some situations that somebody who's suicidal, such as murder-suicide, that murder-suicide often starts with depression and thoughts of suicide. And at some point that person decides, makes a decision, to take somebody else with them. And so that is, I guess, a new idea to me when I read this. That's been backed up by what research is out there.

 

Jacque: Right. And what just came to my mind is my ex actually survived her suicide attempt and so wouldn't it be, you know, good if we could actually ask the person who survived “What happened? “What were your thoughts?” I think it would be we'd be hard-pressed to maybe get an accurate answer or, you know, the mental health of the individual is in question of course.

 

And so we don't know if we're going to get the right answer, a good answer, or even an answer that's true and honest. But I sometimes wish we could ask those questions. “What happened?” “What was the trigger?” And maybe we can, one day. Maybe we will have someone that we can ask.

 

Joni: I would love that because, you know, long ago I did a show on survivors of suicide, people who had attempted suicide, and they and these were serious suicide attempts, and they had survived against their best efforts. And it was so interesting having this group of people and being able to sit down with them and talk to them. Because they were able to talk about those thoughts that were going on and what led up to that. And a couple of those individuals had jumped off of a bridge and were able to talk about, literally, what they were thinking as they were falling down or, you know, as they were heading down toward the water. And, you know, again, we all know as much as we know.

 

Jacque: That's right

 

Joni: But one of the one of the most, you know, one of the most interesting part of our discussion was that really without question, the group that I was talking to, were incredibly happy that they had survived their suicide attempt. And we, you know, and you wonder if, you know, it would be very interesting to be able to talk to individuals who had attempted murder-suicide and perpetrators who had survived. To get their perspective and see how like you said what they were able to tell us what their thoughts were and those kinds of things. I guess it would be a very difficult thing to do.

 

Jacque: Right, that you have to consider the families the victims, you know, everyone that was impacted, the community whoever it, you know, whoever it impacted just kind of opening that wound. And so it would be a very delicate, I think, situation. I think we could learn a lot from it. Most of those people are probably incarcerated for life right, would be my guess, if or, at least, for a very long time. And so there are a lot of contenders with that, but I don't know that that's ever happened. And this is the first time I'm actually thinking about it so that's interesting. But maybe it's something we can come back to.

 

Joni: I think it is. I mean, I'm certainly willing to give it a try because, I will tell, you know, we know that people change as they age, as they have different life experiences, and so would we be able to know what that person was thinking at the time, maybe, maybe not. But we'd certainly be able to get a sense of where they are now, and what their memories are, and what kind of story that they were telling themselves at the time, hopefully. Because I do think when you're looking at any kind of violence, whether it's self-directed, or whether it's directed toward other people, there's always a story that that person is telling him or herself. And it's a story that, in these cases obviously, have a have a tragic and deadly ending. But I think if we could understand that story maybe we could understand how to recognize when that story starts so that we could interrupt it. Or at least create a different ending for that person.

 

Jacque: Right, I agree 100% I think it's going to be important for us to also, you know, as I know that as we go forward we're going to be digging a little bit deeper into the mental health component of murder-suicide. So it will be interesting to hear from the family members that we're going to talk to about if they saw anything in their relatives, or their loved ones, prior to this happening. And did they consider speaking out? And if they did. and if they ended up not speaking out why, you know? What kept them from that? Or was it just a sudden surprise, right?  Was it a surprise?

 

Joni: Yeah, which, you know, kind of brings me to our guest today. Because I think that, at the very beginning of the show we said that, you know, really the people that we're most interested in talking to and hearing from are people who've had this lived experience. And yes, I do hope that at some point we can talk to people who have attempted this and survived it and willing to share. I'm also in awe, and I know you are as well, I mean I'm in awe of you. I'm in awe of you in terms of you talk sharing your story, and I'm in awe of Mitch who is gonna be talking about an experience that he had, you know, 30 years ago, over 30 years ago. And still has meaning for him and still has impacted his life in some ways. And I think at this point he would say, and he's been able to use that in a very productive way, a very positive way. But he's had quite a journey.

 

Jacque: Yes and one thing I would like to say is I spent the last 10 years actually looking for a therapist or someone that could help me through the journey of healing from the loss of my daughter. It's different than just losing a child. It's a loss of an entire family system. It was a loss of an entire family system for me and my son who did survive the trauma, but it's also it's complex grief and it just carries with it a number of different related… well I suffer now from significant depression and I just I think this kind of grief, I think grief in general, can cause extended complex grief in some cases. It changes the brain in my opinion and, based on some research, and so I have struggled finding somebody that could who was experienced enough in not only mental health, in depression, but also in complex grief and trauma, and the court process, and now knowing that my ex is in prison for life she's still there somewhere… and then also still being a parent to my son who suffered so much trauma.

 

So I finally came across this Murder-Suicide Loss Network group that I am so thankful for. And I attend those meetings now on a regular basis. And so I'm happy that we get a chance to talk to Mitch today.

 

Joni: I am too and I will say, I don't as a clinician, and I've been saying this I said this for years long before I began researching this topic, I really do believe there are some traumas that nothing is more important for that person if they're looking for some assistance than finding a group that can relate that has had some shared experience. I just don't think people, I don't I don't think a therapist, I mean a therapist are great obviously, as a, you know, as a psychologist myself and they can be incredibly healing and that one-on-one time can just be incredibly helpful. But,

you know, so often I think people do feel like yes my therapist is great but she doesn't understand he doesn't really understand, and I don't think you have to have the exact same experience with somebody don't understand and have empathy, but I do think also when you sit down with somebody who's had that experience I know when I've talked to people who've had a parent who has attempted suicide, or an aunt, or an uncle - I feel a sense of camaraderie with that person that I don't feel with people who haven't had that experience. Because we can we can share certain, you know, memories and certain feelings and thoughts that we have that other people might kind of go “I don't get it”, you know, they just can't understand it. “I love you. I care about you, but I don't really get it.” So I think, you know, I think that's really, really important. so let's see if we can get Mitch to come on and tell his story.

 

Hi Mitch! We are so excited to have you.

 

Mitch: Oh thank you. And I'm so excited to be here.

 

Joni: Well you are, the, you know, the person who volunteered to share their story first. And that is very meaningful for us because this is a tough topic, I think, for a lot of people to talk about. So you being willing to share your story and be the first, kind of, pioneer on our show is really I appreciate it so much.

 

Mitch: Well, it's not only a pleasure but kind of a quest a divine reason that I think I'm here is to tell my story and reasonings behind that.

 

Joni: So, you know, just kind of as a background tell us just a little bit about the murder of suicide that happened in your family.

 

Mitch: So I am murder-suicide lost survivor, as that's the term we use. I lost my mother and father back in August of 1990. My father was the perpetrator, he did use a firearm, he did shoot my mother and took his own life.

 

I found them in the childhood home I grew up in, two days, approximately, as far as the coroner was able to tell. I was already out of the house and was notified to do almost a welfare check. My mother couldn't be reached, and very unusual for her friends not to know where my mother was. So I drove to the house was about 30 minutes away from where I was living. And I found them. I walked into a quiet house, looked around, and found them upstairs in the bedroom.

 

Joni: And how old were you when this happened?

 

Mitch: So I was 33 years old. I was living on my own for a long time, actually I was married, coming up to my 10-year anniversary. And, interestingly enough, this happened, I found them August 10th of 1990. My parents were both born in December of 1930, so they were both approaching their 60th birthdays. And I had already been in works of trying to secure a venue to throw a surprise birthday party for the two of them. There was a lot going on in my life that I was also coming up to my 10-year anniversary of being married.

 

Jacque: Mitch I'm curious, thanks for being here today and thanks for taking charge of murder-Suicide Loss Network, and I was telling Joni before you came on how grateful I am that the group exists because it's the first time in 10 years that I feel I have a place that I can say what's really on my mind and on my heart about whatever I want, with regard to, pretty much anything, but in particular about, you know, what happened in my case. So thank you for heading that up.

 

We were also talking about the family members if they knew, if they saw signs, if they had a sense and I'm curious to know, and I don't know that we've ever talked about thi,s did you have a kind of a sense or an intuition or did, you know, something was up?

 

Mitch: You know, I personally did not. In hindsight, and hindsight is always 20-20, I see the red flags. I grew up I have one older sister, that that's my household was mom and dad my sister, who's two years older than me, and myself. And she was actually out of the house much earlier than I was. So, you know, my story now, I'm as I get to go first, and be the first one, and I always enjoy, I seem to have this this knack of getting myself into being the first one to do things. And I really I really don't mind it.

 

My story is I think a little bit, like, you can equate it to vanilla ice cream. It's kind of bland, but it's delicious and everybody likes it. A lot of people can identify with it. But, you know, my early life was a good childhood. The only things that I could see, is I always knew I had, or was loved deeply by both my parents. However I'm not ashamed to admit their marriage was not a good marriage. My earliest memories, there was always fighting. And my father ended up being a workaholic to to support his family and was not around quite a bit. I had a tremendously close relationship with my mother but I always, always felt the disconnect from my dad. And, you know, my sister and I weren't close.

 

We lived, as we've talked about it, she says “We grew up in two different households” meaning she had a different relationship, she was actually close to my father and not as much with my mother. And I never knew this until just a few years ago.

 

Jacque: Was there any physical violence? Or violence between them that you ever saw?

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Mitch: No never. There, my father never raised the hand to the children. I think one time, my father gave me a smack, but I will tell you I was raised, I was spanked by my mom and, you know, that's a whole different issue on how we raise children today. I don't think I have any psychological side effects from it. But no. The, you know, the unloving dynamics of my parents caused a disconnect, possibly that has hurt me throughout my life, didn't have a good role model. But I believe it took over 40 years for my dad to develop… I'm not a psychologist, a psychosis, or at least to say he did in my opinion have a mental breakdown on that night from the culmination of everything he lived with. Where he lost the ability to see reality, and killed my mother and himself.

 

Joni: So how do you make sense of it now Mitch? Because you're saying that you believe he lost, kind of, lost with reality or had some kind of a break. And that looking back you saw some signs potentially even though you didn't see them then. What exactly do you mean when you say that?

 

Mitch: Well, going back to growing up, I grew up in middle class neighborhood in Long Island Nassau County. I give shout out to the town of Seaford. It was a wonderful, middle class, we didn't have a white picket fence but it was that existence. We left Brooklyn, I was born on East 21st Street in Brooklyn, that's Flatbush burrow. And my parents knew there's a better life and moved to Seafort in 1959 – 1960.

 

My mother and my father wanted to live a life almost, you know, the same competing with the Joneses. We had to have the house, ann the yard, and nice car in the driveway, we were always clothed nicely. What I think, and I'm not embarrassed to talk about it, I think my mother pushed my dad in demanding our lifestyle look a certain way. And I say my dad, he had a slight bit of education, as far as I knew, I think my dad may have gone to two years of community college in New York. But he was a brilliant, he was a man that commanded a room. My dad, my dad was a big fellow he was 6’3”, 300 pounds, with a deep voice. And unfortunately, you couldn't talk over my father. So, he did command the room. And he did find a good amount of success as a young man in his 30s, being an entrepreneur. But it didn't last. And the companies did fall old my dad owned, like, a couple of small businesses by 1970 that was history. Without education, without skills, other than my dad was probably one of the best salesmen that I've ever met. And what do I mean by that? Well I could tell you my father could sell ice to an Eskimo. So he bounced around for years trying to find himself, to keep this lifestyle that my mother was expecting.

 

Joni: So was money the main source of their arguments? Was that, because you mentioned that you didn't have good role model, in terms of relationships, is that what you mean? Or was it the interactions between them tell me help me understand that.

 

Mitch: Well it was, you know, from my experience from seeing my friends, I had a lot of friends growing up I I'm still a very social person but, you know, at that age as a teenager, always being over other people's houses, seeing how parents interact with each other, and their children… some was so evident to me that there was just so much love, you know. The mother and father, or however the family dynamic were, there was true love. The children were supported however in a very loving caring way. I was supported more so by my mother. My father was a lot non-existent in my life because he wasn't around, and when he was hard on me, you know, if I was in sports oh, you know, doing good enough out there.

 

It wasn't until I started my own company and started to flourish in 1980 - 82 I started a construction company. and by 88 – 87, I didn't understand, my father wanted to ride my coils of my company and get involved in construction, flipping houses. And I wasn't big enough, you know, we didn't have funding behind us to do that. I was still young; I was in my mid 20s at the time. So the role model I grew up with, you know, I didn't see two parents that loved each other, and I didn't see a dad being so supportive. I, you know, can find fault with my mother. I choose not to, but I know it's there. Because she played a role in what happened.

 

Joni: When you first found your mom and dad, which must have just been horrendous, I mean, I can't imagine being the person to walk in and find them. What did you first think?

 

Mitch: Well, up until the exact moment that I entered their bedroom, I had never previously thought of a scenario or a circumstance like this that could happen. As I've met scores of people now, in my group, my learning journey about suicide and murder-suicide… quite often there's red flags. Quite often there could be alcoholism, drugs, mental illness. I grew up, like I said, seeing really nothing. I do see my dad was a depressed man. I didn't equate, that I didn't understand it, and frankly I probably ignored everything because, as a young kid, growing up on Long Island, having plenty to do it just… I had blinders on, It didn't matter to me what happened except my own existence. And that might be selfish, a little bit. But probably natural for a kid.

 

So when I got the call to go over there I was perplexed as well as the person that said “Where are they?” I'm like “gez, I have no idea.” And I had a fairly close relationship with my mother and father, thanks to my wife. She spoke to my mother way more than I did, and we probably had dinner with them at least two Friday nights a month. So almost every other week I was there for dinner. So I went to that house with just to, probably, see if there was any notes that they were gone maybe on a on a vacation. And I entered the house and it was quiet and normal. And I went upstairs, it was the evening, bedroom doors were closed and I opened the master bedroom just I walked in, and my eyes immediately, when I turned the light on, I saw my mother deceased; which I knew because it was a fairly gory scene. I walked in and stepped right up to my mother and probably bent down over her head almost nose to nose. And that's when shock set in, that's beginning, of it's not PTSD yet, that's acute stress disorder. And my life was changed from that exact moment on. I wasn't the same I had never been the same person, but it took me many years just to deal with the shock of what I saw, and what now I've learned, that how could this happen in in my family?

 

Joni: So I mean I'm wondering sitting here thinking, if you had never even thought about this there had been no history of physical violence in your family this is, you know, nothing like this could even you could even retain. Did you immediately know it was a murder of suicide? Did you think they had been murdered by somebody else I mean what is was going through your mind?

 

Mitch: Yeah that's interesting. I'm going to be 100% the honest and say I don't I don't really know Joni. I don't remember rational thoughts. I can remember vividly the scene. It's 35 years ago. I can remember walking into that bedroom, I could, probably, if somebody had a crime scene photo behind me I could probably tell you everything in the picture. My dad wasn't in bed. So I saw my mother. And I didn't see anything. I backed out of the room and saw my dad laying next to the bed.

 

Most likely, I probably knew the scenario. And I don't know why, like I said, in my head my mind I knew there wasn't love, I knew of the huge financial burden that my dad carried on his shoulders for 30 years. Interestingly enough, I walked downstairs, immediately, the first thing I did was call 911. I left the house, I walked outside, my neighbor, I don't know why my neighbor was out of his house, Jimmy, and I walked up to him, and I was waiting for the police to show up. And they did. The house then became a crime scene and I was sequestered in my neighbor's kitchen for about 5 hours.

 

And now it's like midnight - 1:00 in the morning, and myself and my wife were asked to come to Police Headquarters. We went. It was questioning of us as suspects. Because I found them, I guess, you know, that's protocol.

 

Jacque: You know, I appreciate you saying that Mitch, because that's something I think that I had forgotten for a long time now until you just said that that the victims of the crime, or the people that are left here, the family members that might have found their family or might be, you know, a spouse, or a partner, or whatever. That we immediately get sequestered, and spend hours and hours and hours in questioning and, you know. In my case I was in the hospital and we were in that little small room just like on TV and my son as well and then days after that, you know, by Department of Children and Families and it and I think feeling in that moment like I was being blamed made it almost even more difficult in some ways.

 

Mitch: Jacque I can appreciate that feeling, you know. I've met a lot of people that were either there when their incident happened. I wasn't there, but I was the first person to find them. So, you know, we talk a lot now in in our group about how we are treated by First Responders, by the police, and by the media. Resentment to the police. I don't remember a lot, you know, I was questioned, I was treated nicely, had to take my shoes off, and they took them I guess they were footprints I don't know. I have no clue. They separated myself and my wife, and talked to us separately.

 

And one thing I'll never forget is, you know, I was in a room with an open door and some detective was screaming at the top of his lungs at somebody. And I asked my detective “Is he talking to my wife that way?” “No he's talking to somebody else.” And after a few hours they put us together and said “We believe it's murder-suicide.” That didn't shock me, that was like, I wasn't like, I would have never expected that. But like I said, I went into a shock and dark hole that took years to come out.

 

Jacque: What happened? I'm curious, when you say you went into a dark hole. Can you say more about what that was like

 

Mitch: Yeah, I mean, it's an emotional dark hole filled of, you know, anxiety. The anxiety that I experienced, anxiety, the attacks, social debilitating. I was combination of embarrassed, my dad would do something like this, ashamed that my dad did something like this - put a black mark on my name, my family name. And it was such an overwhelming feeling of, you know, the world knows what happened. I brought this up in support meetings from almost the day I joined and people resonate with it. I felt like a rock star not a good one that, you know, I'm not Bon Jovi and I'm not Aerosmith. But I had to go into Manhattan and do business the week after, two weeks after, and I vividly remember being at the train station feeling that the hundreds of people around me knew my story and. of course they didn't. But I felt that way and I went through life being ashamed of what my father did.

 

Jacque: Was it public? Was it in the news and the newspaper and in the in the media?

 

Mitch: My incident was 1990, so social media was not a thing. Cell phones were not a thing. So Facebook, internet was not there. However your local news right got was in its infancy, you know? MTV started in the 80s, I remember when that started. We got, what we happened to have on Long Island Channel 12 News was not the national news anymore, but news that was more directly for Long Island, the Long Island area.

 

It was on the news every 15 minutes. It went as far as to, as I sat in my house 30 miles away the next day watching the news, seeing my parents taken out of their house in body.

 

Jacque: Joni, I'm curious your thoughts on some of this, like the, especially the going into public and I can totally relate to that Mitch. Also was on the news, on the front page of the newspaper for months, years even as court proceeded. And not everyone experiences that. I live in a large county and locals might have recognized me. But yeah, I felt like everywhere I went everyone knew my secret. I felt naked and vulnerable. And I'm just wondering, Joni what your thoughts are on that from a clinical perspective?

 

Joni: I think we have so, we take on so much responsibility, emotional responsibility for the things to happen to other people in our family or our friends. And I think when it comes to something like this, I we all can step back and kind of go I'm not responsible for this. I mean, I was a kid, or I was a brother, or I was a sister. And yet, I remember when my dad tried to commit suicide when I was 19. I felt like I was six, about six years old again, and I kept thinking, you know, I kept thinking that my love should have saved my dad in some way. And let me, my dad was not successful in his attempt I was very lucky about that, but I just remember, and the more adult part of me, was like saying “Okay, you know, that you was you were you're a child. You know, you're your dad's daughter.” And, but, I had that same sense of again being a child, you know, of somehow my love for him should be enough for anything else. And that seemed like such a young view of things. But I felt exactly the same as, I think, I would have felt, you know, 30 years ago. That's how, it was so raw to me when I did that. There's just so much when we talk about loss and we talk about trauma, and that it just it, it's amazing how when it happens it seems like it stops time for people that that's I mean we were talking about some things earlier and it's like, you know. Mitch you were saying and just how you can remember everything it's like a flash bulb memory almost, in terms of where you were and what the room looked like and those kinds of things. And I think that's something that I see over and over again. That it just it's like it just becomes a permanent part of who we are. And it's, but I also wanted to kind of talk with both of you about, you know, how grief is different depending upon how long it's been. I mean, one of the things we've all talked about mention talked about being the farthest one out. And, you know, and other people who've had it for a couple years ago. And then, people, when did people feel comfortable talking about it? And all those things. And I think, I would imagine, the journey to trying to, you know, understand and heal is different for everybody. Not just in terms of the relationships but in terms of, you know, just kind of what happened, but also how far along it's been since it happened.

 

Mitch: I'll start off by sharing my philosophy of what I believe is grief. Or, you know, who is where is a commonality in grief. So, as I have the opportunity to tell my story: I am a survivor of intimate partner loss. My mother and father. And that is the most common of the murder-suicides of the 700-800 a year that occur, you know. The higher percentage is a husband taking a part with a firearm, no less. But honestly, as I have a group right now the Murder-Suicide Loss Network and meet so many different people I see that if I numerically try to make a number to it, I'm not the majority. And the circumstance of loss are mindboggling to me. Because I never really thought about murder-suicide. Losing, you know, a husband or wife, divorcing and taking a child. You know, there are so many thing things come to my mind is now blocked right now.

 

So grief, traumatic grief, whatever your scenario is, and this goes along with suicide people, you know, we are categorized... I am a victim of the suicide loss. My dad died by Suicide. I only have an added component there's a murder in there. So as one of my members call it “We can feel we are the king of the hell of grief.”

 

But in traumatic grief, you know, I think it's all the same. I think grief that that Jacque has, I think that I have, I think of the 50, 60, 70 people that I've met in support group meetings… I've gone to events, I've gone to events with thousands of people, and this is suicide events, because we're not going to get a turnout for murder-suicide, you know, the numbers just aren't there.

 

Traumatic grief is different than grief. Everybody will experience grief. Not everybody will experience traumatic grief in their life.

 

Joni: I had a, sorry, I just was thinking about this something in terms of just: one of the things that we haven't really talked about is how you how you feel about the relationship with a person who murdered somebody else. And how does that change things I mean grief is grief, I think. In terms of, and I agree traumatic grief it can be a whole another level or a whole another thing. But that's something that, you know, I personally haven't thought about as much is: well, you know, what does that do the fact if you have somebody that you used to love, for example? And now this person has murdered somebody else that you love. I mean how does that affect do you think the healing process and going moving forward?

 

Mitch: It absolutely hinders the healing process. The amount of confusion that I suffered, and still suffer with today, I will be honest here I believed I can use the word “hate.” That I hated my father. I couldn't believe what he did, but compound it, that did he realize that that he screwed up my life? Because I spent so many years debilitated by PTSD that, you know, socially I couldn't do things. My health started to suffer, which to this day, I believe I have issues from PTSD. I was so angry at my father for doing what he did, and I'm not really sure if I could say to me, or to my mother, which I'm more mad at. But that that is a hard toll. I have a lot of people in group that, sometimes the other person, you know, the victim, is almost a stranger to the family. Girlfriend, somebody that the family didn't know very well, then the perpetrator ends up dying by suicide. To me it's a different dynamic. I support these people I let them, everybody that has murdered suicide in one way or another is welcome to come to my groups. And I don't judge. I try not to carry my feelings into a meeting. I do have a habit of doing that, so I like to let others share and talk. But that, nobody's ever asked me that question. And it took me 30 years to understand, you know, all you hear about is “If you don't forgive you'll never move forward.” And I'm like, “There's no way I'm going to forgive.” So even to this day I do not forgive my father. However I've learned to forgive myself for the anger that I've, that was manifested and carried throughout my adult life.

 

Jacque: Thank you Mitch for sharing that I believe that we could spend an entire season on forgiveness actually and talk to many people about that. There's a there's a book that, I don't know oh the author I can't pronounce the last name, but there's a book called “Forgiving what you can't forget.” And I haven't read the whole thing because I get irritated sometimes, when I read it. And I think forgiveness means different things to different people. And they feel it in different ways. So that can be a very complex and complicated topic of conversation too. I guess I just wanted to talk a little bit, just a few seconds, about the question that you asked about grief and different times in grief. Definitely I feel, being 10 years out my grief is absolutely 100% lighter. Not gone. Lighter than it was 1, 2, 3 even five years out. I think the more years that go by the harder it is for me, at least, to connect with my daughter. I feel like I'm getting further and further away from the memories. So that's hard. That's a hard thing to accept. And the more I allow myself to become happy in my life now, that's a whole other topic of conversation right survivor's guilt? And living a life after something this tragic has happened. But definitely I believe there are no real stages to grief, there are only waves of grief, in my opinion. And sometimes they come if, you know, anything about waves they come and they knock you over and you feel like you're going to drown. And you can't catch your breath. And other times you just kind of roll over it, you know, it you just roll with it. And so it definitely kind of just comes and goes.

 

One thing that I've been saying to people is “One thing you that's guaranteed is that, at least for me, I will carry this tragedy with me. I will carry the loss of my daughter with me until I take my last breath on this earth.”

 

I believe that I do have some choices in how I do that. But I will say that the first years are extremely difficult. And I've heard that from many people who've experienced any kind of tragic loss, but especially murder-suicide loss.

 

Joni: Mitch what was I think the hardest part to going back to everyday life after this happened? And what helped you the most in terms of going back and starting to function kind of in the quote “real world” as much as possible?

 

Mitch: My hardest part in life, post my tragedy, was to have any empathy or sympathy for basically anybody in the human race. I unfortunately ran a service- orientated construction firm. I worked for residential homeowners. and I was so debilitated, for my initial grief that I just shut down my business and hibernated for a solid year. I didn't work. And I started to go back to work, and truly what I do for living is probably the greatest therapy I ever could have had. I get to do a lot of demolition. I get to destroy things before I rebuild them and it's amazing.

 

Jacque: I could have really used you we had to buy we had to get random doors, Mitch

 

Mitch: I can tell you that my life, the only blessing that probably came out of my tragedy, is that I used work to completely take away… the truth be I suffered from anxiety attacks afterwards. I never really had one in a work situation. My mind was so focused on, it was cool that I was the boss so I knew that, you know, anything was my responsibility. I'm responsible for my men there, but I'm responsible for how the job looks, I'm responsible for everything. I was obsessed morning noon and night. All I thought about was work and I did that for 30 years. And I'm not going to say that's healthy. But it worked for me at the time. Again, I lose train of thought.

 

One of the things people complain about with the traumatic grief is a brain fog that may last for a lifetime. As I've taken a leading role in running groups and speaking, I don't know if I say that “my brain works faster than my mouth” because they sometimes aren't on the same page, you know, the thought I start with is not the thought I end up with.

 

Jacque: No I 100% agree Mitch. And there's actually been studies done on that that that there's actual a brain damage done when there's significant grief and loss like this. And trauma, for sure, and it does affect the memory. And some of it does not come back. I struggled with that and still do.

 

Joni: If people watching and listening to this could just take away one thing from your story Mitch, what would be the most important message that you would have for people who've gone through this experience?

 

Mitch: Yep absolutely.

 

Number one: don't go alone. Loneliness, I still get choked up it's the worst, you know. If it takes a team of people, you know, civilized society to go through a tragedy like we suffer, and again so many different possibilities of those tragedies, but if you don't have a support system, if you don't have a place to talk about it, it's just going to be difficult it'll just fester forever almost. And that's my number one thing, you know, it hurts my heart when I do intake calls, and I meet people, and they never show up to support. Like, don't these people understand? But, you know, we're all different and I, sometimes, I'm told by people that I work with and close to me, you know, “Mitch don't get upset,” you know, I just want everybody, I want everybody to come to the group that needs it. I want everybody the opportunity to talk. Or, if you don't want to talk but just listen to see that you're, you know, most people that suffer a tragedy similar to what we're talking about have never met somebody that had a similar one. It's there are people that but it's rare.

 

Joni: I was talking to a man earlier today who had lost his sister to murder-suicide and he was sharing with me that his mom, you know, it's been 14 years, which I don't know where that fits, is that soon is that not? I mean I think it depends on where you are in your healing. And he was saying that still she'll walk out of the room if somebody brings anything like that up and now the grandkids are asking questions about their aunt. And so, I think that's so important. So how could how can people find this group? As we're kind of coming to a close, what's the best way for people to get a hold of this group?

 

Mitch: well I rely heavily on my younger colleagues that understand technology more, I'm not ashamed to say.

 

So we are a virtual Zoom peer-to-peer support network. We're not professionals in any way. We have met, and do have currently, professionals in mental health that do belong in our group. We have professionals of other: doctors and lawyers, I'll say we have a few carpenters. We have a lot of people. The only way right now is to have that person, somebody to do a search on the internet, under “murder-suicide loss” or “murder-suicide law support”

 

Joni: I know we're going to have to kind of wrap things up, Jacque is there anything else that you wanted to add?

 

Jacque: Yeah there is I just wanted to say if there's anyone who is wondering if the group is good for them or how a peer group is run and how can it possibly be therapeutic if it is peer run? I've been a therapist for over 25 years, or at least in the industry, and it is probably one of the top three peer-led support groups I've ever been to.

 

They run a tight ship they're very good at what they do, the administrators. Thank you Mitch. And it's just a really be safe space so come, and be who you are. And talk openly about your loss or whatever it is that you have to share with regard to that. So just definitely reach out if you have any questions.

 

Joni: Thank you so much Mitch for coming on and sharing your story. I think you were been a pioneer in this area already and you've really been a pioneer today, and we really appreciate that. And also just want to tell everybody how much we appreciate you listening and watching and we really want to hear from you this is not a one-way street. So if there's a topic related to murder-suicide that you'd like to talk to us about. If there's a question that you have about murder-suicide whether that's what it's like about something about a personal experience or about a resource please reach out and contact us. Again, thanks for coming and joining us and we will see you next time on the Final Act.