ASHLEY, BRADY and ISAAC ATWATER - 4, 2 and 1 yo - Oak Harbor (SE of Toledo) OH

Joan Atwater said she first realized her grandson, Alan Atwater, had
threatened to kill himself and his family while she was listening to a scanner at home.

"They said he had called in and said he was going to kill his family and
he was going to take his own life, and I thought to myself, 'Oh, no!
Alan!' because I knew that they were having a few problems," Joan Atwater explained.

Alan Atwater, 31, called 911 from his Oak Harbor home in the 900 block
of Leutz Road just after midnight Saturday. He identified himself then
said, "There's been a terrible accident at my house. My wife and three children are dead."

The dispatcher asked if Atwater killed them himself. He responded, "Yes." The call abruptly ended.

Ottawa deputies spent two hours outside Atwater's home, trying to
contact him by phone and loudspeaker, but they never heard from him
again. When the Special Response Team finally entered the house five bodies were found upstairs.

Authorities say Alan, his wife Dawn, 30, daughter Ashley, 4, son Brady,
2, and son Isaac, 1, had all been shot to death. They were all found on
the floor, with the exception of the youngest, who was found on the bed.

A sheriff's spokesperson told Fox 8 News that one child, a 12-year-old
daughter from Atwater's previous marriage, was not at the home during the incident.

Joan Atwater said that the couple had been having "difficulties"
recently, but nothing "out of the ordinary" for a married couple.

Joan described her grandson as a man who loved his children, saying, "He was a good provider for his family."

When asked directly why the tragedy might have occurred, Joan said, "We
don't know the whole story, we will never know it. We'll never know what really happened."

Ottawa County Sheriff's Detectives said they are actively investigating
the motive of the crime. Atwater does not have a criminal record. He
was an employee in the maintenance department at the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station.

http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wjw-ottawa-county-murder-suicide-txt,0,7802713.story

Alan Atwater abused his wife Dawn, forced her to quit her job and
encouraged her to have sex with one of his friends, family friends told
authorities.But despite problems in their marriage, Atwater told
his aunt he was determined to change and make his wife understand she
and their children were most important to him.Dawn Atwater, however,
told him and her friends she wanted to separate, according to Ottawa County Sheriff's Office reports.These
details, released last week, provide some possible explanation as to
why Alan Atwater might have killed his wife and then himself with a gun
April 16. Dawn Atwater told a friend her husband had threatened to
commit suicide if she ever left him, according to reports."I'm
just sick," Colette Yontz, a friend of Dawn Atwater, told investigators.
"Just sick because we all knew this was going to happen."What is more of a mystery
is why he turned the gun on the couple's children, Ashley, 4, Isaac, 2, and Brady, 1.Killing
the children doesn't fit with the normal profile for murder-suicides
related to marital problems, said Katherine van Wormer, professor of
social work at the University of Northern Iowa and author of "Death by
Domestic Violence: Preventing the Murders and the Murder-Suicides."In
cases where men kill their entire families -- an action known as
familicide -- usually the man has lost his job or has other financial
problems where he feels he can no longer provide for his family, she
said."He may have killed her and felt he couldn't leave them," van Wormer said of the Atwater children.

Reasons for killings
There are five things that motivate people to kill their children,
said Phillip Resnick, professor of psychology at Case Western
University.They are: Altruism, the idea the children are better
off dead; revenge against the spouse, often over a custody battle or
infidelity; the perpetrator is acutely psychotic; unwanted children,
usually newborns killed by unwed mothers; and child battering, where a
parent goes too far with disciplining a child and accidentally kills the
child."If a man kills himself along with the children, it's more
likely to be altruistic," Resnick said. "A man believes his family is
better off in Heaven than in the world."Resnick, who said he
likely has interviewed more parents who killed their children than
anyone else in the United States, is considered an expert on the
subject. He testified for the defense in the trial of Andrea Yates, a
Texas woman who drowned her children in a bathtub in 2001, and consulted
on the case of Susan Smith, a South Carolina woman who murdered her two
young children in 1994.In 95 percent of familicide cases, men
are the perpetrators, he said. Two-thirds of the time, a man who kills
his children and himself also kills his wife, he said."Women may kill their children
and themselves but rarely will kill their husbands," he said.Men
tend to feel responsible for the entire family and do not want to leave
them behind, Resnick said. In situations with domestic problems, the
men sometimes feel they cannot live without their partners or consider
their partners the source of their pain, van Wormer said."Often
these are men who are very dependent emotionally on their wives," she
said. "They justify it as saying she's killing him, so he's going to
kill her because she's the source of his pain."Once they take this first step,
they feel they have to take the second step (suicide)."Although
Alan Atwater may not have planned to kill himself, he apparently had
settled on doing so when he called the sheriff's office to report the
deaths of his wife and children.In that call, he calmly admitted to killing them
and then said he was going to kill himself. Then he hung up.Resnick,
speaking in general, said people who commit suicide may be agitated at
first while trying to decide whether or not to go through with it.
"Once they make a decision to do it, they feel at peace," he said.

Statistics elusive
Every year, more than 32,000 people commit suicide, and another
18,000 are victims of homicide, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.Determining how many of those deaths result
from homicide-suicide cases, however, is more difficult.The
CDC's National Violent Death Reporting System collects data from 16
states -- not including Ohio -- so numbers from those states cannot be
considered representative of the entire country. In 2008, 175 people in
those states died of homicide followed by suicide, according to the
system.What is known about these cases is that a past history of
domestic abuse is the biggest risk factor, according to the National
Institute of Justice, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice. A
study about murder-suicides conducted by Jacquelyn Campbell, professor
at Johns Hopkins University's School of Nursing, showed domestic
violence had been a past problem in 70 percent of the cases.However,
25 percent of these incidents of violence showed up in police arrest
records, according to the institute. The researchers in Campbell's study
learned about the past incidents after interviewing family and friends
of the homicide victims, according to the institute.

http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/article/20110505/NEWS01/105050330/Experts-weigh-murder-suicide-northwest-Ohio?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage

"In situations with domestic problems, the
men sometimes feel they cannot live without their partners or consider their partners the source of their pain, van Wormer said."Often these are men who are very dependent emotionally on their wives," she said. "They justify it as saying she's killing him, so he's going to kill her because she's the source of his pain."

That's not good. My 'person-I'm-married-to' is always screaming at me "You're killing me". Heads up folks. I think maybe we should all work on being a lot more in-tune with the folks we come in contact with so maybe some lives will be saved. Especially the abused children. I often wonder with amazement as I read these atrocities how no one ever noticed; then I think how willing we are to believe the excuses because we can't fathom someone behaving in this manner. Apparently this woman didn't really believe her husband.

I'm moving this to resolved since the murderer is dead also.  What a shame a crazy man slaughters his family and escapes punishment because he's too cowardly to take his punishment like a man.