Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Turtle Killer to Live

There's disturbing, and then there's this article which will keep me up nights, well, forever.

So of course, I'm compelled to share it with you. Your reaction may vary, but I think you'll understand the part that bothers me! To bring you up to speed, a Wilmette man named Wiley killed his second wife and stepson on February 28. He then spent a day or so composing a 43 page manifesto of hurts and observations before turning the gun on himself.

His wife Kathy was a employee and member at the First Presbyterian church next door. And yes, she knew all about those pesky fifteen years her new husband spent in prison for stabbing his first wife 23 times. But she married him three months after release, claiming she could handle anything that came their way.

Wiley used a Civil War replica rifle his stepson loved to use in historical reenactments for the human killings. (I'm surprised a bit that it was a working firearm - do they shoot blanks at events?) But wait. The loss of a seriously-look-on-the-sunny-side-type of woman and her Boy Scout volunteer son is only part of the tragedy. There's more...

The rambling 43-page suicide note left by a man who killed his wife and teenage stepson last month in their Wilmette home is peppered with self-pity over his broken ankle, treatment for bipolar disorder and what he described as a crumbling marriage."I could not fight off the suicide dreams," wrote Richard Wiley, 54, who police say murdered his wife Kathryn Wiley-Motes, 50, and her son Christopher Motes, 17, on the afternoon of Feb. 28, and killed himself the following evening. (To see a page of the letter click HERE.)

Wiley also described how he killed the family's turtle, three cats, four small birds, and a parrot and wrote, "Our little loved ones could not be trusted to anyone else."He told police where they could find the animals' bodies, along with those of his wife and stepson.In some ways, Wiley seemed more upset about killing the pets than his wife and stepson."She looked at me when I caught her with a knowing look," he wrote of a cat. "When I stabbed her she looked again. This one hurt me deeply."

Sicko. Can you just imagine the little terrapin trying to run away? Sniff. I have to go now. This is too upsetting!