Lizzie Borden Society Forum

"Snapped" is the name of a TV series on the Oxygen channel. It covers true cases of women who kill, mostly their husbands.

The shows are 1/2 hour long and they usually show 4 or 5 in a row. Among last night's shows was the Pamela Smart case. She is the N.H. school teacher, who was having an affair with one of her students, and got the student to kill her husband.

A more Borden-like case was the Manuela Garcia case. After loading her husband's drink with sleeping pills she took an axe (a long handled, double blade one) to her sleeping beloved 23 times. She claimed the battered woman defense, was tried and convicted and sentenced to the rather odd length of 28 years. She was later granted a retrial on a technicality but declined, pled guilty and took a lesser sentence, something like 16 years.

Men, hide the axes!

Harry, I've never heard of that show, is it usually on Thurs. nights? I'll have to check the cable listing for the Oxygen channel.

I'm not sure of the schedule for the shows. They seem to be on more than one night a week. Here's the URL for the channel.

http://www.oxygen.com/tvshows/snp/

It turns out I do get that channel, so I will look out for it.
Tonight on Women Behind Bars they had 2 stories about girls who killed their mothers.
One girl stomped her 82 year old mother to death in the bathroom, and the other case was about a daughter and her boyfriend killing her mother in the bathroom.
I watched because of the theme of parricide.

I recently heard about a 49 year old man who abused his 80+ year old mother in a most horrendous manner. The police were called out and took her to the hospital where she died shortly after. Of all the sad stories I've heard about I think that one is the worst. He was her care giver and she had dementia. It devastated me when I read about it. I can't believe a man could ever do those kinds of things to his own mother. My blood still boils when I think about it. I hope they give him the death penalty!

-1bigsteve )o;

There are cases in Florida where caregiver husbands kill their wives they have been taking care of. They can't handle it as long as females, I don't think. Some commit suicide after- but most just "snap" and kill- and trying to figure out the mindset is just so hard. They must think they have no other option.

Well, if Lizzie killed her stepmother, she was, on average, kind of old to be doing something like that and never before or since (that day), nor enlisted the aid of a boyfriend, which a lot of daughters do, according to the crimes I read about or see on TV. But this one case I mentioned, above- the girl's mother was 82 so she was like in her 40's. But she was the caregiver and her mother was supposedly abusive and they both had a mental illness or imbalance. Both had stopped taking their medication and it was one week later the daughter broke down. She blames the medication withdrawal but reports were that she had also been drinking. It's possible tho the drinking was in place of her medication because the mother hid it from the daughter- allegedly. It was a very interesting and complicated story. I do think the daughter knew killing was wrong, which is the bottom line. I also think tho, it's possible people medicate in any way they can to survive. (That's just a theory I'm working on, thinking about.)