
A source emailed me his life’s work. Then, he ended his life - danso
https://www.cjr.org/first_person/usa-today-reporter-source.php
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vit05
_A source emailed me his life’s work. Then, he ended his life_

 _A pardon expert emailed me his life 's work. Then he killed his two sons and
himself._

I'm not from USA. I had no idea about this story. When I started reading the
article, I started with a feeling of sadness. It always makes me sad to know
that someone was facing a problem so great that only saw end their own life as
the only solution

If I had started reading the second title, from USA Today, I would have
started with the idea that it was the last moments of a monster. And a feeling
of anger instead of sadness. It's unbelievable how titles, and photos, can
mess with the way you'll face a story you're just beginning to read.

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nvahalik
Whoa. So I knew the name Peter Ruckman sounded familiar... this guy was the
son of Peter Sturges Ruckman who founded the Pensacola Bible Baptist Institute
and held some very hard line (and controversial) cult-like views about the
Bible.

Specifically he held that the King James Version was very special and let’s
just say that he had many followers and that they are especially tough cats to
deal with.

That might provide some additional context...

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cobbzilla
I have a _really_ hard time understanding suicidal people who kill their kids
-- what are they thinking? In the article the author mentions that Ruckman
posted a loving video of one of his sons playing guitar about a year before
the murders. wtf indeed.

~~~
jmts

      I have a really hard time understanding suicidal people
    

Believe me, you don't want to understand. The only way you can, is if you've
been there.

Imagine for a moment that you are in a hostage situation. Someone wants to
kill you. They have the gun to your head, and you have no control over it.
Maybe it's today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you'll get out okay? Nobody knows.
Inside you're scared as hell. You don't like this one single bit. But you're
bound, and you can only struggle so much. They have their foot on your back,
standing over you. You're powerless. They're screaming at other people.
Yelling at you. Acting irrationally. It only takes the smallest thing to set
them off, and there's only so much you can do to stop them pulling the
trigger. Sometimes they'll go away for long enough for you to get a rest.
Maybe get some sleep. But don't kick your toe or drop something. You'll wake
them up and you'll be right in the thick of it again.

But the person holding you hostage, is yourself. It's a part of your mind. And
it will sap every bit of your energy to try to fight it. The healthy part of
you doesn't want any of it. The healthy you doesn't want to hurt anybody. But
sometimes you just can't fight it any longer. It's daily, monthly, yearly,
conscious waking nightmare.

~~~
mercer
Reminds me of how David Foster Wallace described it:

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself
doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that
life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems
suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain
unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will
eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about
people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great
height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing
speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of
falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s
flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the
slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror
of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling
‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to
have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way
beyond falling.”

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in_cahoots
I’m not sure how I feel about this piece. The last paragraph is a quote from
[edit: a friend of] the professor’s ex-wife asking us not to glorify him, and
instead to honor the children he’s murdered. And yet the first half of the
piece is all about the value of the professor’s work; the children’s names
aren’t even mentioned until the very end. I understand that the author only
knew the professor in the context of his work, but to me the tone of this
piece seems to go exactly against the wife’s wishes. Others may disagree of
course.

~~~
jachee
> A close friend of Ruckman’s ex-wife — the boys’ mother — reached out to me
> with a plea.

Awkwardly worded, but it wasn't the ex-wife that was quoted, but her friend.

~~~
in_cahoots
Thanks for the clarification, that makes this a bit less distasteful.

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craftyguy
And allegedly the lives of his sons too. That's fucked up.

~~~
tyingq
Oy. Odd that's missing from the headline since it changes the context from
"passionate" to "psychopath".

The story seems balanced, but the headline is too generous.

~~~
ewrwerewr3234
in a few decades we're going to look back on terms like "psychopath" with the
same disgust we look back on victorian labels for notions of inherent racial
criminality

~~~
tyingq
In a wider view, I agree. But I'm not feeling terrible about using the term
for someone that offs their own children. In what context is that not some
serious and notable mental disorder? Is "sociopath" somehow kinder?

~~~
emodendroket
Psychopathy is a specific kind of mental illness and I don't think it's self-
evident that anyone who would kill their children is a psychopath rather than
afflicted with some other form of mental illness.

~~~
tyingq
I'm open to that. Just not any rationale that it was justified. Or that it
excuses the headline wording.

~~~
emodendroket
Who's saying it was "justified"?

~~~
tyingq
Whoever decided the headline should say "ended his life" with no mention he
murdered his children.

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paulcole
>And if nothing else, it should help to debunk the conspiracy theories that
would inevitably pop up, he said.

I think this is the exact opposite of how conspiracy theories work.

------
DoreenMichele
This seems so odd. There isn't any information suggesting a history of mental
health issues and the only personal drama seems to be a not dramatic sounding
divorce.

~~~
Erlangolem
For a certain kind of person, it’s not the drama, but the loss of control or
possession, or sense of failure. In the context of divorce, and a particularly
sick personality, killing children is a way to maximally harm the mother.

People can be very odd.

