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This case is an extreme example of how the family's hands are tied by the laws (in California, at least) prohibiting commitment of the mentally ill against their wishes.

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That is not quite right. There is a competency requirement. Anyone can request the police detain someone as posing a danger to themselves or to others, and (provided there is reasonable evidence) the police can detain that person for a few days and get a properly qualified assessment made.

Indeed, as an EMT, there are times when I am required to detain a person against their will (for which purpose I will usually and gladly request police assistance).

However, there are many of us (myself included) who think that the competency line is to close to the totally-insane end of the spectrum...

/Bevin

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One report read, Adventists continue to kill their kids

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Where is that? I can not locate it.

Thanks

Stan

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Where is that? I can not locate it.

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Stan--I got several e-mails on this that I have deleted. It was not a newspaper report, but a talk-show in that area. If I get more I will surely forward them to you.
I was visiting a friend in a cardiac ward in the hospital today and the word 'cult' was used over and over in describing this fellow's church association. It was on Fox news, CNN, among others.

It is kind of interesting how they like to throw around the SDA name when it happens to "one of ours", isn't it? I don't see the same thing being done when the perpetrator in question is a Baptist or Methodist or Pentecostal or Jew. Is that an oversight on my part, or do they just not bandy it about so much in those cases?

Police traumatized by Fresno murder scene

CTV.ca News Staff

It was a crime scene so gruesome even veteran officers were reduced to tears -- and the man accused of committing the killings is also suspected of polygamy and incest.

Police responding to a child custody dispute in Fresno, California on Friday afternoon discovered nine bodies intertwined in a pile of clothes and 10 coffins stacked along a wall.

"This is obviously the worst mass murder in the history of our city," said Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer.

He added: "If this does not qualify for the death sentence, then there is no case that would." 

Some of the police who came on the original crime scene are already seeking counseling.

A 57-year-old man, Marcus Wesson, surrendered to police after a brief standoff. Wesson walked out of the house covered in what appeared to be blood.

He will be charged with nine murders.

"Right now my family are distraught.  My dad is, like, the coolest guy," said Dorian Wesson, who identified himself as Wesson's son.

"I'm finding it hard to believe because he's the best dad anyone could ever have," added Serafino Wesson, another son.

The nine victims -- who ranged in age from one to 24, with six females and three males -- were thought to be Wesson's children.

Seven of the dead were children aged one to eight. The victims also included a 17-year-old girl and a 20-year-old woman.

He is both father and grandfather to two of them.

"We are exploring the possibility that there were other women he was involved with, either sexually or in some sort of polygamist relationship," Dyer said.

Police are trying to determine whether some ritual was involved in the slaughter.

Dyer cried as his officers carried the bodies from the home, cradling the youngest ones in their arms.

Six police chaplains were also called to the house.

The bodies were so entangled in a pile of clothing that it took hours for investigators to reach a final count, police said.

The situation began Friday afternoon when police were called to the home by two women who said a man had their children and would not release them.

The man ignored initial orders to leave the house and ran into a back bedroom as two other women fled unharmed.

Wesson is suspected of fathering the children with the four women. None of the women or the children have been identified.

Dyer said the women who called authorities told them they had given custody of their children to Wesson two years ago and now wanted them back.

A neighbour, Chris Tognazzini, reported hearing two gunshots moments before police arrived.


Other neighbours said they knew little about Wesson or the house, which had a large yellow bus parked in the driveway.

"He never said 'Hi,'" said Linda Morales. "I'd drive by and he'd make a point to turn his face."

Fresno, a city of 440,000 located almost 320 kilometres southeast of San Francisco, had seen only three murders in the past two and half months, the fewest over that period in more than three decades.

"The only thing we can do now is mourn. We mourn for the kids, we mourn for the police," said Mayor Alan Autry. "We will never be the same again."

Based on a report by CTV's Matt Cowan

Yes, this really is a sticky area in terms of sorting individual rights out from the legitimate needs not only of the individual but of the family and society. The real tragedy is that options themselves are limited and leave so much to be desired. Turning people too sick to survive on their own out on the streets with a bottle of pills which their own illness will conspire against their taking is definitely not a solution.

What a sad story. What on earth happened to this man, these people?

Uggh! The horrible word, "cult", strikes again!

I became a baptized member of the Seventh-day Adventist church near the same time the Waco incident happened. For a while, I was scared that perhaps I'd made the wrong decision; that perhaps, I had unwittingly joined a cult.

It helped to strengthen my understanding of the Seventh-day Adventist church and I was certain that I had made the right choice--even after all the times I'd read that we were a "cult."

It is amazing to me how quickly the media latches on to the Seventh-day Adventist wrong-doers. It would be interesting to me to see the statistics on all the various religions of wrong-doers.

Certainly our prisons and rehabilitation institutions are not over-flowing with current or past members of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Why is it then, when we read and watch the news that each wrong-doing incident isn't immediately labeled "another Catholic assault and battery," or, "there goes those @#%^ Lutherans again," or, "how many times do we have to hear about another murder."

Then again, perhaps I'm simply more attuned to the outcries against Seventh-day Adventism. Perhaps the media, does indeed label each man according to his faith.

I think what gave this murder story a religious spin was what the women wore and the relationship circumstances...so it is ripe for exposing what was the religious affiliation.

Just a reminder...

There still is not solid confirmation that he is or is not an adventist.