Voices

voices
CNN:

Sheriff: Mother said God told her to kill sons
Monday, May 12, 2003 Posted: 2:45 PM EDT (1845 GMT)



Deanna LaJune Laney

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TYLER, Texas (CNN) -- A church choir member charged with killing two of her three sons has shown emotions ranging from hysteria to stunned silence as she sits in an East Texas jail cell, Smith County Sheriff J. B. Smith said Monday.

According to Smith, Deanna LaJune Laney told authorities that God told her to kill her children.

Laney faces capital murder charges in the deaths of her 8- and 6-year-old sons who Smith said "had been severely beaten in the head with what appeared to be a rock."

"She goes from a fetal position of crying, to walking around the cell singing gospel music. She stops and prays, then she goes into a crying hysteria," Smith told CNN's American Morning. "She all of a sudden realizes what she's done, then she'll go into a flatline, blank stare."

A third son, 14-month-old Aaron, was in critical condition Monday at Dallas Children's Hospital, and Laney faces aggravated assault charges in his beating, according to the sheriff's department.

Smith said that after the killings, Laney made a 911 call on her cellular phone and spoke in a "very calm, matter-of-fact way. She told a dispatcher, 'I've killed my boys,'" Smith said.

Bail has been set at $3 million, and a lawyer has been appointed for Laney, he said.

A sheriff's department spokeswoman said deputies responded at 12:52 a.m. Saturday to the New Chapel Hill home, about seven miles outside of Tyler.

When officers arrived, they entered the house and found Aaron in his crib, bludgeoned and with a pillow over his head, but still breathing. Laney was not there, but continued to talk calmly on the phone, Smith said.

Officers found the woman, wearing bloody clothes, in a wooded area about 100 yards behind her house, the sheriff said.

Laney described the location where her other two children could be found but refused to go there herself, he said.

Her husband was apparently asleep inside the house during the attack because he came walking out "in his nightclothes," the sheriff said.

Smith said the children's father was still in shock and has not yet been interviewed, but investigators hope to speak to him Monday. Laney's "emotions are wide and varied," he said.

He said the Laneys were a "very stable, loving family," and the suspect has no history of mental illness.

"Any time you're dealing with children, it's such a devastating thing," Smith said. "It's so emotional to see something like this that makes absolutely no sense"

Neighbors, too, were at a loss to explain what went wrong.

"There's no way in the world that I would believe she would do this without something taking over her and something snapping in her," a neighbor said.

"It is absolutely devastating to the neighborhood," he said.

Good question. There was an interesting article in the NY Times last week, re schizophrenics who hear voices. These voices can drive people to all sorts of extreme behaviors, including suicide. And the article did mention the voices heard by mystics and religious figures...

Well, it's a good, thought-provoking question. But if you get stuck on how literally to take what Abraham was supposed to have heard from God, then you must really have some serious dilemmas when the Red Sea gets parted, the plagues are visited on Egypt, Sampson kills scores of soldiers with the jaw of an ass, Joshua makes the walls of Jericho fall down, and a hundred other things from the old and new Testament!

The point being, I don't know if you really want to "go there" (trying to apply deductive reasoning to the miracles and strange happenings in the bible).

Schizophrenics often hear voices. One of the most dangerous types of this manifestation is the "command hallucination. In these hallucinations, the voices tell the person to do something, most often of a malevolent nature.
Very often the voices that the schizophrenic hears is of a religious nature, especially if she has been brought up in a very devout home.

Sometimes, especially in paranoid schizophrenia, a person will kill out of fear. If the voices are telling her that someone is out to "get" her, in a schizophrenic's twisted mind, the acts that she commits are in self defense.

As far as this particular mother is concerned, she will have to be examined to see if she is truly schizophrenic.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/09/000928071154.htm

Should I be weary of the ringing of my ears ?

Are you messin' with me husker? If you really hear ringing, it is tinnitus, and you need to see an ENT doc!

yes already been to that joker

remember "maneries" forgot how to spell it.

There are hearing aids that will mask the sound of the tinnitus. They ain't cheap, but certainly worth it if the ringing is bothersome to you.

Are you referring to Meniere's syndrome?

comes and goes - some days louder than others. today is a loud day, I just learn to tune it out, and listen for the other noises in my surroundings.

Distracting yourself WILL help in coping. Sometimes being in a quiet room will exascerbate the problem. Playing a radio may help.

but not the voices that keep telling me .............

A metal colander will stop the voices, husk.

a mental colander will work wonders

oh, the strain!



my brain is like a sieve!



i will sift him!



brain drain!

if you rotate the colander you can pick up FM but HDTV requires rewiring.

There is a really great difference between this poor woman's "voices" telling her to kill her children, and Abraham's inner voice commanding him to kill his son that he so loved. Abraham's "voice" stopped him before the act of killing his son could be committed. Why would anyone have a problem distinguishing between the two "voices?" The woman suffers from mental illness, Abraham did not or his son would have been dead.

The only feeling I have for this poor woman is an overwhelming sympathy. I wonder why some must suffer so. Yes, hearing "voices" is typical to schitzophrenia.

Husker, I can rid the pain and sounds in my ears by taking a rather large (2000 unit) dose of Vitamin C. Guess its caused by "allergies." Possibly molds. Who knows, works for me but not always anyone else I know.

- excerpt from Apology of Socrates 31.

An ordinary person hears a sound and a person with mental disorder can hear the same sound.
Hearing sounds or voices cannot distinguish the two.