Posted on 08/28/2015 12:07:58 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
Before Vester Lee Flanagan II shot and killed Roanoke, VA journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward on live television and then committed suicide, the public knew him as Bryce Williams, a reporter at station WDBJ who covered local news stories. In the days that followed the double murder, alleged details about his troubling past have emerged, particularly surrounding his late mother.
According to court papers obtained by the New York Daily News, Flanagan’s parents Betty Flanagan and Vester Lee Flanagan Sr. divorced when Vester Lee was 8-years-old. And Flanagan Sr., 76, had filed a restraining order against his wife, a former teacher, who he claimed was “extremely menacing and threatening” to his son and two daughters, Valerie, 10, and Vicki, 9. “She has also repeatedly threatened my life, at least on one occasion threatening to shoot me in my sleep, and the children have heard these threats and are understandably upset,” read the documents.
Flanagan Sr., who was granted the divorce in 1982, along with physical custody of his three children, also wrote, “She has, for example, threatened the lives and safety of our children as a method of attempting to keep me from leaving the house to go to work. At other times the respondent (Betty) is calm, rational, and charming, but the children and I are unable to anticipate or control these outbursts or threats of violence.” He also added that Betty “threatened the children with a brush and a belt, and had I not removed these weapons from her hands, I am certain she would have used them on the children.”
The court granted the father physical custody of his children. Betty, meanwhile, was ordered to move out of the family home, stay away from her estranged husband’s workplace, and to not “attack, strike, threaten or otherwise disturb the peace of the three minor children.”
Vester Lee was also perceived as a difficult employee, and a childhood friend told People that he “wanted to be famous.”
According to Fran Walfish, a Beverly Hills–based psychotherapist who has never met Vester Lee, while volatile eruptions in his childhood home may have escalated once the parents began having marital troubles, it’s likely that they were ongoing during the gunman’s entire life.
What’s more, she speculates, the gunman may have had a unique connection with his mother. “All children subconsciously observe or feel who holds the power in their family of origin, and identify with that person because to a child, power means getting what they want,” Walfish tells Yahoo Parenting. “However, aggression and violence is a distorted perception of power because the one who is raging doesn’t have control.” She adds that the dynamic might have been changed by raising self-awareness, or through intervention with therapy.
And while it’s unknown how Betty treated her son apart from his sisters, his decision to murder two people on live television — and record the act — may have reflected a desire to be heard or recognized after a childhood of neglect. “That’s certainly possible,” says Walfish. “And, by committing suicide, it also shows that he couldn’t face the consequences of what he did.”
Jesse Matthew also murdered Morgan Harrington years earlier..black man murdering two beautiful white women, imagine if it had been the other way around, black lives matter would be protesting and looting
The original of that house is on a hill behind the Telephone Company in Kent, Ohio. Fascinating structure! I drew it for an Architectural Class I was taking at Kent State in the Sixties. Got an A+!
I sincerely hope the irony of a lack of nationwide burning and looting and rioting involving masses of out of control and furiously angry white folk since Wednesday morning in response to the two white journalists murdered in cold blood by a black man, has not been lost on the black population of America. Just so they can see how civilized ethnicities mourn and bury their dead without resorting to mob destruction of the property and livelihood of innocent others. And getting a pass for doing so. But then again, looting and burning and hating is a black thing, isn’t it? We went woefully wrong sometime back in the 1860’s. We really did.
I think he got along with most women, it was the non-gay, other-than-black males with whom he had the problem. At least in his apartment complex.
Isn’t that Hitchcock’s “Psycho” House?
Michelle? Is that you?
Too bad she didn’t contact Planned Parenthood when she was carrying this monster.
yes
If his mother is still alive, I hope she’s getting hate mail and death threats.
It does not appear he was neglected by his father.
From what I heard, Dad was a good guy.
Graduated from Humboldt College, and was drafted by the Green Bay Packers.
Don’t remember him playing though.
Ninth round pick at tackle from the 1961 draft. I believe ha was a training camp cut. Back then there wrre twenty rounds.
She sounds like a bitch, maybe they’re in hell together.
But this article sounds like an attempt to engender sympathy for this fag, he was responsible for his own actions.
It does not appear he was neglected by his father.
...
It’s Yahoo Leftist Parenting. Fathers don’t matter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.