<p>I believe that if person wants to kill really badly, they will, unless they are locked up. How you can lock up someone before they commit a crime? Red flags or not, what are other ways to prevent? We overrate greatly our ability to control others’ lives, it is simply not possible.</p>
<p>There are several things that make this very disturbing. Peters got the 9mm pistol owned by the Cedar Hill mayor after she and he went to the pistol range and she practiced with it. That was on Thursday, July 8th.</p>
<p>The daughter was killed on Monday, July 12 apparantly after she was loading stuff into the bogus graduation gift automobile. Peters then turns the car back into Exterprise and walks home.</p>
<p>Peters killed herself later the next day Tuesday July 13th. So, Peters is in the house with the daughter’s dead body for nearly a full day.</p>
<p>Peters got that gun in the week before the killing/suicide and, as far as we know, after repeated demands for documentation of the usage of the City’s credit card to get $300 in new clothes, etc. (I’m guessing for the daughter to take to college)</p>
<p>Sounds like the daughter was packing to go to the phantom college orientation that Peters had been stalling her on with doctor’s apointments, and Peters had already acquired the 9mm to make sure she didn’t leave.</p>
<p>On the “warning signs” issues. There are lots of people going through very, very trying times economically. Is there really any indication of Peters being on the emotional/mental edge before she acted? Except for dodging the documentation requests on the credit card, wasn’t most everything else hidden?</p>
<p>Yeah, it is definitely sounding more like murder, and the murder of a person who was awake (as opposed to a sleeping daughter), rather than any kind of suicide pact. I’ve got a drill team daughter myself, and I bet that if I asked her if she’d prefer to be shot, or left alone as a destitute orphan, she’d choose the latter. Most Texas drill team members are hard working and self-disciplined and I bet most could survive under adverse circumstances.</p>
<p>Maybe she couldn’t bring herself to sell the house that she and her H had bought and raised their child in. Everyone agrees the mom was “grief-stricken.” Selling the house may have been the logical financial decision, but to the mom it may have meant truly admitting her H was dead and their old life was over. She also may not have wanted the D to know how bad things really were financially.</p>
<p>Being Mayor made her a local celebrity. It was a status symbol, and gave her some power. She didn’t want to give it up. But the further the appearances - house, mayor - got from reality, the harder facing reality became. She didn’t want to leave her daughter an orphan. She was probably afraid to tell the D that she wasn’t really accepted to UT after all, that mom never sent the application because she couldn’t afford it, or she knew the D wouldn’t get in or… maybe when the H died she was so grief stricken she decided to continue their lives as they were until she couldn’t do it any more, then end it for both of them. </p>
<p>Who knows? We’ll never really know. I’m not justifying anything. Just trying to figure out the morbid glass this mom was looking thru. Pride, grief… and the daughter was the ultimate victim. </p>
<p>So sad.</p>
<p>Very strange. Doubt we’ll ever get the full story. A lot of strange deaths that get no explanation because the families feel the need for privacy.</p>
<p>Of course, the real tear-jerker in the newspaper article is that there were pictures of the D at the memorial service that I guess relatives got from the house. Friends were invited to take home any pictures that were meaningful to them. That whole family of three is just now gone.</p>
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<p>In an earlier newspaper report, it said that there was family on the way down from Ohio to arrange the funeral. Peters’ daughter apparantly would not have been without some family. Besides, in my experience there often are friends/acquaintances who will give someone a place to stay for a while.</p>
<p>Also, if Peters had just killed herself (hopefully not in the house since it lowers fmv), the daughter might have been able to realize the equity and perhaps there would have been assets in the probate estate after repayment of Peters’ debts so that the daughter would not have been destitute. </p>
<p>I seem to recall that there was a car Peters drove as well. I have no idea if it was paid for. And, it is always surprising but the sale value of personal contents of a 3,700 square foot house is usually not inconsequential. In any event, the daughter could have enlisted in the military–SHE would have had options!</p>
<p>If Peters had died from a heart attack, the daughter would have been in the same situation as if Peters had killed herself. </p>
<p>Why kill her daughter? Selfish/control???</p>
<p>It defies logic, so it points to some kind of mental irregularity. Any drugs? Autopsy results?</p>
<p>Like Peters’ husband, my husband was diagnosed with colon cancer a few years ago. Fortunately for us, we were already in very good shape with regards to health and life insurance. I would not be facing the same problems had my husband not recovered from his illness. This just stresses the need for good comprehensive life insurance long before any health problems rear their ugly head. Think how differently this might have gone had there been a big fat life insurance policy in place before illness set in.</p>
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<p>I totally agree!</p>
<p>Well, a whole lot of US citizens have no life insurance in place and don’t kill their children when the bread winner dies.</p>
<p>This is such a tragedy. I think the mother had a mental breakdown of sorts and things just came to a point where she could not bear to live or have her daughter live.</p>
<p>Right. A whole lot of people have gone through bad financial circumstances and are plugging away every day. (The house next to me is a rental and the current tenant is a divorced bankrupt custom home builder.)</p>
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<p>The hard thing to square with all that is Peters had to have been living the college application/admission/acceptance/orientation lie since–what?–Fall 2009 when the apps had to go in?</p>
<p>Getting the pistol on Thursday, practicing and then waiting several days until the morning the daughter was loading the car, probably to head to UT orientation, to kill her doesn’t seem like a complete snap. Nor does Peters leaving the house after shooting her daughter to return the rental car. You’d think if she was so over the edge to kill her daughter, she’d have just turned the gun on herself and ended it after she killed her.</p>
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<p>I wish I knew more about depression and other mental illness. Is a severely depressed person capable of such planning and do they have the ability to carry out the plan? The lag of time and her coming and going from the house where her daughter is dead sort of freaks me out.</p>
<p>^^^ The rental car is weird for me, too. It’s not like Enterprise wouldn’t have gotten it back wtih no effort on her part. But she kills her dd and then goes on carrying out a whole host of activities – returning the car, writing notes – for 24 hours before she killed herself. Interesting that she let the dogs live and bothered to write a note about their care.</p>
<p>She obviously had hatched this plot since at least Thursday. I can’t imagine just going on with life for days knowing what you planned to do. I just wonder whether she confessed to the dd before she killed her about the financial troubles.</p>
<p>Awful story.</p>
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<p>I wonder that, too…was there the “you aren’t going to UT, your car is a rental” conversation? Did she just call her to the laundry room and shoot her? If she was a novice shooter, seems like the D would have had to have been cooperative…When I contemplate the horrors someone may have gone through before their murder, I tell myself that they were already in heaven before I even knew it happened.</p>
<p>I was just reading some other stories, and one of notes claims they were both inconsolable, but about what – the money problems? the non-college issue? the death of the dad-father?</p>
<p>I got the idea that it was grief over the death of the father. But that’s just my assumption.</p>
<p>"Getting the pistol on Thursday, practicing and then waiting several days until the morning the daughter was loading the car, probably to head to UT orientation, to kill her doesn’t seem like a complete snap. Nor does Peters leaving the house after shooting her daughter to return the rental car. You’d think if she was so over the edge to kill her daughter, she’d have just turned the gun on herself and ended it after she killed her. "</p>
<p>People who are mentally ill can be logical and organized in a sick way. The things that this unfortunate woman did were illogical and very disturbed.</p>
<p>I’ve read, too, that suicide notes seldom make sense. The suicide victim thinks they’re providing an explanation, even comfort to their survivors, but the victim’s way of thinking is not comprehensible to others.</p>