<p>I saw one report on the Internet that a City spokeswoman said the daughter’s body was found in a downstairs laundry room. I speculate that there was no “discussion” with the daughter about anything. </p>
<p>She probably was in the laundry room getting some last minute things to take on the trip to Austin. Maybe she was even bending down into/over the washer or dryer and Peters shot her in the back or side of the neck and the bullet went through the neck and into the head as the Fort Worth Star Telegram reported. Guess Peters didn’t have the guts to shoot her face on.</p>
<p>missypie–I imagine Peters just shut the laundry room door afterwards. There were dogs and cats (in the house?) and if they got in there there would have been blood tracked all over everywhere in the day between the killing and the suicide.</p>
<p>I’m totally baffled about the college angle. If, as many seem to believe, the mother told the daughter she (mother) was taking care of everything, didn’t the school hear from UT about receiving transcripts but not an application? Didn’t the daughter question why she never received the same sort of acceptance letter/email or other related items as her peers? How did the daughter know what days/times orientation was held? Or were they both in the midst of deep denial/depression?</p>
<p>My son would have totally believed me if I’d have told him I did his applications and got his scores and transcripts sent and by the way, congrats you’ve been admitted and orientation is on Wednesday. But he has Asperger’s Syndrome. My neurotypical daughters…not at all.</p>
<p>Of course, it also wouldn’t take a whole lot of effort to produce a fake acceptance letter on one’s home computer.</p>
<p>The thing is, these are the kinds of lies that children tell…ones where at some point, they ARE going to be found out. I mean, one could hide a foreclosure posting from one’s child because if the debt is worked out, nothing happens. But at some point it would be time to go to college…and then what? Did the mom have any type of Plan B?</p>
<p>The daughter was said to be naive and gullible. And even non-naive teenagers tend to believe their parents. The daughter was wearing UT t-shirts, told her friends she was going to UT, and was packing what she apparently thought was her car to go to UT orientation. I think we have to conclude that, however naive it seems, she did believe she was headed to UT.</p>
<p>missypie–I think we have experienced Peters’ plan.</p>
<p>BTW–Coppell has about 750 in the senior class with 8 employees in college guidance. Most if not all the transcript order process is done online. If you go to Coppell ISD’s website you can see that the entire procees is faceless unless the student reaches out to the staff.</p>
<p>The daughter was active in several things after class. I could see that she might have given it over to Peters.</p>
<p>Very sad. Part of the tragedy, to me is that the mom seems to have beens so tied up with the materialistic stuff; with looking affluent, and well-groomed and perky, with perfect make-up, with the perfect house and the new car, and all that unreal, fakey, pretend stuff. She was playing a part, not being truthful and honest with her new life and with her daughter. And at what cost, this “keeping up appearances!” :eek: If she had leveled with her daughter from the start, they could have downsized and managed and gone on. And husband and mom could have involved daughter in this planning for future living and frugal living, whilst husband was still alive. This is a tragedy on so many levels. I can just imagine a newspaper article heading about this, “When keeping up with the Joneses turns deadly!”</p>
<p>I’ve heard that at some schools (e.g. very competitive private schools), the kids post their rejection and acceptance letters on various walls. But at our HS, the whole process is pretty quiet…no one shows their letters, except maybe (?) to their best friends. Perhaps the D didn’t even know that there were acceptance letters…esp if she thought she was waitlisted…if Mom said, “UT called and you’re in!!!”, many kids would probably celebrate without seeing it in writing. But how could a mother do that?!</p>
<p>I agree. A student could totally go around saying she had been admitted to a school to which she had not applied and the counseling office would never know it. I think our own neighboring HS has one GC per about 550 students…my son had three GCs over the course of his 4 years in HS…the only clue they had about where he ended up going is the address to which we asked them to send the final transcript…but we certainly could have asked the GC to send a transcript to a school to which he had not been accepted. They would have never known.</p>
<p>"Very sad. Part of the tragedy, to me is that the mom seems to have beens so tied up with the materialistic stuff; with looking affluent, and well-groomed and perky, with perfect make-up, with the perfect house and the new car, and all that unreal, fakey, pretend stuff. She was playing a part, not being truthful and honest with her new life and with her daughter. "</p>
<p>The father of one of my friends was an affluent banker and doting dad who showered my friend with whatever she wanted. My friend told me that he used to take her to toystores and let her literally have anything she wanted.</p>
<p>My friend went home from college one weekend and had a wonderful time with her family, including her dad, who, as she left, gave her a long, loving look.</p>
<p>A few days later, he jumped naked to his death from a hotel room.</p>
<p>He apparently did this because he had been involving relatives and friends into some kind of pyramid scheme that collapsed.</p>
<p>To this day – 40 years later – my friend is still angry bitter about what her dad did. She said she would have rather have been poor and to have had a dad who was in prison than to have lost her dad the way she did.</p>
<p>However, I believe that her dad-- who had been born into a very poor family – honestly thought he was doing the best thing for his family.</p>
<p>07Dad and I both knew a lady who, a number of years ago, slit her kids’ thoats before killing herself. I certainly didn’t think she was capable of such behavior, but she did seem “off” - certainly not perky or together.</p>
<p>I also knew someone who attempted murder suicide - ended up that the bullet inside her ex was not fatal but she did kill herself. She also seemed “off” and was not perky or together.</p>
<p>Glad to see I’m not the only one thinking, “If they had just bought really good life insurance policies when the D was born, the mom wouldn’t have been in these financial straits!” </p>
<p>Not that ANYTHING condones what the mom did, but if there’s a lesson to take away from this - buy a large life insurance policy before you need it. When I was pregnant, H and I bought term life insurance - cheap for a lot of coverage at that age. We got enough that I wouldn’t have to return to full-time work for at least 5 years if he died (I was a full-time mom), and we got a policy on me that would give him enough to pay for a Nanny/housekeeper and cover at least part of the kids’ college costs, since we were planning on me returning to work before the kids went to college.</p>
<p>Would any of you hide dire financial circumstances from your teen children? I don’t believe in burdening kids with every financial bump and bruise, but if I were to lose my job, for example, there would be a very immediate family meeting telling the kids about the lifestyle changes that would be required. I just can’t imagine continuing to spend when I knew I didn’t have the money.</p>
<p>I wonder if the daughter had been told, “you’re on your own after HS, or I can kill you” what she would have chosen.</p>
<p>The really, really twisted part of this is that the 19 year old daughter apparently didn’t have any say in Peters’ reaction to her circumstances. If you “buy” Peters’ notes, her daughter didn’t want to live after the dad died. I don’t buy that for a minute given what we know about the excitement shown for going off to UT.</p>
<p>I don’t really buy it either. I think that was the Mom attempting to make it look as though she was respecting her daughter’s wishes, not killing a young lady who very much wanted a future. </p>
<p>But her logic in writing that note was severely lacking anyway. Any reasonable loving parent gets their kid into therapy when they repeatedly say “Why can’t God just let me die?” They don’t sigh, take a gun, and say, “well, okay.” The whole thing is completely crazy.</p>
<p>Sounds like it may have been a fatal combination of both mother and child needing therapy, so neither seeks it, for themselves or for the other.</p>
<p>^^^^Yes, I believe that could be the case. Or it could be that the daughter never said any such thing, but the Mom wanted to avoid the appearance of killing her daughter for her own selfish reasons. In any case, I think it’s quite clear that Mom wasn’t mentally healthy. Somehow she convinced herself that the best thing was to kill herself and her daughter.</p>
<p>"Any reasonable loving parent gets their kid into therapy when they repeatedly say “Why can’t God just let me die?” They don’t sigh, take a gun, and say, “well, okay.” The whole thing is completely crazy. "</p>
<p>She probably was a loving parent, but definitely wasn’t reasonable: She was seriously mentally ill with very impaired judgement.</p>
<p>A New York paper covering this story had a shrink opine that Jayne might have convienced herself that she was “saving” her daughter from a world Peters saw as threatening.</p>
I can just imagine a newspaper article heading about this, “When keeping up with the Joneses turns deadly!”</p>