The brutality of the murder gives me the gut feeling that the parents couldn't have done it.
This is where you and Anyhoo may have to adjust your acceptance of reality a little bit.
Many parents brutally injure, abuse, and murder their children every day. I have posted numerous specific cases about this fact over and over again.
You cannot eliminate the parents based on the level of brutality of her injuries and killing.
Julie Scheneker shot her two teenaged children - her daughter in the face, and her son after soccer practice.
Little Zahra Baker was murdered and dismembered by her stepmother.
I don't need to repost the rest...they are easy to find.
In fact, here's the actual truth, which is opposite of what you, and most, tend to believe - naturally:
Parents most likely perpetrators in child killings
http://washingtonexaminer.com/parents-most-likely-perpetrators-in-child-killings/article/400346
March 24, 2012
"To many parents, there's nothing more frightening than the thought of their child being taken, hurt or even killed by a stranger.
But a string of D.C.-area child death cases in the news this month highlights an uncomfortable reality:
Children are more likely to die at the hands of their parents or other caregivers than anyone else.
Just this month, a Bristow woman pleaded guilty to child neglect charges for leaving her 2-year-old son alone in a hot van, killing the boy; a Sterling woman was arrested for allegedly killing her 20-month-old daughter in 2005; and a Manassas woman was charged with murder for allegedly causing the death of her 3-month-old son by neglecting him.
More cases
Other child slayings at the hands of parents have gripped the Washington area in recent years. A few more instances:
- Banita Jacks: In one of the region's most high-profile cases, the Southeast D.C. woman was convicted of murder and other offenses in the deaths of her four daughters, whose decomposed bodies were found in their rowhouse in January 2008. Prosecutors alleged that she intentionally starved and tortured the girls and isolated them from neighbors.
- Margaret Jensvold: The Kensington psychiatrist fatally shot her 11-year-old son, then turned the gun on herself, at their home in August. She was apparently upset over her son's education.
- Curtis Lopez: Lopez is scheduled to stand trial in October in the Germantown slayings of his estranged wife and stepson.
Between 1976 and 2005,
60 percent of all homicide victims in the United States under the age 5 were killed by one of their parents, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Nearly all others were slain by another relative or acquaintance;
just 3 percent died at the hands of a stranger.
But parents focus on the stranger killings because they're more likely to get news coverage, and that "stays in people's heads," said Michele Booth Cole, executive director of Safe Shores, a District nonprofit that coordinates child abuse investigations.
"People feel like it doesn't happen in their neighborhood, with their group of friends, to their kids," she said.
The truth is hard for parents to face, experts say.
"
It is much more acceptable for us to believe that children are more likely to be killed by strangers than acknowledging the reality," said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University.
To some degree, parents are the most likely perpetrators in child deaths simply because few others have reason or opportunity to harm children.
"Parents have the motive," said Dr. Phillip Resnick, a psychiatry professor at Case Western Reserve University. For strangers, he said, "there's not a good reason to kill a child."
Stress, a history of abuse, and mental illness are often seen in parents who kill their children.
The majority of child abuse cases are linked to stressors that may be temporary but cause a parent to snap, said Thomas Hafemeister, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Mothers who kill often suffer from postpartum psychiatric disorders, according to Appelbaum, and parents who were abused themselves are more likely to become abusers, Cole said.
"They weren't parented," she said. "They can't even see the damage that they are doing or are capable of doing."
Experts say the youngest children are the most vulnerable. Homicide is the third-leading cause of death for children age 4 and younger, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"If you hit a newborn, you're going to do a lot more damage than if you hit a teenager," Hafemeister said.
With young children, even innocuous objects can prove deadly. Vanesa Patricio-Cruz, the Sterling woman charged in her daughter's 2005 death, admitted to investigators that she struck the child's head with a remote control, court documents say.
Cole said increasing awareness about child abuse and providing support for parents is crucial in preventing deaths.
"How do families get to the point where the child could be crying out for help or the parents sending signals that they're totally unbalanced and nobody knows?" she said."...
___
We need to get over the misconception that a parent (or family member) most likely didn't do it if it was so brutal -- in fact the opposite is true, as noted above.
You may not want to believe it, but it is what it is.