Mary Landrieu: Cousin's murder-suicide was mercy killing

[jus_the_facts]

Source: (AP)

Mar 14, 3:14 PM EDT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Stephen Landrieu, a cousin of Sen. Mary Landrieu and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, killed his wife because she had suffered for years, and then killed himself, the senator told a New Orleans radio station.

"It was a mercy killing," Landrieu told WWL-AM in an interview posted Friday on the station's Web site. "She had been suffering a great deal physically for years and years. They were very close. It was not a situation of violence, domestic violence in the traditional sense."

Press secretary Stephanie Allen confirmed the interview, but said Landrieu herself was grieving, had been on the Senate floor until 3 a.m. Friday, and would have no further comment.

Police in the town of Independence said officers went to Landrieu's and Burke's apartment after a man called, saying he had shot his wife and was going to kill himself. Stephen Landrieu was outside the two-story former office building when a police officer arrived from the station a block away, but he went in and locked the door when the officer tried to talk to him, police told The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune.



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LA_MURDER_SUICIDE_LAOL-?SITE=LAMON&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. That is so fucking sad.

:( Damn it, why can't we be civilized about this shit and have physician-assisted suicide for those who want it???

[jus_the_facts]

2. Makes me wonder what Mary's vote was on the Terri Schiavo Bill... guess we'll never know.

Votes on Passage
Mar 20, 2005: This bill passed in the Senate by Voice Vote. A record of each representative's position was not kept.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109-686

:wtf:

[pitohui]

3. physician assisted suicide would not have been legal 4 this case anywhere in the world

the wife suffered from chronic pain and financial strain

no doctor in the world is going to assist in your suicide caused by debt

we need universal health care and a patient bill of rights that guarantees that people in pain receive sufficient pain medicines and if by chance once in a while a drug addict also gets some pain medicine that's the price we as a society should be willing to pay

instead we have a woman in pain for 8 years, falling back on bogus devices, and eventually the couple is so impoverished that they see no other way out (they are even selling these bogus devices themselves, presumably in a desperate attempt to get funds)


dr. k. himself could not have helped this couple, this was a tragedy caused by the exhausting of financial resources based on what i'm hearing

terry schiavo was a brain dead corpse kept on machines for many years in order to drain public and family funds even tho there was no chance of the woman ever coming back to life -- no relevance at all to this case, where it was the woman's diabetic body and not her brain that failed her -- keep in mind that this woman did not kill herself, her husband killed her and then himself, quite a different circumstance from schiavo and most disturbing because if this woman had wanted to die seems she could have taken care of the matter herself any time over the last 8 years, i have to conclude that her husband snapped and is a murderer altho i can sympathize with his despair

[aquart]

5. Or she could have said, "Please, let me go."

It's also possible that she endured the pain because he said he couldn't bear to be without her, and that one day she felt she couldn't endure it anymore and begged him. And he gave in, even though he knew he wouldn't live one day past her.

We don't know.

[pitohui]

7. but we know more if we've actually read the news reports

i don't think you understand, we are not talking about a woman who was hooked up to a bunch of machines and unable to take action on her own behalf, we were talking about a woman who was still conscious, still able to walk and move (albeit with pain), and so presumably had the ability to shoot herself if that's the out she wanted to take -- yet at no time in her 8 years of struggle did she herself pick up the gun and try to end it

i think the husband just snapped, he did all the classic things that suicides do to try to convince someone to stop them, such as telling his mom, calling the cops and saying he was going to commit suicide, etc. -- really the "classic cry for help" from the sound of it


i think in his mind it was a "mercy killing," just as it was in his mind that the bogus "medical" devices he sold actually helped his wife's pain for awhile, but at the end of the day we have a very confused individual who broke under stress

if society were different, such as universal health care and no money worries to prey on their minds, and good access to pain medicines rather than the current war on pain medicines (here operators of pain clinics are being arrested with great fanfare pretty much on a weekly basis) then i don't think this man would have committed this crime

but i do think it was a crime

just my opinion but your theory has very little evidence to support it, considering that while the woman did have back pain she wasn't immobilized

[Major Hogwash]

4. Damn. That is really sad.

I really like Senator Landrieu.

[Acadia Blue]

9. I have sympathy for Senator Landrieu. Any tragic death is difficult

Herniated disks are excruciating and nothing but very strong narcotic pain medication relieves the pain. I know a woman who had 2 operations to stop this pain and they did not. She is misserable.

[pop goes the weasel]

6. could be wishful thinking

According to the linked article:

Although Mary Landrieu said Burke had been in pain for a long time, Stephen Landrieu wrote on his Web site that a device like those he sold had - in three days - ended eight years of pain that began when Burke fell in 1982 and herniated two disks.

So the husband, Stephen, was claiming that his wife, Brenda, was no longer in pain. Makes the mercy killing claim look less likely.

It's normal for relatives to put the best spin possible on things like this, but the fact is that we don't know why Stephen killed Brenda. To immediately assume that, when a person who has a disability is killed, that it is a mercy killing leaves people with disabilities vulnerable to familial violence. I hope the fact of Landrieu's relationship to the case doesn't taint the investigation. After all, what if the real reason for the murder/suicide was that Brenda was feeling well enough to start arguing with Stephen?

[pitohui]

8. i'm sorry to say that i may have to agree with you

this is not a mercy killing in the usual sense, of a helpless person with no hope unable to kill themselves so they beg for relief from a relative

the woman had chronic pain and "rarely" went out -- but it's non-obvious that she was somehow unable to act on her own behalf had she wanted to die

keep in mind the financial issues they were having, and his attempt to sell the devices is a little more understandable -- they were desperate for $$$ and he had to kid himself that it worked or what would they have? not only no hope for her relief but no hope of income from the devices they were selling either