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You are now listening to True Murder, The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them. On January twenty eight, twenty and eleven, the Kappa Police Department received a phone call from a woman who was worried about her daughter, Julie Shaneker, a devoted army wife and mother of two, Julie had sent her mother an email that could be described as suicidal. When authorities arrived at
shaneker home, they encountered a horrific scene. Sixteen year old Kalyx and thirteen year old Beaux Shaneker were found dead, both of them shot, then covered with blankets. Upon questioning, Julie admitted that she was tired of the kids talking back and just wanted it to be over. Had her manic depression driven her to the point of insanity or was hers a case of a cold calculated violence and manipulation. This is the shocking true story of motherhood, mental illness,
and two charges of murder in the first degree. The book that we're featuring this evening is Sleep My Darlings, The true story of a mother who killed her children in cold blood, with my special guest journalist and author Diane Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Diane Fanning.
Terrific to be Richier again.
Dan Well, thank you, thank you very much. Another great book, by the way, and our audience is in for a treat now. You portray, you paint a portrait of Julie Sheneker, And you've done exhaustive research here and had, of course, as usual, some incredible access to all the players that are the major players in this story. And I think it's important how long you spend and how exhaustive this research is to be able to tell us exactly who
Julie Sheneker is. So tell us start in the beginning, who is Julie Sheneker, What is her background, Where does she come from? What is her roots? Tell us about Julie Sheneker.
Julie Sheneker was basically a farm girls mile and she grew up out in the country, and she was very much liked. She was a very pleasant person. She was, as one of her high school classmates described it, the kind of daughter you wanted to have when you had children. So everybody wanted to be Jeweli or to have a childlike Jewelry someday. She was an athlete and a scholar and just an all round nice person. There was nothing
in her early years to foreshadow any of this. Then she went off to university and excelled again in sports or the volleyball team, and did well academically. When she graduated, she joined the army and went into Army intelligence, and she had a very high pressure, prestigious position. She was based in Germany during the Cold War and her job was to interview people that were coming out from behind
the iron curtains seeking asylum. She was a Russian specialist, so she could speak fluent Russian and she understood about the Russian culture and she could communicate with these people and basically debriefed them. When they were trying to find asylum in the United States, and that was the kind of job that really required a lot for a person, that required a lot of intellectual ability and a lot of staying power. And as one of her co workers said, everybody in that unit was a type a person and
they all worked. And then they played hard too, with all the beer festivals in that part of and she had a bike as she rode recreationally. She captained me and coached the volleyball team. She was a very busy woman and it was in that capacity that she met the man she was married with, Chris Schenniker, And after she started having children, she became a stay at home
mom taking care of her kids. Traveled across the United States in different bases where her husband was posted, went to Hawaii for a while, and eventually ended up in Tampa, Florida, where her husband was a colonel in Army intelligence. And she was very socially active with friends, got involved in in charitable events in volunteering there. She was not from the outside what anyone would have expected in the long term, and what actually happened to it was very much of
a surprise to many people. People closest to her knew she was having problems, but I don't think anyone really understood the magnitude, severity, and life threatening nature of what was going on with her. She was diagnosed bipolar, and bipolar people have a particular challenge, and that is to be able to stay on medications, because the temptation is so extreme to get off the medications because they make for a lot of people with bipolar disorder, they make
everything kind of flat. And yeah, the depressions of bipole are horrible, but also the hides can feel wonderful when you're in them. And so it's difficult for someone with that problem to maintain their medication and keep on it. And Julie had a very difficult time with that, and she couldn't manage it. And after she was in an all car accident, she got some pain pills and so she was abusing those, she was self medicating with alcohol.
She was doing all sorts of things that would not even be good if you didn't have mental health issues, but when you do, it's even worse. And I'll be honest, and when I sat down to write this book, I did not expect that I would have any compassionate all for Julie Schenneker in light of what she had done. But I've found myself having a lot of compassion for her. It doesn't mitigate anything that she did that is still
absolutely horrible, But she really had a difficult condition. She was having trouble getting medications that were working right for her, and she really was, aside from what her mental illness stead to her, a really nice and good person. And the drug abuse and the alcohol abuse combined with her mental condition created a monster.
Let's go back for our audience though, because we've kind of skipped over the story to a certain degree, so we'll go back a little bit and tell a little bit more of it. What I found interesting is that I've found it surprising what you just did. I did say that you found compassion for Julie Sheneker, and you in the initially didn't think that you would have any
compassion for her given the crimes they were committed. What I wanted to get into a little bit is that we want to know when exactly this mental illness was diagnosed, and exactly how serious was the disease that was diagnosed, and of course what was she You talked about hospitalization. Of course, she was on a certain amount of drugs, but we want to talk about later about the actual amount of drugs and different variety of drugs that were found at the Shaneker home after police were called to
the home. And we're not at that point yet, So let's go back a little bit. When was she first diagnosed. I know it was around the time that they were married, But tell us when that first diagnosis was, and what that diagnosis was specifically, and what was the course of action taken upon and recommended by the doctor at that time.
At the time she was diagnosed, which was in the early nineties, she was it was recommended that she, you know, take medication to treat her illness. The first thing was that the diagnosis for at first was depression, so she put her in a depressant. And that's very common with people who are by a polar that they're first because that's when you go for help, is when you're depressed. You don't go for help when you're in the middle of the high So it takes a while for a
doctor to recognize that it's more than just depression. But it took a couple of years in her case, and she was, over the course of twenty years, medicated, hospitalized, she went to rehab for drug abuse. It was a situation that you would like to hope that she could be getting better, but it seemed like every step she took forward, eventually she'd slide two back.
There was no diagnosis, though, of violence or violent features to her bipolar disease, the depression or the bipolar diagnosis. There was no violent features in there was.
There no There were times that it was thought she might be dangerous to herself. Now. The last time she was hospitalized, she would not give the doctor permission to speak to her husband, and in the because of the hippo laws in this country, he couldn't do that without her permission. And I often wonder if Parker and her doctor could have talked openly and freely about what was going on with Julie, if that would have made a
difference in the track of her life. If Parker had realized the seriousness of her condition, I'm sure he would not have left her alone with two kids and gone to quit there. He could have gotten a family emergency leave. He could have called a family member to come in and stay with them. I just think he was not able to be fully informed. And as a result of this, you know, he now has no children, and that's really sad.
It's very sad. But I also maybe it's just from living in camp. In my whole life, I did have sympathy for Julie Scheneker. And where my sympathy was lying was as the story unfolded, I said, I'd be awfully depressed myself. I've got a couple of kids, and no one can really depict because you didn't get to interview the children obviously what kind of family life they did have when they were all together, or what kind of family life they had when they were apart. But certainly
a move must be traumatic for children. It's also must be traumatic for a wife. She gave up a career. She was a very important military She had a very important military career too. So it wasn't that she gave up something that wasn't a real passion of hers. She gave this up traveled the world. I guess she obviously knew that he was a career military man, and she
understood that. But I thought, I think it's depressing just by nature of him not being there very often and her dealing with teenage, a teenager and another two teenagers actually, and and all the things that go along with a marriage or maybe a life just not so fulfilled. I thought that that was part of I think the thing that you probably couldn't get to unless you really spoke to Julie. And maybe that's just my imagination, but I.
Do think I do think she had multiple stressors in her life. You know, the frequent moving is stressful, selling a house, buying a house is stressful. Having teenagers in the house is stressful. Being separated from your spouse is stressful.
And so.
You know, she had a lot on her. For any person, if she was a friend of yours, you'd be sympathizing with her a lot, because she did. She carried a heavy burden. And I think that a lot of people often don't realize. They look at a woman who gives up a career and stays them and goes. Isn't she
lucky she doesn't have to work every day? But there is something there, Particularly if you have a fulfilling job and a demanding job like she did, you lose a piece of yourself and of your self identity, and you don't have as much fulfillment. I think when you're a parent and you look back at your parenting when it's over and you see that your children have turned out and it turned out to be really fine adults, and
you go, wow, that was really fulfilling. But on a day to day basis, you don't really feel that so often. You know it's because there's so much detail and drudgery that goes along with it you've got to take care of. There are happy moments, there are loving moments, there are a lot of things, but it's not necessarily fulfilling something you look back and see what you've accomplished, whereas a job that you enjoy and love can be fulfilling on a pretty regular basis.
Right now, two things I thought were important as well is that, and you know this is not the chronological order of the book, but I wanted to talk about when police actually go to the home. And we'll leave the murder for in a few minutes, but this variety
of drugs and the volume of drugs that were there. Now, I understand people being prescribed antidepressants, but I'm not going to ask you off the top of your head the variety and the amount of drugs that were there, but safe to say there was say three antidepressants, at least a couple very very strong oxycotton cardon or whatever it's called.
Yeah, there were the pain killers, which I do not think that her regular doctor was aware of all the medications she was taking. I think she had had different doctors, one because of her accident, and then a regular doctor. I think she had multiple doctors prescribing for her and nobody knew the whole picture. But she did have three antidepressions, she did have a couple of anti anxiety drugs, some
pain killers. Topped that off with just some of cold medications which can make you a little loopy just by themselves, and all of that thrown together along with lithium, and it was just a nightmare pharmaceutical display all over her house. I mean, they found pills on the dead, they found him in the bathroom, they found him in her purse, and then on top of that, they go in the kitchen and they trash hands full of empty all the
beer cans and wine bottles. And this was a woman that was obviously at the end of her leash, and she was self medicating in a very destructive way, and she had yes, two very very good children. They were well liked, they were well adjusted for teenagers, and they weren't causing any serious problems like going out and doing
drugs and getting arrested or anything like that. But the friction between a sixteen year old daughter and a mother is often very extreme, and in this case, I think that Julie's mental illness played a role in it being even more extreme. Klex was trying to get into a boarding school because she did not want to live in
the house with their mother anymore. There was no story, though, of any conflict with though, and that was kind of odd that she did kill thou because there had never been any educational conflict between them.
The thing is, it doesn't really you know. Again, we should just wait for a moment. In terms of this, I'm trying to paint the picture that you have for the book with Bully. There is nothing in Julie's background that would predict anything like the last bit of her life, and so there is no ability to this insanity. And in terms of all the cases that you've covered and all the cases I have looked at, this is still and I think you're right about this as well, is
that this is this is not typical. This is not the typical person that kills their children as well, and these are not.
The It's not the typical person that would kill her children. There is no I mean usually when teenagers are killed, there's a history of violence towards them. There are two incidents of her slapping her daughter, that is it, and those were shortly before she committed this final act. Also, when you look at mothers who kill their children, the younger the child is, the more likely that a mother will kill the child. By the time children are teenagers,
it's extremely rare for a mother to do that. If children teenage children are killed by a parents, it is almost always the father, So this is extremely unusual.
Now, tell us what happens a little bit before this murder. There is concern from Parker Scheneker about his wife, of course, not enough to delay or postpone or cancel his work overseas in the military. But tell us what he does do. There's an email, There is talk among the families, and I found this very shocking, and some of it from her own brother. Tell us a little bit about conversations and how long that was before this tragic event.
Well right before the event I meany days before he left the country, they were taught he was talking with the family about how she had the judgment of a ten year old, and no one was disagreeing with him.
And they they were wondering, if you know, if he just had enough of critiquity more and it was going to be leaving her because of her drug abuse and having to be put in to rehab and uh getting into an automobile.
Accident by driving crazy and uh drinking and driving and not being responsible for the children and at times and the family was getting garbled messages from her, and they knew that she her own family knew that she was not doing well. And yet Parker was the kind of guy if you if you said said yes, I will do this, Yes I can do this, no problem, he
was going to believe you. And so when he asked, Julie, will you be okay if I go on this ten day deployment to the Middle East, and Julie said yes, for that time, I can handle that, and so Parker said, you know, okay, Well, then then you know I won't be gone long, just ten days. I'll be back. And I'm sure he never anticipated for one moment that she would not keep her work. But unfortunately she met something meant something entirely differently than what he different than what he.
Thought before we get into the actual planning, which you know puts a big monkey wrench into any kind of insanity defense. That's for sure. I wanted you to convey to the audience because again, this is a dynamic that was awfully shocking to me is how this is a very religious family. We haven't talked spoken about that, and that permeates itself all the way through the entire story after the children are murdered and way beyond. But there's a letter from her brother I believe his name is
Dave to Julie. And what is the tone of that letter from her own family member? And I think this may hopefully explain the kind of impression I got from this family dynamic.
Well, basically he was telling her to shape up, that you know, you had no more patience with her, you know, And this is so common in how family members react to someone with a mental illness, to expect them to pull themselves together and stop jerking around and stop like her brother felt that she was because of the way she was acting. She was causing Parker to retire before you made general. And that had been Parker's desire for years and years, and everybody in the family knew he
wanted to be a general. And so it was all, you know, look what you're doing to Parker, and look what you're you're causing him to give up. And nobody was really looking at what she'd already given up for one thing, right, And nobody was ever looking at the mental illness as not being some sort of weakness but a serious biochemical problems.
And I think that this, well, maybe I'm going to get ahead of myself if I if I comment on that anyway, Now, there are some I just mentioned that there are some plans. There's some premeditation here that really makes you wonder when you're following this story, and it's amazing how it's laid out, and it's very, very surprising that this happens. Tell us about the premeditated plans for murder.
Well, when Parker left for all of his deployments, Julie went three counties away to a gun store. I mean, there were a lot of gun stores closer to her home, but she chose this one that was a little further away. She went in and she bought her gune and was very disappointed to find out that she had three day waiting period. So she went home and wrote in her journal,
the massacre will have to be delayed. And so it was obvious usually in a lot, in most possibilities of domestic violence, that three day waiting period can save lives because it's it's sort of the heat of the moment kind of thing. I'm going to kill my wife, and they go out to get the gun to kill her, and they come if they can get it right away, to come over and kill her, but if they have that waiting period, they think better about it. With Julie, though,
that waiting period didn't impact her state of mind. And I know that for the prosecution who's trying to get the death penalty, that they say that proves premeditation and she deserves to die for it, and I disagree with that in that I think that she was in a state of mental illness, unclear thinking through all of what they're calling premeditation. And yes it is premeditation, but it was all created by a mere psychotic state of mind.
Well good luck with that. But yeah, Now, the thing is that she waited the three days she got her gun, bought her ammunition. And these guys were key guys testifying or at least giving their testimony to police, and that was part of the evidence gathered against her. Now, what does she do and on what day and under what circumstances Take us back to that faithful day and recreate that horrible experience for us.
It was a Thursday in January and towards against January, and she picked up the gun at the gun store. She came home when it was time to take go to his soccer game. She was driving down the road with him and suddenly fired a shot into the windshield, which terrified Bow and he turned towards her and pleaded with her to put down the gun, and she shot
him in the head. Then she with him sitting there, she drove home, parked the car in the garage, went into the house, walked up the stairs to where Klex was busy in front of the computer work in her Homewark shot Kaelex in the head. When Kaylex swung around in an automatic physical response, she was shot again in
the face. She was sitting on a rolling chair and Julie rolled her down the hall and into her bedroom, picked her up and laid her in bed, got a white cat blanket out of the cap in the bathroom and stretched it out over her, put the chair back where it belonged at the desk, got another white blanket, went downstairs, out into the garage and covered up. Though then she went and detailed everything that happened in her journal.
She sent some very very garbled text messages and email messages, and then sometime after that she ended she had written that she was going to commit suicide, that was going to be the final act of violence that night. But it said she passed out on the concrete apron of the swimming pool and it was the next morning the police found her there.
Now in the journal, was there talk of why she wanted to kill the children.
She said that she was tired of them talking back and it had to end, and that was it.
Now, did she send an email to Parker just sort of foreshadowing this?
She sent an email to Parker telling him to herry home, they missed him, and that was after she killed the children.
Incredible.
Now, Parker's viewpoint in his lawsuit was that she did that to torment him. But the other possible meaning of that is that she was already in total denial about what she had done. And in a lot of cases of mothers killing children, there is often a plan of suicide, but the emotionally draining nature of shooting their kids or killing their kids, whatever way they do it is it just wears them out and they have absolutely no energy, and it's very often they go to sleep or pas us out.
Now before we get to this lawsuit, because again I found this quite shocking and some of the behavior as well. Tell us about the course of events, because early in your book we talked about how while you talk about how the police are first notified, and tell us about that.
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Well, Julie Oh.
Had not.
Really told anyone what she was going to do, I mean, so it was a big surprise to everybody and how they found out. She did send an email to her mother that saying this is this is all got to end, and it sounded to her mother as if Julie could have been contemplating suicide. Her mother did not suspect that she would ever do anything to harm the children. So it was her mother that called the police because she
was very worried. Her mother, religion Iowa, was vacationing in Texas, and she called the Florida police to go check on her daughter. And they did go over there, and the police, I mean, they thought the worst thing they would find is the suicide. That was, you know, the only thing
that they could imagine. So when they found the first body they found was Klyx's upstairs in the bedroom, and at that point, since Beau was not in his bedroom, they had great hope that that Beau would be found hiding somewhere scared, but instead they found him dead in the car.
Now, what was Julie's reaction when they did discover her there? You describe in the book what was what was her sort of what was her behavior? What was her reaction when police found her there?
Well, at sorst, I mean, she identified herself and they asked to go into our house, and she said that was fine. But then once they all got into the house, she started fighting the police. They ended up having to forcibly cuff her because she was resisting them, but eventually she told them what she had done. She told them that they were talking back and she wasn't going to take it anymore.
Now, what is Parker's reaction, How does he find out? How long after and what is his immediate reaction.
Parker found out while he was deployed or receives that his family was gone basically, and and he came right back. It was due to come back anyway, actually, but he went to the base and he all was there for the community memorial service for the one that the military had. He was also willing to go to Fort Worth for the official funeral. He was there, He spoke at all of these. He was very open to Bow and Kalyx's
friends and was very welcoming to them. He would go to games that were played by those soccer team and cheer the kids on there. When March came around and came the event that Klyx was in charge of for the American Heart Association, he showed up and he did the walk with all of the kids, and he was there all night with them, just as he would have been if Kalyx was there, and he gave a big donation. He was through the foundation he started for Calyx and Bow.
He gave a big donation to that event to Relay for Life, and he has been very involved with those children and with his foundation and wanting to do good things in the name of his children.
My question is is that who visited Julie Sheneker and Parker. How long was it before he visited Julie Shenneker And what was the nature of the visit once he did visit her.
Well, when they first got together, it was right after the two memorial services and the funeral. He went into the jail to visit her. And normally in the jail all visits were by a close circuit television and you
never actually physically saw the people. But they made special arrangements so he could actually sit down in the same room with her, and he talked to her about the memorial services and about all the kids and all the love for Calyx and Bow, and he updated her on all of that, and then he informed her that he was filing for a divorce, and she seemed to take
it okay at that time. She just nodded her acceptance, and he pretty much thought she was okay with it, and then the demand started coming from her lawyer as far as what she would get out of the divorce. They went money immediately to pay for her defense, and they wanted him to have a life chose policy with hers beneficiary. And it seemed very odd to me that those demands would be made, that anyone would expect a father to pay for the defense of the person who took his children's lives.
I was surprised that the court didn't. I was surprised that these cases were sort of mixed up a little bit, or not a little bit. They were kind of connected in terms of if she's looking for a proper defense, and she's has to raise the money, the funds to be able to do that, and she gave up a career, she's entitled to a substantial portion of his or fifty
percent of his earnings. And so I thought that it was odd that this type of civil case was again connected with the criminal case in terms of if she has success with this, then she might have the funds to be able to defend herself much better. I found it odd. I found odd that.
These trials had other Yeah, the whole thing.
Was very odd in that, on the one hand, you look at Julie, who, as you, gave up her career for the sake of their family. And yet that would say, on the one hand that she deserves half of their assets, just flat out without questions. But on the other hand, the only reason her husband is getting divorced at this
point in time is because she killed their children. So in order to divide that money, that means that half of the money he earned is not just going to his strange spouse, it's going to the killer of his children. So it's brought all sorts of emotions into it that shouldn't have been there. To look at it.
Objectively, I'll tell you I find it odd. And again, anyone who listens to this program knows I'm not a bleeding her liberal by definition, but I found it odd that Parker didn't visit his way. It's almost like he's married to this woman, but she is the nanny. She is diagnosed with mental illness. And there is again the letter with Dave and some intimation with Parker as well and from the family that somehow or Parker had said that, well, she was mentally ill before I got married to her.
She was damaged goods, So somehow trying to wash their hands of this woman somewhere along the line after she's been a caregiver, but she's been a lot more than a caregiver. And the thing that I found missing from your book, and again I guess it's just how much can you really get? But the one thing that just not at my brain was what kind of relationship did
he have with his wife? It didn't seem like he had much of a relationship with his wife really, And then at some point when she commits this, of course a heinous crime, the most intolerable crime of all, still it's like he didn't have a wife.
There is there was some suspicion to me that things were In addition to the notes, he didn't have his wedding ring with him when he went overseas. It was in the bathroom. Now I believe there was a story put out that, you know, he didn't wear his wedding ring when he was deployed, and that was just to have it. And so I don't know if anything could be read into that, but it almost seems symbolic to me. And yes, he seemed to have absolutely no respect for
her as a person anymore. And you wondered how long that had built up. Was that just a result of recent events or is it more or a reflection of how he saw her more as an underling than as a partner. And you don't know, because even if he did, he's how could admit it and everything he was in their states at all.
Another question I had too, was that given what you just admitted, that may have been the situation in that he didn't respect her enough in this marriage, and that certainly didn't help her mental disposition at all, their mental state whatsoever. But this also could have been passed to the children, where the children saw the father as this sort of hero rule compared to the mother that was the drunk, the pill taker, or the insane mother, one
of those three. And again not to say that the normal dresses and strains of a relationship between a mother and a teenage daughter would not be enough, But if the father didn't have enough respect for his wife, referring to her as having the decision making capabilities of a ten year old, maybe that was rubbing off on Klyx as well. Do you think there might be something to that?
I it seemed as if Parker was taking Kalyx's side in her conflict with her mother, which is always a bad thing in a family when that's going on.
And if he had an attitude towards his wife that was anything short of what a spousal relationship should be, then yes, the.
Children are going to pick up on that. They always do. Children pick up more than we know, and when they're teenagers they pick up even more. And perhaps some of her disrespect for her mother all they are, it's natural for teenagers. Maybe some of it was a reflection of how a father was feeling. It seemed like that that relationship was clearly on the rocks. If the children were still living, they'd still be married. Maybe not, maybe they
would have separated regardless of what happened. It's hard to know.
The thing I think that we shouldn't, we should let the audience know, is that this email that I spoke about where the brother was chastising his sister, and it to me it was I would have called my brother and said, listen, you don't be talking to me ever again, because I couldn't believe the tone that he was using as a brother to his grown sister, responsible sister and talking to her like this was wrong. On so many levels, But tell us, didn't she ask and then get the contents of that letter? Oh?
Yes, yes, she wanted to see it if she asked.
All that email to see copies of it.
And initially she was told no, and then Parker said, go ahead, let her see it, and so she thought, I mean, she knew, and quite frankly, I think she had to have been feeling as if she was pretty much all alone in the world, and you know, there was nobody for her to turn to.
It seemed like they were all ganged up against her to some degree.
Yeah, I mean again, I understand it. You know the insanity defense. Again, you pointed it out in your book. Less than one percent of all the murder cases trials and insanity defense is put forward, and out of that a fraction of that one percent actually succeed with the
insanity defense. So it's I don't know if it's worth doing, but certainly a defense lawyer has a responsibility to defend his client to the best of his ability, and if he believes his client to be insane, then certainly he should present insanity defense.
Now, I think that there's a difference between being medically insane and legally insane, and it always doesn't make sense psychiatrically when they say they were legally saying.
Well, what the difference is is that in different jurisdictions in Canada, the insanity defense is successful quite a bit. And what I sent you in an email just for an example of a case that I covered on a on a program itself, it was a doctor Turcotte from Montreal, Canada or Quebec anyway, the province of Quebec in Canada,
and he had killed his two children. Again we won't get into the details, but it's compaable enough in that a respectable, otherwise law abiding I don't believe he was diagnosed previous to this with any kind of mental illness, but he used the insanity defense as this temporary insanity and he was successful with it and he was released
after four years from a mental institution. So you can see that there's a difference in jurisdictions using that, and certainly if that worked once, then it can work again.
And the precedent has been set and there as many different insanity defenses that have been used in this country successfully, So you can see that, and you write about it in your book as well, that there's a reason why juries don't go along with this, even though they are sane and logical and intelligent and have been instructed otherwise. As you write in your book, they're fearful of what maybe possibly somebody letting the people out again. So they're afraid of the person that's insane.
Wet doctor Michael Sterne, who is a forensic psychology.
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Bia trist And works does a lot of work in a hospital for the mentally insane. He a prison hospital. He says that Julie Schniker definitely is mentally ill and should be should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, but that she is the type of person that should never be let out of the institution again because she cannot control herself sufficiently. And cannot be trusted to take medications if she ever were stabilized.
Now, with your experience with these death penalty cases, these capital cases, and with you know how many women are actually executed, and how many women are actually sentenced to death. Given all the mitigating circumstances that are involved here and the kind of counsel that she may have, what do you think the chances are that the death penalty will will defeat her sentence.
I think it's highly unlikely that a jury would give her the death penalty. Quite frankly, I think it's a little bit of overreached by the prosecution too. And I and it seems as if perhaps the only reason they are seeking the death penalty is in order to have a jury that tends to side more with the prosecution.
As death certified juries. Do I really believe that, you know, if we're going to have a death penalty and we're going to be executing people, then it should be reserved for the kind of people that like tommylo Sales in that book, I went through the window. He's somebody who gets actual pleasure from killing, and he just kills over and over again, and that is just what he likes to do. That is his reaction to stress. He tortures
and kills. And although you could although the murders of her two children were horrible and they both had a moment of total terror in their lives and betrayal, they were not tortured. They died quickly. And I really think that if you're going to kill a person for taking a life, it should be reserved for the most severe cases. And in this horrible as it was, just did not measure up to the horrors that have been inflicted on people by those like tomulent cells.
Yeah, I know you're right, And the thing is, I think it's overreached as well by the prosecute prosecution in terms of this is not again the typical kind of person that you would find being on death row again going and putting blankets on her deceased children and not doing anything of the jackal type sort of thing that serial killers and some heinous vengeful killers do. This is a clear case of mental illness having some you know, something to do with this case, and at least that
will be a mitigating circumstance. And like I say, in other jurisdictions, at least I know in Canada, we would be the jury would be feeling sympathy for Julie Scheneker, and they would bring up all the kinds of things that are some of the kinds of things that we'd
spoken about today. And I wanted to say too as well, is the defense has already spoken about in terms of this statement that they have in terms of Parker's responsibility, tell us about the contents of the gist of what that statement is in terms of Parker's responsibility in the murder and the deaths of his own children.
Well, they pointed to Parker and what he said about Julie like not having the judgment or the ten year old and saying that it was extremely irresponsible for him to have left her with those children, to take care of those children, and to lead charge them that she should have never been left there alone with them. And maybe they are right, but I think that Parker was blinded a bit because he didn't have full disclosure from
her position about the state she was in. I think that he never for one moment thought that he would she would physically harm the children in any way, and I think it's a little harsh on him. But by the same token, going for the death penalty for her is a little harsh. I really don't think the defense is going to succeed with the insanity defense, and I also don't think the prosecution's going to succeed with the death penalty.
Right. Well, I mean, I believe that you're correct too. There's enough mitigating circumstances that she is very unli likely to get the death penalty, I believe. And uh, and certainly the insanity defense has too many you know, the premeditation again.
That it all yeah.
Yeah, And what you wrote in the book too, is that when they were set for Core two, there was initially some data retrieved from emails and all computer data, and then of course there was a snap woo in terms of nobody could read the data. And then he realized this is going to take a year to look at the data and read the data and prepare the data.
And so again they're going to be rolling up their sleeves for a big, protracted trial, I hope, though, because I don't know, I mean, I haven't done the research in terms of what's the media doing in terms of this story. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that. But how big is this story? Do you believe going to get by the time it gets to trial.
There's other trials that have captivated the American audience. But do you think this may captivate the audience and raise the issue of mental illness or what do you think about it the prospect of history in any kind of big way.
I'm hoping that it does raise awareness of the problems with mental illness. I don't and it all depends on how the media handles it. It can be handled so that some sort of ugly shadow is cast on anyone that has mental illness, and people tend to forget that the average person with mental illness never hurts anyone. People with depression who they hurt usually is themselves and they commit suicide. But most people with mental illness are not violent.
It's a possibility with a small percentage. And I think that if the media focuses on her mental illness by pointing out red flags and danger signals and the importance of noticing things in your family and friends and those around you, that maybe it can serve a very good purpose if we can get people to realize that mental illness isn't something that someone can just get over. It isn't something that you can just pull yourself up out of it and you stop messing around and just act normal.
It just doesn't happen, and we need to take it more seriously and encourage people to get help and not expect them to do it all on their own. People would mental illness needs strong family support, and they also need strong professional support.
I think the lesson in this as well is that one of these striking events that happens in this book, in this story, is that when police find all the medications, and there's again voluminous mounts of pills, three type of antidepressants and a couple of the most potent pain killers on earth, that alone can create some things. Every recreational
drug user, every prescription drug overuser knows that. But again, whose finger we're going to point who we're going to point the finger at is she's also drinking and she's combining alcohol. You know, not too many juries are sympathetic about that. The thing that I have the sympathy for and the understanding. Again, I can't comprehend murder and I
can't justify it. I can just that there certainly was some circumstances that obviously led to this, and you do a great job of having access to that and telling that story. But the thing is, what I found was is that it almost seemed like this poster perfect family, this military man, and that even after the murder of his kid, that's all more to me. This is my impression that it was all more about the impressions, it
was all about image. It was more about ritual. You know, he's a military guy, he's a religious person, and then they have these fundraisers and then they dress all in Harry Potter costumes and all these memorials. But yet he didn't have any time, any comprehension, any compassion or empathy for his wife whatsoever, the mother of his children, the person that he was with. He didn't contemplate divorce before this.
He wrote this email and then got and then what was silly enough to think that somebody wouldn't just blow their top reading the email and the brother is chastising her. So all I know is that if if you want to push someone and push someone and push them away and treat them like nothing despite this image that's probably still out there of Parker Penneker and the Angelic kids, is that somebody should have a little bit of sympathy for this mother. That's my impression out of this whole thing.
I really have certain compassion for the whole family, sure, you know, And it is hard for me to put myself in any of their shoes and try to understand, well, try to say how I would react in any of in any of their positions and with any of their burdens. I just am glad. I am grateful that I never had to face this of a spouse that filled my children. I am grateful that I never had to carry the burden of serious mental illness. And I'm glad that I never had to live with a parent who was abusing
drugs and alcohol like that. I mean, you know, everybody in that family had a difficult road to ho and I think that there should be enough compassion for all of them.
Yeah, I just see it odd that the courts are involved in the civil suit in the criminal case which is connected to the civil suit in terms of he wants to not support again, you say, like the killer of his children, Yet it's still the mother of his children at the same time time, and she could have a bushel full of money, she could use every penny that he had it still wouldn't get her free. She
wouldn't be a free woman. So defense is only really all she can ever hope to get is a fair trial and taking in, you know, the circumstances of her mental illness and considering them in the sentencing itself, because she is facing the death Tunnelly, or facing the rest of her life in prison without any kind of possibility paroleso. These mitigating factors such as mental illness may make the difference between life and death for this woman.
Yeah, yeah, it is a It is a shocking situation to see a woman who is solid middle class, up standing in her community, with with the background of no violence, is really facing nothing that you would have ever imagined for her to be facing as she goes into her fifties.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's an amazing story. I thought when I first read this that, oh, I think I can tell what's going on from just the basic details. And again, you've done an admirable job of sucking the reader myself right into this story. And it's an incredible, incredible journey that you take us in to find out who Julie Schenecker
is and that this is where all this empathy comes from. Again, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, but you've bought that character to life and showed so much humanity in expressing who she really was and really is even at this time. And so I have that empathy for this woman, and again you're right, I should really feel equally for everybody involved here. It's just a strange, strange situation of a slice of American life that if you look on the underbelly of it, it's not so picturesque.
Yes, things are not always what they see.
Yeah, certainly, certainly. Now, Diane, we just got a couple of minutes. I wanted to congratulate you to it. This is your twentieth book, Sleep my Darlings.
Yes, it certainly is.
Congratulations on that.
Yeah. I have a hard time believing it myself sometimes. Well, I've never imagined.
How many do you have? Twenty books been in how many how many years has that been spanned over?
It's been in twelve years.
In twelve years. Wow, that's very very prolific, like a machine. I want to thank you very much, Diane for coming on the program once again and talking about this your latest and greatest Sleep my Darlings. Again, great job, and thank you for this interview.
Thank you Dan, it was great talking to you again.
Now do you have maybe you just leave our readers with an email address or Facebook or how's best to contact you and find out about new and latest and greatest projects and things coming up in the near future for you.
Oh my, my Facebook page is real simple, it's just you know, the regular Facebook address with the slash on me in die In dot Fanning. Oh. My email is Dian at die in Fanning dot com. My website is diy Infanning dot com. So if you can spell my name, you can find me on the internet. And if you're not sure how to spell my name, just go online, find one of my books and read the cover. So it's pretty easy.
You're easy to find. Yes, yes, well, I want to thank you very much Dan, and have yourself a great evening. Thank you very much again for this interview.
Good thing. Thank you Dan.
Okay, good night, good night,