Death in the Families

The demon that drives people to mass parricide is a favorite subject of classical tragedians--and modern psychiatrists. Last week in the U.S.:

P:John Sargent, 33, a Korean War marine veteran of New London, N.H., called his minister to his home to report the killing of his wife and four children. Police found Mrs. Janet Sargent, 30, bludgeoned and shot to death; the children, aged three to nine, had been shot. Sargent, variously described as "the nicest guy in the world," "morose," and one who "just couldn't make his way in life," was charged with first-degree murder and sent to the state mental hospital for examination.

P:Mrs. Deanna Hanbey, 28, of South Bend, Ind., wife of a traveling auditor, had grown despondent over her husband's absences and over the task of caring for her four children--two-year-old twin boys, a girl, 6, and a boy, 7. A woman friend found Mrs. Hanbey and the children in the bedrooms: the youngsters had been strangled to death with nylon stockings and a necktie; Mrs. Hanbey had tried to strangle herself, to cut her wrists and ankles, and to set fire to the house. She was hospitalized, whimpering that she had murdered her children and crying, "Let me die!"

P:Arthur Sherod, 37, an unemployed Negro laborer, piled his wife and nine children, aged two to 18, into his 1958 secondhand Buick. Though his license had been revoked, Sherod drove recklessly from their tenement flat in Jersey City to a restaurant in Newark, N.J., where his wife worked as a waitress. There, Sherod got into a drunken argument with his wife, hustled the children out to the car. Moments later, he returned wielding a knife, threatened his wife and hit her, forced her to accompany him to the car. Said Mrs. Sherod's sister, who also worked in the restaurant: "He said he was going to kill the whole family and then come back and cut our throats." Half an hour later, Sherod, with his family in the car, sped down a highway, swerved across several lanes into oncoming traffic and crashed head-on into a tractor truck. The truck driver and his helper were injured. Sherod and two of his children were seriously hurt. Sherod's wife and seven youngsters were killed.

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