Wilmingburg Murder-Suicide a Marriage Indictment

When Jose Wilmingburg held the gun to his head at 8:17am on a Monday morning, he ended the life of a family that by all accounts should have been happy. Jose was a CAT scan technician at his local hospital, where he'd met his partner 25 years ago. Jose married the oncology nurse and the couple raised four beautiful children. The children were average, regular kids. In fact the eldest, Frederico, was a young up-and-comer in his school football team. The coach later spoke to the press, explaining how Jose would drop Rico off at training and stay around to watch, speaking to the coach in order to get the best tips for his son's practice later at home. From Rico to the second youngest were all boys - George and Robert. They all adored their youngest sibling, a two year old girl, Vanessa, and made sure her every waking moment was overseen by one of her brothers. A neighbour joked they treated her as if they were her bodygaurds on rotating shifts.

Their home life was normal and Jose's work at the hospital started for the most admirable of reasons - he simply wanted to help people. Raised by his grandmother and father, Jose saw the effects of degenerative Alzheimer's slowly rob his Nana of her mental faculties, and he vowed to learn how to prevent the same fate from befalling others. His marks at high school and college were modest, but his pleasant attitude got him into the local hospital and under the eye of his supervisor. Mr. Geraldo saw his employee's aptitude for gadgets and encouraged him to join the technician's field. From there, Jose picked his favourite machine, the CAT scan, a device used to pick up irregularities in the brain, and continued working with the machine for 10 years. Jose's workplace was normal.

The only abnormality was his partner, the oncology nurse Maria. Jose was married to a woman.

"I admit, I thought it was odd to say the least, but he's my son, so I supported him 100%." Mr. Jose Wilmingburg Sr is the spitting image of his deceased son, only the ravages of time have tanned and wrinkled his face. He looks at a photo of his son as we compare it with an old photo of himself. "I'd heard the stories from town and some of the more nosy family members actually wanted me to intervene. Especially when they decided to have kids. Oh lordy, my sister was horrified. But like I said, he's my son, and I loved those grand kids, no matter how strange it was that Jose raised them with a mother."

It's all these regularities that might throw one off the scent of why Jose took a shotgun to his wife and four children, then took his own life. Money wasn't a problem, but it wasn't free flowing either. The couple had both been fired just a month before for forging a supervisor's signature in order to get the children into a publicly funded child care centre. But surely this isn't enough to throw Jose off the deep end and commit an act considered the most unnatural - the murder of his own offspring and the person he loved most. The woman he loved most.

I think it wouldn't be a shock to admit that the family wasn't normal. A man living with a woman and raising children isn't the most sane of ideas. The debaucherous elements of the couple's 'lifestyle,' couldn't be hidden from the absorbent minds of their kids. Even the most avid TV watching child is aware of what mummy and daddy are doing in their bedroom. It's not just celebrities who are weak against their own dark appetites or damaging habits.

Jose and Maria, by all accounts, were completely normal except for one glaring difference. The family, despite their particular penchant, were described as happy and healthy by even the most ardent protesting neighbours. A happy, healthy family man does not creep into his children's room and pull the trigger.

We cannot and would not dream of diminishing the dreadful circumstance, most of all for the surviving grandparents who now must see their children and grandchildren buried, but another sadness of this tragic story is the blow struck to the happy-ever-after myth of heterosexual marriage.

Not all male-female couples are cast from the troubled, some might some depraved molds of Bonnie and Clyde or Michel 'Virgin Hunter' Fourniret and his wife Monique Olivier, a heterosexual married couple who, over the period of 16 years, lured virgin girls into their midst so that Fourniret could rape and murder them while Olivier watched. But the murder-suicide of an entire hetero family forces us to ask some serious questions about the viability, morality and at the very least, safety of a male-female marriage.

It would seem that yet again the quiet peace of the suburbs is ruined by the steady seep of a dangerous and uncertain lifestyle. Perhaps the Wilmingburg family is the wake up call we all need.

Edit: Unsure what triggered this blog post? See here.

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