Mother convicted of killing her two children tells judge they are "alive and enjoying everything and anything heaven has to offer."

Courtesy of KTLA5:  

After deliberating for just two hours, a jury of eight men and four women in Hillsborough County, Florida, found Julie Schenecker guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for charges related to the 2011 shooting deaths of her two children. 

Schenecker, 53, was charged with murder in the deaths of her daughter, 16-year-old Caylx, and her son, 13-year-old Beau. The state did not seek the death penalty. 

Schenecker addressed the judge before he sentenced her to two life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 25 years per count, to be served concurrently. 

“Your honor, I’m prepared and I accept your sentence. I apologize to everybody in this courtroom who have broken their lives,” Schenecker said through tears. “I know our children are in heaven. I want people to try to find comfort in believing as I do that they are in no pain and they are alive and enjoying everything and anything heaven has to offer,” she added. 

The mother, who had a long history of mental illness, wrote out a plan for her "Saturday Massacre," with a gun she bought two days before the killings. She apparently  tried to arrange for her husband, who was in the military, to find the bodies.

In an interview with police, Schenecker said she shot her son to death while driving him to soccer practice on the night of January 27. Afterward, Schenecker said, she returned home, parked her van in the garage and shot her son one more time in the mouth — “his mouthy mouth,” she told authorities. 

Still armed with the handgun, Schenecker told investigators, she went inside the home and shot her daughter twice in the head while Calyx was doing homework on her computer. Schenecker said she then wheeled her daughter’s body over to her bed and covered her body with a blanket. 

This story really hit home for me, especially the part about the children living in heaven now, which of course serves to alleviate a portion of this woman's guilt.

Many years ago I worked with a young boy who had a potpourri of mental health difficulties, and who would often talked about just wanting to go to heaven now, in order to deal with the pain he felt trying to cope with his mental disabilities.

His parents were fundamentalist Christians, and had once taken him to an exorcist in order to deal with his problems.

The young man was on suicide watch the entire time that I worked with him, and at times was not allowed to be alone under any circumstances unless he was heavily medicated and asleep in his room.

One time during a team meeting, when the suicidal ideation came up, his mother suggested that it might not be the worst thing to simply turn our heads for a moment and allow him to act on his impulse. "After all then he will be with Jesus in heaven, and all of his pain will be taken away."

Today this young man has graduated high school, holds a job, and has an actual relationship. His medications were altered over time through trial and error and he is in a much better, and happier, state of mind. In other words no more talk of killing himself.

One of the truly terrible things about the Christian religion is the focus on the perfection of the life that follows this one. For individuals who are struggling with constant mental health issues this seems like the best of all possible solutions.

This mother callously shot and killed her own children. But in her mind she simply sent them ahead to a better place.