August 1, 2010

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- How does a mother murder her kids?

The suicide and killings that left Leisa Jones and her four children dead on the morning of July 22 were likely acts of severe depression and desperation, but psychiatric research suggests that in the mother's own mind, likely warped by mental illness, the murders were acts of love.

The logic is twisted but consistent in such cases, says Dr. Donna Cohen, a professor at the University of South Florida and a leading expert on murder-suicides:

"The person with a mental illness has an intense attachment to the victims and in most cases feels threatened that their relationship is about to change. The motivation is that nobody else can take care of them: 'I'm responsible, and I would rather we'd be dead than not be able to control things,'" she said, surmising, based on the thousands of cases she has studied: "I'd say this mother was feeling unable to provide for them. ... I think she saw herself as a good mother who would rather see her kids' death than to see their world fall apart and not be able to take care of them. That's love, for her."

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We know that Leisa Jones was overwhelmed. The mother of four, who was attending beauty school in St. George, had last worked in January at Macy's in the Staten Island Mall, where she was hired on as a holiday-season security guard. She had been indebted to her landlord in Port Richmond and had been evicted for non-payment in 2008 from her home in Washington, D.C., where she was, for a brief period, and unbeknownst to her blood relatives, homeless.

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Investigators piecing together the tragedy that took place before daybreak on Port Richmond's Nicholas Avenue struggled at first to determine who was responsible.

From a blazing second-floor apartment emergency responders pulled the bodies of Ms. Jones, 30, and three children whose throats had been slit: C.J. Raymond, 14, Brittney Jones, 10, and Melonie Jones, 7. The youngest, 2-year-old Jermaine Sinclair Jr., was rescued from the fire but died later from smoke inhalation.

Police, who ruled out the possibility that an intruder committed the crimes, originally theorized that C.J. had killed his siblings and set the fire before slitting his own throat. But after finding what they thought was the mother's charred note with the words "am sorry" still legible, they turned to Ms. Jones as a suspect.

The medical examiner ruled last week that Ms. Jones' death from smoke inhalation was a suicide, and C.J.'s death was a homicide. The autopsies revealed that both the mother and teen had ingested some type of pills, but they did not cause the deaths.

Roughly 2,000 Americans a year are killed in murder-suicides. The perpetrator is usually a man; 70 percent of murder-suicides involve couples, and 6 percent involve infants and children, according to data from the Violence and Injury Prevention Program at the University of South Florida.

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From various descriptions of Ms. Jones emerges a picture of a mother who was devoted and exacting, yet also harsh and hot-tempered.

Ms. Jones was 16 and living in her native Jamaica when C.J. was born.

She immigrated with her family to Wasington D.C., when C.J. was just an infant  leaving him behind for nearly two years while she dedicated herself to arranging his entry to the United States. C.J. was born with a heart problem and frequently fell ill; his mother arranged for surgery he needed in Washington, D.C., and only let family members know about it after the operation was complete, said a cousin, Annette Daley, describing Ms. Jones as "independent."

The New York Post reported from Jamaica that C.J.'s father, Earlston Raymond, said he left Ms. Jones because of her temper. C.J. had, they reported, asked about going to Jamaica to live with his father outside of Kingston. Raymond also told the Post that a close friend of Jones' had called him after the tragedy to say the mother had earlier admitted to her that she was planning to kill the children and burn the house down.

Authorities at Laurie Intermediate School, where C.J. was enrolled, had been concerned about his family life; social workers there had observed Ms. Jones being "verbally or emotionally abusive" toward him, said a school official who requested anonymity.

But friends, neighbors, and other relatives also describe Ms. Jones as doting.

She demanded polite manners from her children and kept them neatly dressed, according to several accounts.

Ms. Jones helped provide for her children by utilizing the by-appointment food pantry at Faith United Methodist Church in Port Richmond; it is not clear whether she had worked since January.

Ms. Daley, speaking by phone from Washington, preferred not to comment on whether Ms. Jones had suffered from depression.

"The family would like to withhold comments on Leisa's personality in order that the investigators can perform a thorough review of the physical evidence to arrive at a factual conclusion," she wrote in an e-mail after speaking with the Advance. "We feel this is the right thing to do as comments on C.J.'s personality and boyish antics caused him to be wrongfully accused. We pray that Leisa and the children are all in God's hands."

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While authorities have sought to answer their central question-- "How did this happen?" -- a traumatized neighborhood has grappled to understand a seemingly senseless crime: "How does this happen?"

A bouquet of balloons memorializing the dead loomed over a pile of stuffed animals outside of the Jones' four-plex apartment house last week, the ribbons cinched together by a torn length of crime tape. The image echoed the clash of innocence and brutality that has shocked the community.

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Innocence.

The word that arises almost inevitably when children are victimized by crime is doubly poignant when lives are cut short. As the murders unfolded, the Jones children were presumably asleep.

Little information has emerged about the youngest lives that were lost. Relatives told the Advance last week that Brittney liked to write, color and draw, and that Melonie liked to dance.

The two girls reportedly went to PS 44 during the school year and PS 22 for summer school, though PS 22 declined to confirm that information.

Residents of Nicholas Avenue said the family was always together, playing on bicycles and drinking apple juice on their stoop.

Of C.J., we know that the teenager was troubled, although the accounts that helped police build on their initial theory exclude all but his faults. He had been suspended in the spring for being aggressive toward other students, and he had a recent history of lighting fires outside of his home and, the day before he died, at Faber Pool.

He had been referred in June to a special education day-treatment program.

But, Ms. Daley said, "C.J. was still a little boy at heart," who "liked to be under his mom, sucking his thumb and hugging her up. He liked comfort."

C.J. had also reportedly taken on the role of man of the house, looking after his younger siblings.

The night before the early morning slayings, a neighbor said that C.J. had combed his hair and his brother's before bedtime. The children presumably went to sleep happy: They'd be going to Coney Island the next day, their mother had told them.

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Murder-suicides involve distorted thinking, researchers say. But, Dr. Cohen says, they are never "senseless" acts:

"A person who commits suicide after murder feels completely helpless and hopeless and has made the decision to die," according to Dr. Cohen. "The murder-suicide is intentional and well planned, often weeks, months, and sometimes years before it occurs. There is usually a trigger, a straw that breaks the camel's back, but most likely she was vacillating between die/live, die/live. To us this is really horrific. In her mind, this was totally rational." 

"People who commit familicides aren't malicious criminals," said Dr. Cohen, "they are people who see this as a way out. Leisa probably really, really loved those kids."

M.E.: Mother in Port Richmond fire committed suicideBy Peter N. Spencer