A police sergeant, his wife and their two sons – ages 10 and 12 – were found dead in a suburban home in New York in what police said was a triple murder-suicide.
Watson Morgan, 49, a sergeant with the Bronxville police department, fatally shot his wife, Ornela Morgan, 43, and their sons before dying by suicide, police said. They were discovered just past midnight Saturday at the family’s home in Clarkstown – 18 miles north of Manhattan – after Morgan failed to show up for work at the police department in nearby Bronxville.
“At this phase in the investigation, it is believed that Watson killed his wife and two children, prior to killing himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the Clarkstown police department said in a statement.
All four members of the family had gunshot wounds, police said, and all were pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered a handgun at the home.
Though police described Morgan’s killing of his wife and their children as a murder-suicide, such crimes since the 1980s have been known as Family Annihilations.
Communities often view such crimes as isolated tragedies, especially in the US. But an Indianapolis Star investigation found there had been an average of one Family Annihilation in the US every five days since 2020.
I was listening to an 1956 episode of Suspense where I heard the quote “All my life, I’ve heard a man had to have something wrong with him to want to be a cop, but I didn’t believe it until now.”
I wouldn’t say the show is strongly pro- or anti-cop, but it’s an interesting sentiment to hear from that time regardless.
On a somewhat related note, there’s also an episode about a store owner who is too eager for a break-in so he has a reason to shoot someone. Really surprised me to hear from a 50s show.