Palm Sunday, 2017. Posh locality of Nanthancode in Thiruvananthapuram. A bungalow in Bains compound which is half a kilometer away from Cliff House, the official residence of the state Chief Minister. Neighbors were alerted as smoke billowed out of the house. They discovered the charred bodies of retired history professor Rajathankam, his wife retired cardiologist Dr. Jean Padma, their daughter Caroline and relative Lalitha. Caroline had returned from China where she studied Medicine. Absconding was the son Cadell Jeanson Raja who supposedly worked as an animator for an Australian firm. He had fled for Chennai after carrying out the four murders. Police nabbed him the next day from Thiruvananthapuram railway station.
Cadell had bludgeoned his family members to death one by one with an ax that he had bought over the internet, hacked their bodies to pieces and burned them with petrol. He had earlier made a dummy body and practiced his acts on it. The motive for the murder was unknown but 30-year-old Cadell, a dropout from medicine and engineering courses, was suspected to be mentally deranged and/or under narcotic substances. He was said to have committed the crime as an experiment in astral projection. He wanted to liberate souls from mere mortal bodies, communicate with them and gain superhuman powers.
Cut to 13th November 1974. Amityville, Long Island, New York. 24-year-old Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. shot dead six members of his family including his parents and four siblings. Defense lawyers pleaded insanity and heroin abuse. DeFeo was sentenced to life on six counts of second-degree murder and is now in the correctional facility in Fallsburg, NY. The motive was suspected to be to collect the life insurance money of his parents. The children were killed to eliminate witnesses. The 1977 novel The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson tells the story of the Lutz family who moved into the house later but left after a month, terrorized by paranormal phenomena. The 1982 film Amityville II: The Possession is based on the book Murder in Amityville by parapsychologist Hans Holzer. It talks of an incestuous relationship between DeFeo and his sister Dawn. The 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror hints that DeFeo was influenced to commit the murders by spirits from a Lenape burial ground on the site of the house.
PS: The Nanthancode killer, Cadell is kept in isolation in the city's Mental Hospital. His derangement is such that it is not safe to let him out for even a day for the remainder of his life, according to the psychiatrist doctor who examined him. Apparently, mirror neurons which create empathy in humans, help them sense pain, etc, are not developed in his case.
(2018)
Cadell had bludgeoned his family members to death one by one with an ax that he had bought over the internet, hacked their bodies to pieces and burned them with petrol. He had earlier made a dummy body and practiced his acts on it. The motive for the murder was unknown but 30-year-old Cadell, a dropout from medicine and engineering courses, was suspected to be mentally deranged and/or under narcotic substances. He was said to have committed the crime as an experiment in astral projection. He wanted to liberate souls from mere mortal bodies, communicate with them and gain superhuman powers.
Cut to 13th November 1974. Amityville, Long Island, New York. 24-year-old Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. shot dead six members of his family including his parents and four siblings. Defense lawyers pleaded insanity and heroin abuse. DeFeo was sentenced to life on six counts of second-degree murder and is now in the correctional facility in Fallsburg, NY. The motive was suspected to be to collect the life insurance money of his parents. The children were killed to eliminate witnesses. The 1977 novel The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson tells the story of the Lutz family who moved into the house later but left after a month, terrorized by paranormal phenomena. The 1982 film Amityville II: The Possession is based on the book Murder in Amityville by parapsychologist Hans Holzer. It talks of an incestuous relationship between DeFeo and his sister Dawn. The 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror hints that DeFeo was influenced to commit the murders by spirits from a Lenape burial ground on the site of the house.
(2018)
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