Love and Loyalty to Family
I watch more than my fair share of true crime TV. Investigation Discovery is one of my favorite channels and I am also known to be an avid consumer of Forensic Files and The First 48. I am fascinated by human nature, especially destructive or chaotic human nature. If I can understand something, I am much more likely not to fear it.
Investigation Discovery has an hour-long crime series called “Evil Lives Here”. The first episode of 2017 was about a serial arsonist in Washington State named Paul Kenneth Keller (Season 2, Episode 1). Keller was one of those personalities that manifested a clear lack of empathy for others early on in his life. (Not all dangerous criminals do.) There were multiple examples of his emotional deficiency in his tormenting of his brother and sister and his various attempts to hurt or kill them as a child. His mother was clearly terrified of him and his father developed a persistent blind spot for the evil that his son was capable of and even went so far as to set up his son to be the heir apparent of his business. Sadly for their sake, they raised Paul in a time before much was understood about deviant behavior and the only diagnosis that they received for him as a child was that he was “hyperactive”.
As a teen, Paul developed an obsessive fascination with fire. He got himself a police scanner and would often times show up on his bike to take pictures at the scene of a fire before firefighters had even arrived. Fast forward to Paul as an adult and his sister ventures to say out loud in front of the family regarding a rash of arson fires in Seattle, “Do you think it could be Paul?” A composite sketch of the serial arsonist that was published in the local paper was what finally drove his family to accept what they had suspected all along and to contact the authorities.
What was so striking to me was how his parents felt guilty about thinking poorly of one of their children and saw their own reaching out to law enforcement as a betrayal. His brother actually contemplated telling Paul to leave town and never look back when it was clear that the police were about to arrest him. Their love for him clearly minimized the destructive impact that his crimes might have had on their feelings for him. How else could they have agonized so much over what they were doing to him by turning him in? They originally consoled themselves with the knowledge that at least he hadn’t actually killed anyone, only to find out later that at least 3 people died in the fires that he had set. As if the more than $30 million in property damage that he caused in a 6 month period wasn’t enough to justify their turning their back on him.
It’s easy for me to judge from afar because this is not my family or my story. What I am having a hard resolving in the case of this family is their own frightening naivete when it comes to understanding Paul. Being an ultra-religious family actually worked against them. It is a mistake to be loving, forgiving, generous, and kind in all circumstances with all people. That particular lifestyle is only appropriate in a perfect world where all people are selfless and generous of spirit and no one is violently or destructively inclined, which Paul clearly was. How many times do you need to catch your son trying to kill his sister as a child and as an adult to be convinced that he was not to be trusted?
Frankly, Paul Keller showed a dangerous lack of understanding or empathy for others for most of his life and his family seemed to have a very difficult time accepting that. It is a terribly common human mistake to really not comprehend that we don’t all see or feel things in our lives the same way, especially among members of the same family. His family couldn’t ever imagine themselves personally being as unfeeling or as dangerous as Paul turned out to be so instead, they found excuses for his deviant behavior. His defense for setting the fires involved issues with undiagnosed and untreated Attention Deficit Disorder and the stress of a failed marriage and bankruptcy. He also apparently abused alcohol and drugs. None of these excuses however, account for the fact that as a child he tried to drown his sister in a pool and tripped or pushed his baby brother causing a terrible break in his leg that required him to wear a body cast.
I am not a parent so I am having a really difficult time resolving loving anyone so much that you forgive them over and over again for doing overtly callous things that they clearly have no remorse about. Is the fabled biological imperative to always love your offspring no matter what because you will always see yourself in them? Is that why parents and loved ones of people accused of serious crimes live so deeply in denial? Is the personal boundary between members of the same family so blurry that the truth can never be accepted or internalized no matter what the evidence? Is family ever capable of seeing a person as they really are as an adult or will they always still see the child within?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, especially if you are a parent. If your child came to you as an adult needing help burying a body, would you/could you do it? Respond below if you are so inclined.
