Netflix miniseries
I learned a new word today: parricide. It is the act of killing one's parents, sometimes as a universal term to include murdering relatives.
It is not peculiar to our modern times by no stretch of the imagination. All through human civilisation, children have been killing the hands that fed them, directly or indirectly. Ancient Indian scriptures have numerous accounts of patricide. The Greeks, Babylonians and the Norse were not far behind. Even though the Mughal emperors had to kill to grasp the throne, the most they did was kill their siblings, like how Aurangzeb, the militarily savvy son of Shah Jahan, is said to have masterminded the brutal killing of his brother, Dara Shukoh, the tolerant one liked by the subjects. Aurangzeb did not kill Shah Jahan. He merely dethroned him and kept him in prison till he died.
King Asoka, who advocated the Middle Path of Buddhism, did not follow the path of passivity. He had to kill his 99 siblings to be the Supreme King. Recent studies suggest that Asoka was already a Buddhist before his victory in Kalinga and a change of heart towards nonviolence and banning animal slaughter.
In modern times, however, parents are killed off due to psychological or neurological reasons. Besides the occasional cases when an explanation can be elucidated, most despicable crimes escape reasoning. In 1968 Japan, in Tochigi, a daughter one day decided to put an end to her father's 15 years of rape which resulted in 11 pregnancies and three children. The Japanese law at that time advocated the death penalty as a blanket rule for parricide. After this case, the courts determined that each case needed to be handled individually.
In 1966, in Texas, an ex-marine went on a shooting rampage, killing his mother and many others. An autopsy revealed that he had an amygdala tumour that would explain his violent behaviour.
US figures show that at least six parricide events happen on their soil weekly. A large proportion of them involve youths and early adults. The often quoted reason for this is usually psychological reasons: parental abuse and control, or occasionally over money.
This miniseries narrates the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who both killed their parents in 1989 due to fear their parents were plotting to kill them. They also cited self-defence after enduring years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. They show that everything was not as it seemed, as there was premeditation in their actions.
The duo currently serve life sentences.
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