commentary by Patrick H. Moore
We all know that mother-in-laws (MILs) can be a problem; on the other hand, they can also be sweet as pie. I’ve had three of them so I am probably as experienced in dealing with the sometimes officious creatures as the next guy.
My first MIL was sweet, pliable and habituated to the anti-psychotic Thorazine. My ex and I could probably have taken advantage of her but to our credit we largely fought off the temptation. My second MIL was rugged as the Maine coastline and almost entirely focused on herself. She did tell me to stop f______ around and write some good commercial fiction, but that was close to 30 years ago and I was too dumb to listen, not that I would necessarily have succeeded. My third and final MIL spoke very little English and lived far away. This was ideal and we got along great.
So as you can see, I’ve been relatively lucky with my MILs. I’m not sure, however, that they would say they were lucky with me. Only MIL #2 is still alive and strangely, we’ve gotten along much better since her daughter and I divorced, although we o0nly run into each other every 10 years or so.
What brings this to mind is a recent case in which a Colorado Springs woman with a 2-month-old baby was faced with the daunting task of co-existing with her MIL who flew out from San Francisco to stay with her and help her take care of her 2-month-old baby while she was going through a divorce with her husband. Although one should never generalize, it’s probably fair to say that this does not appear to be a match made in heaven. I’m sure no one expected, however, that this odd coupling would turn out to be an utter disaster.
The MIL’s name was Deborah Rainey while the daughter-in-law, who was 20-years-old, went by the peculiar appellation, Ellyzabeth Rainey. (Has anyone noticed that the spelling of common names has gotten very weird over the past 20 to 30 years? Could this be part of our cataclysmic national slide into the tar pit of extinction, as we merrily do our best to emulate our late friends, the dinosaurs?)
Kiri Blakeley of Café Mom (maybe she is the Café Mom) writes in rather entertaining fashion:
A new mother’s relationship with her mother-in-law can be strained at best, but this one turned nightmarish. Ellyzabeth Rainey, 20, was a new mom who was under a huge amount of stress — she reportedly suffered from bipolar disorder and was going through a divorce. No doubt her husband’s mother, Deborah Rainey, thought she was doing the right thing by moving in with the couple to help take care of their 2-month-old baby. But things soon became heated between Ellyzabeth and Deborah, who had a history of arguing, and then they turned into the stuff of horror movies.
Shortly before her MIL moved in, Ellyzabeth had been hospitalized for hearing voices that reportedly warned her that her mother-in-law was going to take everything from her, which, of course, would include the baby. Now normally, it is not considered to be a good thing to experience auditory hallucinations, but if the voices are warning you about impending dangers at the hands of your MIL, you should probably pay attention, particularly if she’s planning on moving in with you while you’re going through a divorce. If I were Ellyzabeth, I like to think that I would have listened to the infernal voices and sent my MIL packing quicker than you can say “Jack Be Nimble” or would never have let her move in with me and my child in the first place. Sadly, Ellyzabeth did not listen to her voices of reason and apparently did not object when MIL Deborah moved in.
It apparently got very noisy in their Colorado Springs apartment on a certain Wednesday in April of 2013, so noisy that a neighbor complained to law enforcement.
Soon the police arrived to the tune of a baby crying and the sight of a bloody knife. It’s unclear what they said to Ellyzabeth, but according to the police report, she told the officers that she had just killed someone without identifying who it was. Then, she hurled her 2-month-old child at one of the officers and apparently tried to head for the hills. Perhaps she thought that Slender Man would take her in now that she had killed someone.
According to a second report by the Colorado Springs Gazette, before hurling her baby, Ellyzabeth held the child up to the officers and told them to prepare to catch it because she was preparing to make a run for it. When the officers asked her why, she reportedly responded, “because I just killed someone.”
She apparently did hurl her baby at one of the officers who caught it deftly. Then Ellyzabeth took off but she never made it to Slender Man in his mountain hideaway in the Nicolet National Forest; in fact, another officer chased her down and arrested her before she’d even made it out of the courtyard of the apartment building.
After being apprehended, Ellyzabeth reportedly told the officers she was tired of her MIL pushing her around and had just snapped.
It didn’t take long for the police to find Deborah’s dead body stuffed under a mattress. According to the Gazette, once the gig was up, Ellyzabeth told the officers that first she threw boiling water on her mother-in-law; then she threw free weights at her head; then she stabbed her multiple times (we can’t fault her for thoroughness). Then for good measure, she poured bleach into Deborah’s mouth and nose.
Ouch! This is what what one of my twitter friends would call five cups of crazy, none of which does poor Deborah any good.
The judge was not amused by Ellyzabeth’s peculiar behavior. Nor (in my mind wrongly) did he pay any attention to the fact that she obviously suffers from severe mental illness. 41 years in prison is a very long time for an individual who was clearly out of her mind at the time of the crime, even if she intended to commit the crime and was lucid enough to carry it out step-by-step.
Kiri Blakeley of Café Mom adds:
It doesn’t sound like Ellyzabeth got much mercy for having a mental disorder. Granted, it is difficult to feel sorry for someone who committed this kind of unspeakable crime. But it sounds like Ellyzabeth was in no position to be taking care of a baby at that time. It’s tragic she didn’t get more help before this happened.
Ellyzabeth reported that she has a history of domestic violence and was diagnosed as bipolar at the age of 10, but had never received any medication for her disorder.
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I’m a bit surprised that Ellyzabeth did not plead not guilty by reason of insanity. To my knowledge, Colorado is one of the few states where in the event a defendant makes such a claim, the prosecution has the burden of proving that the defendant WAS NOT INSANE at the time of the crime. This is the John Holmes defense and is the reason that case keeps being sent back for more expert psychiatric opinions.
Meanwhile, Deborah is dead and Ellyzabeth is “up Crap Creek without a paddle.” This could be a case of a weak defense team failing to represent her properly, but I can’t draw that conclusion without more information.