Primarily the deceased mother’s family, but she did have frequent visitation with her father and his parents. It was awful. To make it even worse, he killed the mother while the child was in the house. (Thankfully?) She was only 18 months when it happened, but the whole situation made my blood boil.

Because legally the father hasn’t been found guilty of killing her. I prosecuted a case similar to this and the trial kept getting pushed back, and her parents fought him/his parents in court for almost five years before he was found guilty and her parents were awarded full custody.

What’s your damage? People process grief in different ways. The Onion did this about 9/11 and a cake and I burst out crying when I saw it - a mix of humor, coping and sadness.

Your “BUT YOU’RE IGNORING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN!” routine is performative and gross. Policing women’s expression is profoundly anti-feminist.

not that i’m aware of but that was 16+ years ago.

Just like I feel slightly less stupid for checking up on both my (female) roommates to see if they were okay because I heard a lot of screaming earlier. It turned out one of them was really ticklish or something, but it really sounded like rape and/or murder to me.

Or it could just be a rhetorical way of saying, “I am struck by the vast and terrifying gap between the mundanities of daily life and the sheer horror of this story. Let me illustrate to you how strange it feels to know that while most of us spend most of our time saying, Hey, today’s the day I gotta make that cake…

it’s not about making it about yourself, it’s talking about how hard shit like this is to handle and to get some commiseration, because it is actually very common to not know how to balance sad news with your life continuing on and many people use humor and/or good unrelated things to cope.

It’s not as much surprising as it is dumb.

Jeez. I now feel slightly less stupid for that time I called 911 because I thought a woman was screaming in my building and it turned out it was someone’s tv. I guess when in doubt etc?

Even though the paternal family have a lot of money, I don’t get how they could have a persuasive case.

“It’s very early to make a conclusion as to what the cause, intent, motive and facts were to this unfortunate tragedy.”

I mean, I know very little about international family law, but I do know that it’s fraught and that US judges are often extremely concerned about the possibility of international child abduction by foreign nationals with custody rights. Anyone lurking in comments know anything about California custody law?

You know they will. Her family will want to raise the baby in their own country I'm sure. What a fabulous argument for a high-priced attorney to make: this baby is an American citizen and should not be raised elsewhere.

Oh my god. This poor woman, her poor family, her poor daughter. As someone who works with foreign students and exchange visitors, there’s something particularly awful to me about the loss and violation a family suffers when they lose a daughter or son to violence in another country.

Hannibal Lecter’s neighbors and friends would have considered him a very cultured, well spoken individual.

Also this may have been a clue to his violent tendencies:

She had moved out of the condo they shared when he was charged with rape but had come back to talk things over with him and he killed her. I have the misfortune of having gone to high school with this spoiled piece of garbage and while I can offer no insight here other than to say he was and seemingly still is an…

“It’s very rare that someone is involved in a homicide case with someone they just had a baby with.”

Says his divorce attorney Ronald Richards, “Him being violent is so uncharacteristic of the person I’ve known for many years.”The classic line of all friends, acquaintances and family of abusive people. FFS will someone just accept that you don’t know what is going on behind closed doors and that someone you may like…