His Grandmother Murdered Him For Being Disabled
Content warning. This video is about a sensitive topic involving loss of life. We’ve removed any graphic content to comply with YouTube’s guidelines. We aim to provide informative factual journalism on a tragic event in the public interest that does not dismiss its seriousness. All clips are used under the doctrine of fair use for news reporting and analysis.
Joel David Parks Jr. was born on February 17th, 1989 in Meriden, Florida to parents Joel Park, Senior and Tashia Fretz. Joel had a sister named Ivonne, whom he called Bonnie, who described him as positive and full of energy. Friends and family recalled his constant smile and the strong hugs he gave.
Within the family, he was affectionately called Bubby. When he was four years old, Joel’s parents divorced and at some point during Joel’s life, his father Joel senior passed away. His mother, Tashia, would later remarry a man named James Fritz. However, before she remarried, Toshi was struggling to take care of her children.
So, custody shifted to their grandmother, 61-year-old Lillian Parks. From that point on, Lillian raised Joel and his sister, dedicating her time and energy to their well-being. She had no criminal history whatsoever. Public records also confirmed she had once worked as a nurse, holding a license in Tennessee between 1977 and 1983.
This helped her in providing consistent care. as Joel lived with a cognitive disability. Some reports attribute it to autism, while others suggest it may have been caused by a brain injury from a car accident during his infancy. Regardless of the cause, Joel remained physically healthy, but needed lifelong support due to his developmental delays.
Joel had a bright personality and attended the Easter Seals of Southwest Florida’s day program. Per their agency’s website, Easter Seals empowers people to live independent, full lives. Our national affiliate network provides essential services to children and adults with disabilities, older adults, veterans, and their families.
According to the CEO of Easter Seals, Tom Waters, Joel greeted everybody warmly, often calling out, “Hi, friend.” whenever he saw someone. He explained that Joel was one of the happiest guys that you could ever meet. He was also one of the strongest huggers that you would ever meet. He would come up to you and give you that bear hug and you knew you had been hugged.
According to a Facebook post by a man named Denny Miller, Joel would volunteer at the Manatee Players, which is a local performing arts organization, and would never leave the building without hugging every staff member. Joel loved baseball. He also played in the Miracle League, and earned the nickname Home Run Joel from his teammates. Coaches recalled how he kept improving as a player and he seemed proud of his own progress.
According to Jordan Jones, the board chair of the Miracle League of Maninnesota, on the field, he was probably when you saw him the happiest. He always had a smile on his face. What was great about Joel was you always saw him getting progressively better as an athlete and I think he knew that as well.
By all accounts, Joel was active in his community, was loved by many, many people, and was thriving in his adult years. As Joel grew older, state funding allowed him to move into a group home designed for adults with disabilities. These facilities provided structure, help with daily needs, and opportunities for independence while ensuring residents had supervision and care.
He was able to handle some tasks by himself, like holding a part-time job and taking care of his basic needs. Still, he required daily support. His grandmother, Lillian, now in her 70s, could no longer provide full-time care because of her own health issues. Joel stayed at the group home during the week, but spent weekends with Lillian. His mother, stepfather, and sister at the time lived in Ohio.
According to Lillian, Joel disliked living in this group home, often wandered off and depended on her for daily medication. In September of 2019, Lillian was scheduled for hernia surgery and was expected to recover in a nursing home. Knowing she couldn’t care for Joel during that period, she asked her granddaughter to travel from Ohio to Bradenton, Florida to help out.
Ivonne arrived at the Carlton Arms apartment sometime around midepptember. Malia instructed her to clear out most of the apartment, even her couch and car, leaving only the bedroom furniture. That evening, Ivonne spent time with her grandmother and Joel before going out with friends. She left. Joel asked her if he would see her later and exchanged I love yous with her.
Joel often spent weekends helping out at a local convenience store near his grandmother’s home. And on the morning of September 21st, he was seen there in good spirits before heading back to the apartment. He was supposed to be on the field playing baseball that night, but his grandmother had other plans for him.
Avon spent that day with her boyfriend and friends. She returned to Lillian’s apartment. She saw Joel asleep in a recliner with a TV on while her grandmother rested nearby. Nothing seemed unusual to her, so she went to bed. The next morning, around 8:00 a.m., she saw Joel still in the recliner with a blanket covering him. She accidentally bumped the chair, but thought he was just sleeping in.
Hours passed and Joel never moved. When Ivonne grew concerned and questioned Lillian, she was told he had stayed up late watching movies. By noon that day, Ivonne checked on him again. Joel had not shifted at all. And when she looked closer, it appeared that he was not breathing. She quickly alerted Lillian, who responded, “That’s because he’s not.
” Shocked, Ivonne pressed her for clarity, and Lillian told her, “Oh, I’m doing us both. We’re going together.” Bon believed she saw a pill in her grandmother’s mouth as she said this. Horrified, she left and called the police. When an ambulance pulled up outside of Lillian’s apartment, neighbors assumed it was for the grandmother given her age.
Instead, they were stunned to learn the call was for Joel. When officers arrived, Joel was still in the recliner, lifeless, while Lillian remained in a bed nearby. 30-year-old Joel was pronounced dead at the scene and it appeared he had been gone for several hours. There were no signs of physical injury and nothing pointed to a violent struggle.
Police first spoke with Ivonne who explained that she had come to Florida to help clean out her grandmother’s apartment. Officers then spoke with 87year-old Lillian who remained in bed during questioning. She told the officers, “Well, he’s needed help his whole life and has been living in a home, but he doesn’t do well there. He walks around outside here, and I have to go find him.
I’ve been taking care of him and giving him his medication every day.” She admitted that around noon the day before, she gave Joel an unknown amount of prescription pain medication, then took some pills herself. She told police she had been told that she had about 5 months left to live and did not want Joel to suffer alone after her death, telling them, “I want him to be with me when I go, so I put him to sleep and and then I’ll go to sleep, too.
I wanted him to go to sleep, and now he’s asleep.” Lillian said she wanted him to be in heaven with her and had written letters to family members, even leaving behind $1,500 to cover cremation costs for the both of them. With her health failing, she did not want to spend her final months in a nursing home.
She claimed her intention was for Joel to go to sleep so that he could remain with her when she eventually passed. We’re here to discuss the case from Sunday afternoon around noon. Braden police responded to the 5100 block of Riverfront Drive in Bradenon. It is an apartment complex for the report of a deceased individual.
Upon arrival, uh, officers found 30-year-old Joel Parks, uh, deceased in the residence. Joel’s grandmother, 87year-old Lillian Parks, who is his part-time caretaker, um, made several concerning remarks, spontaneous remarks to the officers that she had uh, purposely overdosed him with the intent of taking his life.
She was uh, concerned about her medical condition and uh, was worried about uh, who would be caring for him in the event that she passed away. Um, Jillian currently is in uh protective medical custody um until uh she’s released by a doctor. And I would like to note that Joel is a disabled adult unable to care for himself.
Joel resided in a group home throughout the week and then would stay with Jillian on the weekends. Joel’s parents. His father is deceased. His mother is estranged and he was discovered by a sister. So, at this point in time, charges are pending. We are working uh with our partners at the state attorney’s office to ensure that Jillian Parks the proper charges are filed and that she will be taken into custody when she is released from medical care.
Are there any questions? What did she use to overdose? There’s a lot of things still pending. It’s a very v a very active investigation. At this point, we’re waiting on um some results, one of those being toxicology results. This is a this is a difficult case for our detectives, a difficult case for our agency. Um partly you you feel bad for an individual who feels that the only option is to take another human being’s life because you’re so worried about their care after you’re gone.
Uh but on the other hand, this is a process where it was thought out, it was planned, and she took a human life. So, we are looking at it from a standpoint of she took a human life and we need to do everything we can to bring justice to his family and and his friends. Miss Parks, I’d like to clarify her name is Lillian. Not not Jillian.
I said Jillian earlier. It’s Lillian. Miss Parks is 87 years old. She’s in jail. No, she’s currently in a secure medical facility. There is no threat to the public um until she is released by the doctor. Uh until then, we will at that point then we will move forward with with charging her. You never know what what Miss Parks or a family member, somebody may have said something, somebody knows something.
We we always put that out there. There’s always more to a case. And if anybody knows anything, of course, we put that offer out. They can the cash reward is through Crimestoppers, one of our partners, Mans County Crimes Stoppers. You’re eligible if you call in anonymously, you’re able to and and the tip pans out, you’re able to be eligible for a a cash reward.
And what’s next with the investigation? Next to the investigation is the uh continuing with the um toxicology reports uh the medical examiner investigation and of course moving forward with the state uh and any charges that we’re moving forward with um as soon as she’s released from that doctor’s care. How are you guys picked up for this? It was a sister who found uh Mr.
Parks deceased when he went to check uh when she went to check on him. She found him deceased and called us. Did she describe behavior at that moment? What was she doing? That’s that’s still part of the investigation. Interviews are still going ongoing in today. Uh we’re still meeting with family members as of today and and plan to for the remainder of this week.
Currently, we are working again working with the state attorney. So, uh we are we are gearing towards seconddegree murder. Uh in this case, you never know totally what someone is thinking. Um in this case, I I don’t know if she’s thinking about the well-being of her grandson or if she’s thinking about herself. I I can’t answer that question.
What we have to look at is the the the total circumstances, everything surrounding it. And and in this case, we we can arrive and say that this is a premeditated act where again she took the life of another human being. So we take all the other factors out of it. At the end of the day, she she took the life of Joel Parks. Right. Thank you very much.
Following her statements, Lillian was taken to the Manatee Memorial Hospital under the Baker Act, which is a Florida law that permits involuntary hospitalization for those who pose a danger to themselves or others. A search of her apartment revealed a prescription bottle in her name filled on September 17th with 120 pills.
Only two of those pills remained. Investigators concluded that Joel had likely been given a fatal dose. Multiple letters addressed to family were also recovered, each containing explanations and instructions about what she did. Police noted that Joel’s relationship with his mother had been described by Lillian as arange.
But soon thereafter, Tashia and her then husband James pushed back. They denied any estrangement and insisted they had always been present in Joel’s life. In fact, they said they were ready to take him in and been preparing for Ivonne to bring him back to Ohio. They said if that didn’t happen, Tasha herself would have come to collect him.
Also became clear that Lillian had never set up any formal guardianship arrangements for Joel despite her advanced age and health issues. She could have legally transferred responsibility to a family member, but she chose not to. Van later reflected that her grandmother likely already knew her time was limited when she asked her to come help clean the apartment.
She believed Lillian had been weighing two paths. Either undergo hernia surgery, stay in a nursing home, and trust that Joel would be taken to Ohio, or do what she ultimately chose to do. In the end, however she justified it, she chose the latter. Ivonne expressed disbelief at her grandmother’s choice, pointing out that there were plenty of relatives willing and perfectly able to care for Joel.
She said it was wrong for Lillian to insist that there were no other alternatives. Joel also had state funding which would have guaranteed that he was cared for even after Lillian died. There’s not a shred of logic behind this twisted idea of mercy that Lillian had for Joel’s murder. I was headed out to the front door.
He goes, “Many, see you later.” I said, “Yes, Debbie.” I said, “We’ll see you later.” I said, “I love you.” He goes, “I love you, too.” And that was the last time I’ve seen him a lot. Yvon Park says she spent the day out with her boyfriend and friends. She got back to her grandmother’s apartments late Saturday night, saw Lillian Parks and Joel sleeping with the TV on, and thought nothing of it.
But at noon the next day, she found it strange to find Joel still asleep. I said Graham said, “It doesn’t look like he’s breathing.” And that’s when she said, “Clear as day because he’s not.” And I said, “What do you mean he’s not? Like what are you talking about?” She goes, “Oh, I’m doing us both in. We’re going together.
” Ivonne says Lillian had a plan. She had asked Ivonne to come to Bradenton to clean out the apartment and take Joel back to Ohio with her because she wasn’t sure if she was going to commit or if she was going to go through with having the high hernia surgery and go to a nursing home afterwards. Bradenton police say Lillian told them she intentionally overdosed Joel because she’d be dying soon and there was no one left to take care of him when she was gone.
You know, for her to say he was estranged from his mother is a big lie. I have never been estranged from my children by choice. I’d have come and gotten Joel. She had planned two weeks prior to that that she was going to let Bonnie come and take him back to Ohio. The family says Joel’s death was unnecessary and premeditated. And now this voicemail is the only thing they have left of their bubby.
How are you? Goodbye. She took my brother for no reason and to sit there and say that there there’s there was no option that this is the only way she knew how to take care of that’s crap. He lit up the room when he walked in the door. That bright star was 30-year-old Joel Parks. His family called him Bubby.
He goes, “Bunny, I love you. I’ll see you later.” I said, “I love you too, Bubby. I’ll see you later.” And that was the last time I seen him. The next day, Joel’s sister was back at her grandmother’s home at the Carlton Arms Apartments in Bradenton, where Joel lived part of the time. Ivonne says that’s when she noticed Joel slumped over and not looking right.
And I was like, Grahams, it doesn’t look like he’s breathing. She said, “Because he’s not with kind of like a little snicker in it.” What do you mean he’s not? What do you mean he’s not breathing? Like, what are you talking about? Oh, I’m doing us both in. We’re going together. 87year-old Lillian Parks told police that she purposefully overdosed and killed her grandson because she would not be able to care for him any longer because of her declining health.
His life was snuffed out for nothing. Joel’s family is devastated. His mother, Tasha, says Lillian tried to keep her out of Joel’s life. For her to sit there and just take it not just away from me, but his siblings, the world that he touched. Police say Lillian Parks was taken to a medical facility because of her physical condition.
They say when she’s released, she’ll be charged with seconddegree murder, but the family says that’s not enough. It was all premeditated. His life was cut way too short. Nothing like this should have ever happened to him. Captain Brian Thees described the case as complicated for detectives because on one side they saw an elderly woman worried about her grandson’s future care and on the other hand they could not ignore the fact that she intentionally ended his life.
He emphasized the department’s responsibility was to look at the situation as a whole and to uphold Joel’s rights as the victim. Regardless of Lillian’s age or Joel’s disability, a life had been taken. He was murdered and she acted on her own. Cases where caregivers murder disabled dependents are not rare. While no national database exists, research shows that philicide is more common among children with disabilities than those without.
Now maybe hearing that doesn’t surprise you. But what might surprise you to hear is that according to research done by the Rutderman Family Foundation, it’s estimated that killings of disabled individuals by a family member or caregiver happen about once a week. Though the true number is believed to be higher because many cases are not reported or the victim’s disability is never disclosed.
Think about that for a second. Each week, at least one disabled person is murdered by someone who was supposed to love and care for them. When such cases go to trial, courts often show leniency. The culprits may receive lighter sentences than other murderers because juries sometimes accept hardship as a defense.
Though advocates for justice strongly reject this framing, history reflects how people with disabilities have long been devalued. In World War II Germany, around 200,000 disabled individuals were killed between 1940 and 1945 with medical doctors overseeing the executions. In the United States, similar discriminatory views existed.
A 1927 Supreme Court ruling upheld sterilization and roughly 65,000 disabled Americans were forcibly sterilized across 30 states. This wasn’t even 100 years ago. These historical attitudes still influence present-day ideas of so-called mercy killings. Advocates warn that a justice system built on such biases often delays or weakens justice for disabled victims.
Lack of resources also plays a role. Adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities face limited care options once they leave the school system. Without a national support framework, many rely solely on family members, most of whom are not equipped to provide long-term care. The deinstitutionalization movement has promoted community integration.
But tragedies like Joel’s death highlight gaps in available services and oversight. After being discharged from the hospital 12 days after being admitted, Lillian was taken into custody at the Manity County Jail and was charged with seconddegree murder, awaiting trial. Her case was later reduced to manslaughter.
This decision drew further frustration from Joel’s family who argued that the act had been planned for weeks and should have counted as first-degree murder. But the trial never happened. On January 1st, 2020, a little over 3 months after Joel’s murder, Lillian Parks died. With her passing, the case effectively ended.
Authorities did not release Joel’s autopsy results, nor were the letters Lillian left behind ever made public. The family did not speak further, and no obituary for Lillian appeared after her death. What remained were unanswered questions. No official details came out about Joel’s final moments, and nothing more was said about Lillian’s writings.
The silence from her relatives suggested the deeper pain her actions had caused, leaving Joel’s death as the final chapter in a case that closed without resolution in court. After his death, the community that surrounded him was devastated. Leaders at Easter Seals, along with many in Joel’s community, described the loss as deeply painful.
They offered condolences to his family while also choosing to honor Joel by celebrating the happiness he brought to everybody who knew him. According to CEO Tom Waters, the Easter Seals family is in mourning. The disabilities community is in mourning. Lots of people are in mourning because everything in this situation is tragic. We want to express our condolences because as we mourn, I know they do, but we’re celebrating him.
We’re celebrating the life that he had and the life he shared with us. Jordan Jones of the Miracle League shared that I think our whole entire community has been shook by this. We know he may be in a better place, but it’s just not something anybody saw coming. Joel’s celebration of life was held on Thursday, October 3rd, 2019 at the Salvation Army on Albi Farm Road in Venice, Florida.
On his online obituary, friends that knew him from Chase Bank remembered his smile and hugs, writing how much they would miss him. Others left messages of condolence, wishing him peace. One caregiver shared how special it had been to know him, recalling his bright smile in their last conversation at a neighborhood Walmart.
She described it as an honor to have cared for him and said he would always be remembered. Now his loved ones are left only with memories and a voicemail from Joel telling his mother, “I love you.” So where does this leave us? I think many people might hear a story like this and recognize that it is clearly tragic, but include that something like this must be rare.
chocked up to one of those senseless acts of violence that nobody could have prevented. And sure, I’m not here to definitively say that there was a way to prevent Joel’s murder. But what I am here to ask you is how many of you knew the statistic that one disabled person is killed each week by a parent or caregiver? How many of us live our lives completely unaware of something so heinous quietly happening week after week? I’m not asking you to feel guilty for not knowing that, but I’m highlighting that clearly a change needs
to be made here because the result of that is another murder every week that could have been prevented. And knowing that some of these individuals are unable to advocate for themselves, it makes this all the more dire that we have to do something. I wish I could lay out a perfect step-by-step solution to fixing this.
But what I do know, the average person’s blind spot around the frequency of murders of disabled individuals, most important thing that we can all do is open our eyes. Okay, so this case really pissed me off. And I know we’ve done a lot of cases that were far more brutal than this, but there’s specific things about this that really enraged me.
And one of my first thoughts was when I was working for a daycare, when I was fresh out of high school, I worked with many children that had intellectual and developmental disabilities. And when I would tell people about that, not 100% of the time, but I would get the response of, “Oh, oh my god, those poor kids, they must be suffering.
” And it’s like, “What are you talking about?” There is this idea in so many people’s minds that disabled people constantly walk around in a perpetual state of pain and suffering and it just isn’t true. I mean, at least not for the vast majority. I’m sure there’s people in pain. Of course there are.
But the idea that a 100% of them Right. Right. Right. I just wanted to specify that. which leads to this idea and and we can talk about what the mental state of this grandmother was, but this idea it’s like, “Oh, he’ll be in a better place.” You know, and when I when I hear when you hear about disabled people passing, you’ll hear people make comments like, “Oh, well, they’re themselves in heaven now.
What does that mean? They’re themselves or or they have all their faculties or they have their legs back.” Like, I’ve heard comments like this. They’re running free with Jesus now. Exactly. And you know, I know that when certain people say this, it’s not coming from a place of malice, but look at the foundation this sets to have ideas that Joel Parks is better off dead than living a a life that he had where he was clearly thriving, right? Like he had a community.
He was active in that theater group. He volunteered. He had an job. He has an athlete who and from what I understand a pretty good athlete, too. Yeah. He was very loved by his community and there was plenty of people who were willing to take him and take care of him and he had state funding. I I just And this is what’s what’s hard for me is that so many news outlets and even the police had a hard time saying the word murder.
And I want people to think about this. If this was a child and a grandmother poisoned them to death, there is no way anybody would have a hard time saying murder. They would label it murder. And I believe she got she was charged with second degree or they were going to charge her with second degree before she ended up dying in jail.
I think it I think it dropped down a manslaughter. Even worse. Even worse. Like this is premeditated firstdegree murder. And so if this was a child that this was done to, there was no way that grandmother wouldn’t get first degree, even with her advanced age. There’s like a lot of things like I have to say to this.
Um I mean essentially what she was performing was eugenics. Yes. Yep. Essentially what was going on 100%. Um and like attitudes like this against disabled people. I don’t even know how I want to even like broach this topic, but one that that comes to mind for me is the whole uh issue around like right to die. Um and how on one hand you have a lot of supporters for it, but on the other hand um the disabled community finds it to be eugenics.
And I didn’t understand that for the longest time. Um just to give a little bit of background, I essentially watched my grandmother die from stage four cancer. She she didn’t know she had it. It was very quick. Everything happened in under a month. And after she they had her on a lot of the medications and she started to really like lose her faculties, she honestly thought they were going to give her a pill to kill her so she didn’t have to go through this anymore.
She honestly thought that the point where she started getting even more and more um out of her faculties and she was asking us to kill her. Yeah. So from that moment on, I became a big supporter of your right when you’re terminal to be able to get the prescribed medication to do what whatever you need to do to not be suffering.
However, a lot of my friends, specifically one friends who actually is a longtime listener who has cerebral palsy, was very much against all of this. And it took a little bit for me to figure it out. But it’s cases like Joles’s that are the reason why a lot of folks with disabilities, you know, don’t want that to to happen.
So when we have incidents where essentially people are murdering disabled people because they don’t think they have the right to live or they’re better off not living, it’s just echoing what everybody is thinking. Yeah. So just to properly in the disabled communities. Yeah. Yeah.
So, like in a perfect world, if somebody is terminal and wants to die, obviously I don’t think there’s many people that would just say to them, “No, you can’t.” However, what your friend with cerebral pausy his concern was is and why he’s opposed to right to die is because if you start sending that groundwork, it be it cause the slippery slope that now insurance companies might start pushing things a certain way if you have certain diagnosis and those diagnosis might not be limited to stage four cancer.
He was worried, okay, maybe this starts getting extended to cerebral pausy and other disabilities that a person can live with. Yes. And thank you for packaging that properly for me because like I still I know this is a sensitive years later. I have a hard time talking about this, but like this is this is obviously a sensitive topic and it requires a lot of nuance, but when you told me about about your friend and his viewpoints, like I had never considered that before.
And when we were doing Joel’s case and you brought that up, I was just like, “Oh my god.” You know, that this is the the mentality the grandmother had is the same type of people that like, you know, I ran into when I was working with disabled children. And um you you just you see the the shadows of it everywhere.
You see the reflections of it. um that this this idea that it boils down to that disabled people are in a constant state of suffering and would be better off dead. And that is a very disgusting and frightening belief when you really think about it. Um because it’s a slippery slope like what then what then is uh what then is disabled? Does it then like go into like those of us with depression and anxiety and like like how far does that go before you end up in a crazy situation? What disabilities are okay now to live with? Mhm.
And what aren’t? Like I am terrified of that reality where all of a sudden there’s a picking and choosing based on that, right? And I’m not talking about like those who are interested in that right who choose these options because I know in Europe specifically in the Netherlands that is legal.
I’m talking about the government. Yeah. I’m talking about the government and the insurance companies being like no. Yeah. No, I I I think we’ve made it pretty clear that we’re we’re we’re talking about people have it being pushed towards a certain way against against their will. And obviously this is a this is almost a completely other video and I would want to talk with people um in the disabled community like more about this.
Um if we were to do a video on this and if this is something you want us to do a video on like leave us a comment below if we get enough interest like maybe we can do an interview with your friend and um like dive deeper into this. That’s something I’m sure he actually would appreciate because he is Yeah. No, for sure.
I would want those voices um that are Yeah. And I and I fully understand this seems like a whole bunch of information vomit, but like this was a lot of thoughts we had after the fact that we just didn’t know how to fit in. It made us very emotional. And in this one murder, you saw so many problems. And yeah, we highlighted before about the uh the one disabled person is murdered every week by a parent or caregiver.
I didn’t even know that. Did not even know that until like I knew it was high. I knew it was high, but I didn’t know it was that high. And that’s horrifying. And if most people don’t know that the first step, like I don’t have a plan to fix this, like I said in the video, but the the first step has to be awareness.
So I this is the least we can do at this point. Um and I I don’t really know what to go what to do from there. But like this just it has been a few days since we recorded this and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Um I don’t I don’t know if there’s anything else you want to say. I know that some people I’ve read in the comments people saying that Lillian she’s she was 87 years old the time that she murdered Joel and does she have dementia? Was she in the right frame of mind? Um at an age like that it is I don’t think it’s
unlikely to say oh she could have dementia like I think that that’s obviously possible but I don’t think it excuses it. No it doesn’t. And like another thing that might not excuse things, not not might not does not excuse things is something that came to mind. You know, she is from an older generation that has different viewpoints of what we do with disabled people. Yes.
We’re not that far removed from institutionalizing people. Yes. Like I have an aunt, aunt Vicki on my um on my father’s side and I met her one time and that one time I met her, she was already an elderly woman and it was at my grandmother’s funeral in Ohio. Um completely different grandmother that I’m talking about, my two separate grandmothers.
Maybe you want to give a background about Vickiy’s. Uh right. When she was a child, she had measles and her temperature rose so rapidly that it fried her brain and she became developmentally disabled. And back in that time, like in the the 50s and stuff, you didn’t stay at home, you went to an institution.
And Aunt Vicki was in an institution for the rest of her until she died. She was in residential care and you didn’t know she existed for a long time. I think to the point that somebody in your in your um that side of the family told you, “Oh, we don’t talk about her.” “We don’t talk about her.” Because I was looking at a family picture and I’m like, “Who is that little girl?” And they’re like, “That’s Vicki.
We don’t talk about her.” And it took until I was in my mid20s. That was the only time I had seen her because she was at my Grammyy’s funeral. So to tie into Lillian’s mindset of previous generations who um if you had a disabled member of your family, they’re looked at as embarrassments to the point where you don’t talk about them.
You pretend that they don’t exist and you quietly put them in an institution and forget about them. um dementia or not. And there there’s no there’s no proof that Lillian had dementia, but dementia or not, for decades, Lillian had the opportunity to put something legally in place that if something happened to her, Joel would be taken care of.
And she did not do that. And she was a nurse. She knew better. Yes. And for that, I think she deserves no leniency, no forgiveness. like that. Not only was what she did premeditated, she is somebody that knows better, she knew the system, she knew the process. She chose not to do it for decad almost 20 over 20 years.
She got Joel uh when she was 61, I believe. It I believe if our notes are correct. Yeah. Because this went from early 60s until she was 87 when this all went down. So roughly 25 26 years she had the opportunity to do this. And I I I have a hard time believing she had dementia at 61. And I Yeah. So I I you guys can say what you want in the comments.
I have zero sympathy for Lillian whatsoever. In my mind, she is a murderer and she needs to be talked about as such. And I really don’t like that there are so many people like the when the the the police captain gave a speech and he talked about how he I’m kind of par paraphrasing sympathy for this woman who feels she needs to kill her grandson because in her mind he cannot be taken care of.
when that is such a broken framework when you look at the details. It is not what Joel’s situation was. No, not at all. He had other family. He had state funding. He was able he was able to hold a part-time job. So, for him to say, you know, that he sympathizes with a grandmother who believes that um her loved one couldn’t be taken care of, well, that’s built on a faulty premise.
like this is not reality. It’s the inability to talk about things like this concretely and factually that will lead to more murders of disabled people in fashion such as this manslaughter. How dare you?
