THE CHILDREN OF KILLERS

BY: ELIZA SHAPIRO

(From Newsweek Magazine)
Shapiro, E. (2013). The Children of Killers. Newsweek. Volumen 17. Pginas 34 y 35.

The Daughter of the Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and many like her will forever
wonder if they are also bad seeds.(semillas) Are they right?

Week after her father, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, allegedly (supuestamente)set off(detonar) a

bomb near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring hundreds more,
3eyearold Zahara Tsarnaev was seen happily playing on a slide in her grandmothers
backyard in Rhode lsland.
Zahara is likely oblivious (probablemente ajena) to her fathers suspected crimes and
perhaps (quizas) to her fathers death in the early hours of April 19, when he was shot by
police trying to apprehend him and his brother, Dzhokhar, who ran him over
(atropellado)with a car in a desperate attempt to escape the police.
But, the children of other killers say the fathers crimes will cast a long shadow over the
girls life. Of course there will be questions about the man she knew and the road that led
him to carry out (carry out) extreme violence against innocence. But other questions will
also arise;(surgir) How does his crime relate to me? ls there an inherited element to his
actions? Could I do the same thing? "Generally when these kids get older, they wonder, ls
it me? Am l carrying this gene?" says Dr. Helen Morrison, a child and adolescent
psychologist and forensic psychiatrist in private practice in Chicago who has interviewed
more than 135 serial killers around the world.
Certainly the notion of "the bad seed" has taken root in the public imagination, and such
suspicions have a decadeslong history in scientific literature. ln the 1960s and 70s, early
genetic research seemed to link violent crime with socalled supermalesmen whose
genetic makeup was XYY instead of the more standard XYuntil that theory was
disproved. Then in the 1990s, researchers found that 14 members of a Dutch family had
committed crimes and that all 14 had a similar genetic variation that could lead to excess
aggressiona mutation that turned out (result) to be specific to that family and not
applicable to any larger populations. Just this month, researchers at the University of
Connecticut announced plans to investigate the DNA of Adam Lanza, the killer who
terrorized the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20
children and six adults.

There are many skeptics (escepticos) of this kind of research who believe that the nature
nurture(naturaleza-educacion) interface is so complicated that a strict genetic component
that would unify mass killers is unlikely to be found. "lt is almost inconceivable that there
is a common genetic factor" to be found in mass murderers, Dr. Robert C. Green, a
geneticist and neurologist at Harvard Medical School, told The New York Times. "l think it
says more about us that we wish there was something like this. We wish there was an
explanation. "
"Complex human behavior does not distill down to a single gene or even a single set of
genes," Green tells Newsweek. "Human behavior is a very nuanced mixture ( matizada
mixta)of environment, family earlychildhood experience, and probably genetic
predisposition. It is a gross misrepresentation to imagine that there is a single gene that
pushes someone in one direction or another, particularly in the area of criminal behavior.
"Morrison, who has studied the psychological histories of the siblings, parents, and some
children of the murderers shes met, has found no violence correlation between the killer
and their kin(parientes). But most kids of killers seem to disappear into thin air after their
parents deeds (hechos) become public, making cohesive research on murderers offspring
(descendientes)next to impossible. They change their names, move to other cities or
countries, and disassociate themselves completely from their families, Morrison says. "No
one wants to talk about what they are associated with, " she says.
And that fear and secrecy point to the bigger risks to Zahara: social and psychological ones.
Growing up with the last name Tsamaev wont be easy Melissa Moore knows this all too
well. Her father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was known as the Happy Face Killer for the
murders he committed from California to Washington in the early 1990s before he was
imprisoned for life. He murdered at least eight women and was infamous for signing
confession notes sent to police departments and the media with smiley faces.
The last time she saw her father before he was arrested was for breakfast one morning
before school. "l have something to tell you, but youre going to tell the police,
Jesperson kept telling Moore, who was a freshman (estudiante de primer ao ) in high
school. "l went to the bathroom and when l came back the conversation was dropped,"
Moore says.
As soon as the news broke about her father, Moore tells Newsweek, she was isolated
(aislado)from her friends and her community She switched high schools to try to escape the
media frenzy The first time she visited her father in prison, he told her to change her last
name. Thats when I realized it was a done deal, " she says. "My name was forever
intimately tied to this murderer. I could never get past my name. In order to cope with her
familys history she wrote a book, Shattered(destruido ) Silence: The Untold Story of a
Serial Killers Daughter".

The community rejected me because they rejected my dad," says Moore, who struggled
throughout her childhood and early adulthood to come to terms with her fathers deeds.
"Parents didnt want their children around me," she says, "maybe they thought I knew
something, maybe because I was damaged by being raised by him. I felt ashamed and
unworthy
Beyond the social elements is the psychological journey that the child of a killer needs to
go through, and experts say that one of the most important steps will be for Zahara, as she
grows up, to acknowledge(reconocer) and accept her fathers act of evil while absolving
herself from any responsibility or guilt.
That will likely include animosity (anymosidad) toward her father for what he did to both
the larger community and her own family. The children of killers can "experience anger at
the relative for putting them in such a conflicted position," Michael Price, a professor of
evolutionary moral psychology at Brunel University in London, told CNN. That conflict
includes strong psychological and emotional incentives to defend and remain loyal to a
family member, and to delude (engaarse) and selfdeceive (engaar)themselves about
the reality of their relatives guilt, " Price said.
Travis Vining went on an emotional journey that spanned(abraco) decades. He remembers
when his father, John Vining, admitted that he was the serial killer responsible for the
murders of five people in Orlando in the late 1980s. Travis who was in his early 20s at the
time, became his fathers unwilling (dispuestos) confidant, even helping his father burn a
car where Travis suspected a corpse was stashed. (escondido)There was an inability to
comprehend the overall (general) meaning of what is happening to you when its someone
you love, " says Vining, who eventually reported his father to the police. Vining tells
Newsweek he repressed all memories of his father and his killing spree(juerga) for nearly
two decades, until he was brought to his knees" by physical signs of trauma; migraines,
back pain, sleep apnea, and horrible nightmares. We are not capable of burying (enterrar)
these things, " he says.
Vining and Moore say the only way for Zahara Tsarnaev to lead a peaceful life will be for
her to understand that evil is not in her blood.
"lf you spend your childhood waiting for the other shoe to drop, you have more anxiety and
worry for the rest of your life, Morrison says.
Vining says connecting with families of his fathers victims has also brought him peace.
"Very few people connect in the way that we can connect to each other, he says. He
speaks often with the son of one of the women his father murdered. "We end every phone
conversation with l love you, " he says, l cant tell you how much that means to both of
us. " NW