Philip Frank Dileo was a punk and a coward.
Mama always taught me not to speak ill of the dead, but even she likely would look the other way on this one.
I have to go on this rant, and I believe the entire Denver metro area is with me when I use this public space to scream that I am sick of the Philip Dileos of this country and the world.
It was the note that the former Boulder cop and Aurora firefighter penned before killing his wife and son early Monday that sent me over the edge.
You do not get to kill your wife, child and, then, yourself and leave behind instructions on how you want the remains handled.
Correction: You don’t get to kill your wife and child, period. Kill yourself if life is too tough now. Leave the innocent alone.
Cowards and punks who are calling themselves men are out of control in America these days. If you want to read of the carnage they are leaving behind every single day, go ahead and Google News two words: “murder-suicide.” You will hug and kiss your children tonight.
Philip Dileo’s murderous stupidity is only the latest of it.
Most of the shooters are — and they are almost always shooters — men.
Only last month in Boulder, you may recall, a 39-year-old stay-at- home father unable to find a teaching job lured his 30-year-old lawyer ex-wife to his home and shot her to death before turning the gun on himself. Big man.
It is not enough, though, simply to rant.
Seeking insight, I called the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., a virulently anti-gun nonprofit that in recent years has done multiple studies on murder-suicides.
“The reality of the killing in Boulder is it fits a fairly common scenario in murder-suicides,” said Kristen Rand, the center’s legislative director.
Their studies, she points out, have shown there are at least nine to 10 murder-suicides in the U.S. every week.
“The common denominator in all of them,” she said, “is the shooter feels he or she has lost control over their relationship or finances or, usually in the case of the elderly, a loved one’s health.”
Nearly 95 percent of the killers are male, Rand said, and an equal percentage of the incidents involve guns.
Most act as a result of overwhelming financial problems.
“They cannot cope with the stress as it builds,” she said. “They are already suicidal, and kill their intimate partners as a last, final acting out of their anger and aggression against the world.”
I don’t understand this, I tell her.
“Most feel their family would be better off dead than if they left them behind without a breadwinner,” she said.
The case of Philip Dileo is a sad but ridiculously common murder- suicide.
His wife, Elizabeth, years before got a gun to protect herself from her husband. He had one and she had one, Rand said.
“When you have people under such stress — and both with guns — our studies show at least one will act out. And with guns, it is so much easier to kill and commit suicide.”
The answer to all of this, of course, would be to tighten restrictions on handgun ownership, Rand said.
We should all hope, too, to find a leprechaun and a pot of gold in our backyards. It is never going to happen.
It certainly can never happen in a country where even the mere suggestion of any type of gun control will generate more outrage than even nine to 10 people every week killing their loved ones before turning the weapon on themselves.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
