Stephen’s brother Phillip was a brilliant man. He taught college calculus and worked as a draftsman, surveyor and engineer.
But, Phillip was emotionally stunted. He never had a significant relationship and he became hermit-like and miserly.
We think the early trauma of alien abduction damaged Phillip’s emotional health. He developed fibromyalgia and was unable to keep working. In his early 40s he moved back in with his parents.
As his mother Irene’s health deteriorated, he and his father, Geoffrey, became her caregivers.
The year of 2017 was terrible for our family. In March our dog died, then the next day my father passed. In mid summer, Stephen’s father became ill.
We drove up to help. I took over caring for Irene, cleaning and cooking. Stephen helped deal with the doctors caring for Geoffrey.
Geoffrey was improving so we returned home, but we had to return only a few weeks later when he took a turn for the worse and died.
We felt bad leaving Phillip to care for Irene alone, but we promised to return during Thanksgiving.
After returning home we started getting strange emails from Phillip accusing us of stealing. He said my house cleaning was suspicious.
Over the next couple of months, these paranoid accusations increased. We lived 550 miles away, but he accused Stephen of secretly living on the property and sneaking in and stealing things at night. He changed all the locks and installed a surveillance system.
We were concerned Phillip was going insane and he was Irene’s sole caregiver.
We were trying to figure out what to do, when we got an email from Phillip saying he needed help convincing Irene to go into a care facility.
After that email, all communication stopped. After two days, we called the police to make a wellness check and were informed that Phillip had killed his mother, his two cats and himself with a shotgun in a gruesome murder suicide. He did this on his 51st birthday.
This marks the end of our “Stephen’s Just Plain Weird” series. We launch our new series, “Hearing the Other Side” tomorrow.
