A former United Church minister massacres his family. What led to this act of femicide and why were his victims forgotten? On May 2, 1963, Robert Killins, a former United Church minister, slaughtered every woman in his family but one. Two child survivors lived to tell the story of what motivated a talented man who had been widely admired, a scholar and graduate from Queen’s University, to stalk and terrorize the women in his family for almost twenty years and then murder them. Through extensive oral histories, Cook and Carson painstakingly trace the causes of a femicide in which four women and two unborn babies were murdered over the course of one blood-spattered evening. While they situate this murderous rampage in the literature on domestic abuse and mass murders, they also explore the perspective and journey of the two traumatized children. Told through vivid first-person accounts, this memoir recounts the story of one family’s resilience after enduring years of relentless cruelty.

Issued also in electronic format.