There have been almost 40 victims over the span of three decades, but the awful story is always the same: A good, vanilla, church-going father in the suburbs of Oregon abruptly snaps without provocation, slaughtering his wife and their young children before taking his own life in similar fashion. Absent any forensic indication that someone from outside the home was at the scene of the crime, these domestic atrocities might seem like a devilish coincidence if not for the single piece of evidence they share between them, a sinister-sweet birthday card signed “Longlegs.” That serial killer flourish is a fitting coup de grâce for a series of murder-suicides made all the more disturbing by the juxtaposition they strike between unfathomable evil and textbook wholesomeness; the illusion of purity draws an unholy contrast with the darkness that intrudes upon it.
It’s enough to make the nuclear family seem like a cover story, or at least to sow a measure of doubt in its promise to protect good Christian souls against a slew of ungodly horrors. The devil thrives in the gap between what people are taught to believe and what they are powerless to fear, and even the most vile atrocities committed in Satan’s name are but a means to an end. The real goal is to seed the lingering suspicion that something terrible is hiding just out of sight — right below you, perhaps, or just over your shoulder.
Every slit throat and breathless headline whispers the same thing into a thousand dif.
