Her attorney says Tenika Revell loved her son to death ... literally. The 40-year-old Brooklyn mother brutally killed her 7-year-old son, Bernard, using a hammer, a belt, and even her own bare hands last week. She tried to kill herself as well, but her attempt was unsuccessful.
What could love possibly have to do with that? Well, Revell was suffering from terminal breast cancer. According to the New York Daily News, even after undergoing a mastectomy, it had spread to her ovaries. She knew the end was near and that she wouldn't be there for her boy, so instead she chose to kill him, say those close to her.
“She was a yard and a half beyond wit’s end,” defense attorney Harvey Soss told the paper.
Revell's long-term boyfriend, Terrace Johnson, who says he helped raise the boy, said, “She loved him so much she didn’t want nobody else to have him.”
It's unfathomable that a mother could think this way, but Revell had demons from her past that plagued her as well. She was reportedly abandoned by her own mother at the age of 7, and had worked as a prostitute since she was a teenager. She also had problems with drugs, but she was reportedly a good mother who spoiled her son, and Johnson says she wanted to save Bernard from a similar fate. “She didn't want her mother or none of them to get Bernard," he told the paper.
It's a place I try not to go very often, but as parents I think we all at times imagine what would happen if we were to die and leave our children. It's painfully heartbreaking to think that we wouldn't be there to guide them, and see who they become, and love them along the way, but to take their life is unthinkable. Of course, for most of us, the life Revell led is unthinkable too.
None of us knows how we would react upon learning that we're going to die, and while Revell's actions are absolutely outrageous, I can't help but feel for her too. Because it seems like in her own warped way, she tried to do what she thought was right, even though it was so very, very wrong.
Do you believe this woman killed her son out of love?
Image via CarbonNYC/Flickr
This Hot Dad Wants to Do Your Ironing
KStew Refuses to Shower
This Hot Dad Wants to Cook You Dinner
This Hot Dad Cooks AND Does the Dishes
Comments 101
... Jeez a hammer? She could have gave him some of the pain meds and stuff that he wouldnt feel pain, and then she could have overdosed and them die together, but a effin hammer to the head says "I love you so much"
What part of 'drugs' and 'a life of prostitution' and 'childhood abandonment' lead you to believe this act had anything to do with love?!? How was she successful in killing them, but not herself? She sounded selfish and warped.
Normal people choose life, esp for their children who have yet to live theirs. You know, doing what's best for them!
^^ Christina, good point.
She probably wanted to keep all meds for herself, too.
Why does the author always say how she "feels for" these awful people who commit outrageous crimes
this article is stupid, u can't analyze the behavior of a psychotic person and get any logic from it, the woman is mentally ill and that's it. it doesn't matter why she did it, there's no point in trying to figure it out, this is a warped, irrational mind and saying she did it out of love gives her mental capacity too much credit.
Well before reading the article I could've believed it, but not after reading how she did it. Why was it necessary for her to kill her son so violently? All I can think is maybe the cancer spread to her brain or something and she isn't right in the mind.
No. Just no.
The term "No one is going to love and care for your child like you will" came to mind while I was reading this story, which is why I can understand why she took matters into her own hands. No, it definitely wasn't right for her to strip him of his life but in her mind she probably felt that it was the only way to prevent him for going through hell on earth after her death. The thing that bothers me the most is the manner in which she chose to kill him. It seemed to me that there was some pent up aggression and anger based on the techniques that she used to kill him. I love my son to death and i would hate to have to leave his side, God forbid, if I became struck with a terminal illness but I would never kill him. I would have to trust that my loved ones would do the best that they could to love and care for him just as I did while I was here on earth.
Very selfish!!!!!