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
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Comments 101
OK i"m confused....are you saying this is understandable? Cuz it sure is not effing understandable. Sounds like she viciously and brutally murdered that poor boy, her OWN boy. Sorry, but a crappy childhood does not justify that.
Hell no she didnt kill him out of love. Where was her compassion for this child she supposedly "loved" as she beat him to death with a hammer and strangled him?
I'd like to think this was caused by her cancer...maybe it went to her brain...but somehow, I doubt it. I do believe she should be killed in the same way she killed her son....I'm awful..sorry.
very very sad!!!!!!!
Besides being extremely tragic from any point of view, this shows why we need more support, from not just family, but everyone else regarding the emotional effects of cancer and other serious illnesses. The bond between mother and child is so strong that she probably believed she was saving him from future pains. When your faced with terminal illness and faced with death, common sense does not apply to thought. I believe the disease takes over your mind and although the extreme she went to, is by far horrendous, her instincts were to protect her child. In that state of mind who is to judge. I just wish someone could have seen some warning signs, there was obviously depression. Its sad she felt so alone and fearful of life going on without her. As for her son, my heart goes to the pains life brought him, and prayers that he is at peace now and safe. I always tell my kids that if something was to happen to me, close your eyes, feel your heart beat and that's me saying I love you.
My earlier post was out of line. As a mother of 4, if I had a terminal illness, I would do everything it took to find a suitable caregiver. I might even go as far as finding another wife for my husband and get to know her to make sure she would love them to.
Do you believe this woman killed her son out of love?
With a fucking hammer?!?!?! Funny how people who do the whole murder-suicide thing somehow never get it right when it comes to themselves, do they? They make sure those kids are dead, but they just can't do it to themselves. Just like the woman who fed her kids de-icer, gassed them, then superficially cut her wrists - oops, couldn't figure out how to end my own life - and her reason was because her husband was cheating.
Both of these women need to be fed to the general population and torn to pieces.