So sad, and some comfort

Found in Mud: Precious Links to Loved Ones

Gently, Dayn Brunner reached into the mangled car and lifted his younger sister’s lifeless body out of the driver’s seat and onto a waiting tarp. For almost a week, he and his teenage sons had slogged through the muddy catacomb of what had once been a neighborhood, scouring the pulped homes and broken earth for some sign of her. Now, it was time to say goodbye and wait for the helicopter to take her away.

“We cried together, and we moved her over,” he said.

But before they could go, Mr. Brunner, 42, turned back to the blue Subaru to salvage a few of the things that his sister Summer Raffo, 36, had carried with her on her final drive through the valley. He found a horse halter — she had loved to ride and breed horses. Her wallet. Her checkbook. A few packets of honey from KFC stashed in the glove compartment. He tucked them away.

Man, that's cold

Police: 2 confess to killing 6 near Seattle

Prosecutor Outlines Gruesome Details of Washington Family Slaying

Carnation suspects tell officers of victims' frantic, final moments

Neighbors remember couple as paranoid and withdrawn

'Unloved' daughter held after Christmas Eve family massacre

Now only the memories of Carnation victims are left


A 29-year-old woman and her boyfriend (same age) have confessed to killing her parents on Christmas eve supposedly over money issues and feeling like she wasn't appreciated. After hiding her parents' bodies, the couple allegedly waited for her brother and his family to arrive, shooting first her brother, then his wife, and finally their children, ages 5 or 6 (accounts vary) and 3, so there would be no witnesses.

The sister-in-law managed to make a 911 call before the guy supposedly crushed the phone, and deputies were dispatched to what sounded like people arguing at a party. By the time deputies arrived, the woman had supposedly locked the gate to the property, and they did not investigate further. It isn't known whether they could have saved any of the family's lives, but the suspects might have been caught at the scene. Instead, the couple apparently fled from Washington towards Canada, then turned back towards Oregon, finally returning to the parents' property, where they lived in a trailer 200 yards away from the home. At that point it was a homicide crime scene, as a co-worker of the mother came by when she did not show up at work and saw the bodies through a window.

Okay, I understand being angry at your parents. We are all at one time or another, and some people have very good reasons to be. I can even almost make the leap of being so angry you want to kill someone over it. But what about those children? How did killing those children really do anything to make things better for the suspects, really?

The couple may be facing aggravated murder charges, the only crime in Washington State punishable by the death penalty, and at a minimum of life without parole. I'm not a proponent of the death penalty, but I'm thinking if this couple turns out to be proven guilty, then they are two selfish twits who are child-killers, and I'm not so concerned with what happens to them, so long as they never have a free moment again. It sounds like mental illness may play a role in this--others described the couple as paranoid and reclusive. The family itself is described as tight-knit but also intensely private; who knows what went on in this family dynamic? Now six members are dead and another is jailed, and this is a tragedy that's going to affect the family for years to come.