How Could Two ‘Nice Kids’ Try to Kill Their Parents?

Neighbors can’t believe that Christopher and Cameron Ervin are being accused of trying to murder their parents, Zachary and Yvonne. But police say otherwise. (Photo: Facebook)

The 911 call came in Saturday morning from a home in the upscale Atlanta suburb of Snellville. “Please send someone to my house. My children are trying to kill me,” a woman pleaded.

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Yvonne Ervin was hiding in an upstairs bedroom, frantically telling a dispatcher that sons Christopher and Cameron, ages 22 and 17, had tried to strangle her and then assaulted Zachary Ervin, her husband and the boys’ father, with a shotgun.

“They attacked me and my husband,” she told the dispatcher just before 8 a.m. “They drugged us with Xanax. They attacked us, and they’re trying to kill us.”

When police arrived, they found Yvonne seriously injured and Zachary outside the house bleeding heavily from stab wounds, according to a news release posted by the Gwinnett County Police Department on September 8.

While EMTs attended to the parents, investigators noticed that the gas line to the house had been cut. They suspected the sons tried to burn the house down as well. “Based on the evidence that has been gathered thus far, it is apparent that the brothers launched a plot to kill both of their parents,” stated the news release.

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Christopher and Cameron, high school grads described as “very nice kids” by a shocked neighbor, were then driven by officers to police headquarters. On the way to the station, Cameron reportedly said, “I tried to kill my f—ing parents. Who does that?” according to ABCNews.com.

Who does that? It’s a chilling but essential question. About 250 mothers and fathers are victims of parricide every year — in other words, they are murdered by their children, Kathleen C. Heide, professor of criminology at the University of South Florida and author of Understanding Parricide, tells Yahoo Parenting. (Heide has no knowledge of what’s behind the crime at the Ervin house.)

“Most of these killings are committed by adult children, but about 20 percent will be committed by juveniles,” says Heide, who also has no knowledge of the boys’ mental health. While the majority of cases involve one child targeting one parent, about 20 cases per year involve two or more perpetrators targeting two parents, she says.

Though parricide is extremely rare, Heide says that her research shows four distinct types of offenders. “Sometimes a child who has been the victim of longstanding abuse will kill a parent, not out of revenge but desperation to have the abuse end,” she says.

Another type of perpetrator suffers from serious and often longtime mental illness. “They may be delusional and out of touch with reality,” says Heide. “Sometimes this is the case with an adult who kills a parent, typically after going off medication.”

A third type is the enraged offender, who erupts in anger — possibly due to abuse or because a privilege has been taken away. Finally, there’s what Heide calls the “dangerously antisocial” offender. “This means they kill a parent for a selfish reason, like freedom or money,” she says.

“People with antisocial personality disorder will do anything to get what they want,” licensed marriage and family therapist Paul Hokemeyer (who has never met the boys in question) tells Yahoo Parenting. “They lack a moral compass and are incapable of experiencing compassion. It is a characteristic we see among people who have experienced extreme abuse or neglect early in their lifetime. But such abuse or neglect does not make a person antisocial.”

While the details of the Ervin family aren’t clear, police said that there was no history of domestic violence at the home. And in media interviews, neighbors made it clear that they never would have expected this kind of depraved violence from anyone in the family.

“That would be the last house where I would expect something like that to happen,” neighbor Clint Miller told 11Alive.com. “Very nice kids, I can’t stress that enough. Those kids are extremely nice kids.”

Right now, Cameron and Christopher are being held at a county detention center; they’ll have a preliminary court hearing on September 11. Yvonne Ervin has been released from the hospital, while Zachary is still recovering.

As for a motive, police have not publicly identified one. But Yvonne Ervin had a theory as she hid in her bedroom and talked to the 911 dispatcher.

“I don’t know why they’ve done this, I really don’t,” she said. “I guess they have something … they want the insurance money, I’m not sure.”

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