Facebook Lives, Family Deaths

"Over the last ten days I have done some of the worst things I could have ever imagined a person doing. I took a gun and shot her in the head and now she is migraine free and floating in the clouds on a sunny afternoon, her long beautiful brown hair flowing in the breeze, a true angel."
"Rest in peace my little family. Love Daddio xoxo."
Randy Janzen, Rosedale, British Columbia

"This investigation is extremely complex involving two crime scenes and potentially multiple victims. At this time, IHIT [RCMP Integrated Homicide Investigation Team] believes that this incident is not random and the suspect and victims were related to each other."
Sgt. Stephanie Ashton, RCMP spokesperson

"Whenever I start to feel sorry for myself, I just thank God I'm still alive."
"I complain about all the pain, but at least I'm here to feel it."
"I'm so tired of people making me feel guilty for being too sick to hang out. Do you think I want to sit at home or in the hospital all day? NO"
Emily Janzen, 19, now deceased

CPEmily Janzen poses in this undated handout photo from Kim Mallory Studios.

A young woman with artistic aspirations whose health impaired her plans for the future, but who appreciated life irrespective of the physical suffering her condition entailed, no longer has a future. Her father who loved his 'little girl', decided he would remove his daughter from the land of the living and consign her to death, where she would no longer be in pain from migraine headaches.

Emily Janzen's headaches and the pain they brought her were sufficiently severe to interrupt her education. They made her miserable enough so that the young woman whom her friends regarded as bright and cheerful no longer took pleasure in being with them, due to her unbearable discomfort. According to a Facebook post that her father wrote, his daughter suffered migraines since elementary school.

The decision to miss two years at the University of British Columbia "broke her heart", wrote Randy Janzen. And he had enough of his daughter's 'broken heart'. Because he had no wish to see his "little girl hurt for one more second", he decided he would murder her. Oh, not only his daughter, but her mother Laurel, as well, because, he wrote "a mother should never have (to) hear the news her baby has died".

And while he was about it he shot a third person, his sister Shelly for the simple enough reason that he "did not want her to have to live with this shame", that he "caused all alone". He wrote also that he felt "great remorse" for what he did. Death is final, no looking back, no changing your mind. But he took comfort in the fact that his family was now in heaven, and all were free of pain.

Save him, presumably. But he took care of that, too.

CP/Darryl Dyck   An RCMP officer stands near a burnt out home during the investigation of multiple homicides in Rosedale, east of Chilliwack, B.C., on Friday May 8, 2015.

Emily Janzen's Twitter account reflected an aura of helplessness and frustration. But then again, she wrote differently at times, with optimism and gratitude, belying her hopeless settling into a life that appeared to present no opportunity to escape continual grinding, painful headaches. Not only did Emily write of her misery, but her mother's Twitter account was also devoted to registering Emily's pain.

This has become standard. People communicate with the wider universe of social acquaintances through the medium of the Internet, updating details of their lives on Twitter and on Facebook. We open ourselves wide to public scrutiny of our private thoughts and actions and feelings and expectations and disappointments. In so doing, we live shallow, superficial lives.

Is it no longer possible to communicate intimately with one another, in a face-to-face forum that is private and respectful? Does it help us to survive unpleasant and difficult lives if we shout out on line to anyone and everyone that we are suffering? Does anyone hear? Why yes, it appears that someone or perhaps many someones read Randy Janzen's Facebook account of his premeditated murders.

Someone alerted the RCMP that a man had confessed on social media that he had put his loved ones out of their misery. He evidently took no steps to communicate that decision beforehand to his daughter, his wife, his sister, to ascertain whether they were in agreement, and prepared to surrender their lives to their father/husband/brother's altruistic determination to spare them further existence in this vale of tears.

RCMP were dispatched to the home in Langley, B.C., on Friday, owned by Shelly Janzen, and there they found a body, presumably that of Shelly Janzen. Officers then arrived at the home of Emily, her mother Laurel and her father Randy. They made an effort to speak with a man in the house. "And then they started shooting, I don't know if it was inside or outside (the house)", explained Sgt. Ashton.

Four hours after police arrived at the house it was afire, and swiftly engulfed. One assumes from an incomplete newspaper report that the fourth person in this family tragedy died in the fire that consumed the Janzen family home.

Facebook    Laurel and Emily Janzen seen together in an undated Facebook post. The mother and daughter are believed to have been killed by the patriarch of the family, Randy Janzen.