One of the underlying themes to my novel was that everyone does everything for love. On the surface that statement sounds crazy but it is one that will be revealed as an unalterable axiom of life. Think of love as water coming through a hose. If you try and stop it the hose explodes. If you press your thumb over the outlet it bends the flow in a direction not to be long tolerated. The only constant is the water and the need to let it out. Once you realize that all else is put into perspective.
That's why love causes so many crazy outcomes: if you try to deal with it on your own terms, you lose.
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(COPPELL, TEXAS) On July 14, 2010, Coppell mayor Jayne Peters fatally shot her 19-year-old daughter in the neck, then turned the gun on herself inflicting a fatal wound to the head.
Coppell (accent on second syllable) is a tony, bedroom community of 39,000 here in the DFW metroplex. It's a churchy, comfortably numb sequestered slice of white conservative America. It's not the plasticine porter of Plano where it's “Be perfect or die” but like any place that becomes a bubble life, perception becomes reality. And when that happens, pain is sure to follow.
The news rocked the insular citizens as their good mayor showed no signs of trouble or discontent as they lay their heads down nightly believing nothing lay beneath the surface of their world but love and goodness. I'm not sure that same slumber will ever return - thankfully. Once separated from reality, questions are deemed the enemy but the tragically missed truth is they are lifelines.
The search for answers in the Coppell mayor murder-suicide case might change the way the city does business.
News 8 has learned that city leaders will take a look at the policy on city-issued credit cards.
The review comes after Mayor Jayne Peters used her city credit card for personal expenses as she struggled to make ends meet. The city attorney launched an investigation because Peters failed to turn in some receipts.
The questionable charges total more than $4,000 and could reach $6,000.
Some of the suspicious charges were made at North Texas businesses in the last eight months. They include nearly $600 at a Kroger supermarket; around $270 at gas stations; $360 at two clothing stores in Plano; $700 at restaurants; and $1,600 at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
A second rental car expense showed up as well: that of a Kia she'd given to her daughter as a graduation gift - the fact it was merely a rental was not explained. But the credit card investigation had started before the suicide and most likely prompted the killings as she was pressured to show receipts for her expenditures. It made one wonder how she planned on funding her daughter's future:
Corrine planned to attend the University of Texas in the fall, and she wasn't going alone; a handful of Coppell High School friends also got accepted.
They say Corinne wanted a career in the medical field, a goal she set after her father passed away from cancer in 2008.
Dance was Corinne's passion; friends called it a gift. "She had the best technique on the team," Ashley said. "Beautiful pointed feet, and leaps, and turns, and... everything about her dancing was flawless."
On Monday, Corrine was planning to set out to follow her dreams and attend freshman orientation at UT.
Yeah, I know. It hurts to read. But UT had never received an application, her daughter's acceptance another lie in the house of cards. Nor did her mom reveal their $400,000 home had almost been foreclosed on three times in the last year. Apparently Corrine's mother felt ruining her daughter's perception of reality would be a fate worse than death and rationalized her death as a mercy killing. But really, can you imagine pointing a gun at your daughter? The idea of maintaining her image lasted even to after her death:
Police said Peters left four suicide notes around the house detailing who to call. She left a key at the front door with the note:
"To our First Responders:
Here's the key for the front door.
I am so very sorry for what you're about discover.
Please forgive me.
Jayne"
It was neatly planned and premeditated with surgical precision. After neighbors saw Corrine loading her car on the fateful day presumably for the UT orientation sessions she kept "unluckily" missing, about 15 to 20 minutes later her mother was spotted unloading the car after what would have logically been her murder. The rental car, you see, needed to be returned and was duly done so. When the daughter's body was found, her head was wrapped in towels.
Image is everything.
The main suicide note read thusly:
"Oh, gracious God, please forgive me and have mercy on my eternal soul.
My sweet, sweet Corinne had grown completely inconsolable ... she had learned to hide her feelings from her friends, but the two of us were lost, alone, and afraid. Corinne just kept on asking, "why won't God just let me die?" We hadn't slept at all, and neither one of us could stop crying when we were together.
Please ask my family to take care of my pets. The dogs, Hope and Lucy, should be kept together or put down.
There are four cats:
Mystic - the black cat - 9 years old
Sassy - Siamese - 11 years old
Snowflake - Siamese - 11 years old
Reno - brown Abyssinian - 6 years old"
Another note told who to contact about the deaths and a final note by her body asked "do not recesitate (sic) under any circumstances."
There's no reason to judge Jayne Peters. She has to live for all eternity with what she's done and I wouldn't wish her hell on anybody. She couldn't let her truth out, thinking she no longer could warrant love if that were to happen. She kinked the hose hoping to stem the flow, all the while knowing a day of reckoning was coming and I share this story because hers is not unique in type, even if in scope.
Being one of their own, Dallas conservatives have closed ranks after the murder-suicide.
Until this week, Jayne Peters was the kind of person I have always envied, held in awe and maybe even – in a craven and jealous sense – feared a little bit.We never met, but as women of roughly commensurate age, education and background, we were, in a general sense, sisters: white-collar baby boomers, comfortable habitués of upper-middlebrow American culture, poised to take advantage of the breaches in gender barriers that gave women of our generation more options than our own mothers enjoyed.
...Yet, she seemed to belong to an elite sorority I have never entirely understood, the superwomen who effortlessly juggle family, career and civic involvement.
Further vomit ensues but you get the idea. Now transpose the murder-suicide to a white trash trailer park or to the black projects of south Dallas. One wonders if the sympathy would be the same. I know which way I would bet. Criminals tend to cover for one another.
I also heard Ralph Strangis, popular play-by-play guy for the Dallas Stars hockey team, speak about this on the radio. As a fellow Coppell resident he said the true tragedy was that the mayor was a popular person, and had she reached out for help it would have flowed in from all quarters. Sometimes, when we separate ourselves from reality, it's not hell we're avoiding, but heaven.
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