Parente Case Profiled In New Book

Journalist Mary Papenfuss spotlights fathers who kill their families in her book, Killer Dads, which chronicles five cases where families have perished at the hands of the patriarch, including the Parente family of Garden City.

In 2009, the bodies of Stephanie Parente, 19, her sister, Catherine Parente, 11, and their parents, William Parente, 59, and Betty Parente, 58, were discovered inside a hotel room in Maryland.

According to police it is believed that Betty's husband killed the three and himself in a murder-suicide while the family was visiting Stephanie Parente at Loyola University.

Papenfuss will host a book reading at Barnes & Noble in Manhattan this Thursday. Ten percent of book sales proceeds will be donated to the Loyola University scholarship founded by classmates of victim Stephanie Parente. 

The heinous murder took a toll on the entire community. Betty was an admired wife, mother and volunteer. Their daughters had many friends and were fully involved in the fabric of the community. Bill Parente, on all accounts, was an upstanding citizen and attorney who doted on his family. 

What went wrong? Papenfuss reveals a trail of deception and a Ponzi-like scheme regarding Parente’s business.

Papenfuss, who covered the Scott Peterson trial, set out to raise awareness. According to researchers, about 250 to 300 children are murdered by their parents each year.

“I felt the need to speak out about these crimes,” Papenfuss said. “America seems to overlook these cases. Something has to be done; we need to study this behavior.”

Interviews with Betty Parentes’ friends did not indicate a sign of abuse.

Neil Websdale, a professor at Northern Arizona University, has conducted the most detailed study of family annihilations. According to Websdale, Parente was more typical among his “genre” of family annihilators. For males they experience acute shame at failing to live up to their calling as providers.

In a study conducted by Phillip Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, most parents who kill their children are not “insane.” Desperation in a “unique and seemingly inescapable situation” is cited as one of the main reasons for filicide.

The severity of the crime is still difficult and for many impossible to comprehend.

Papenfuss feels a lack of answers as well, as she explains in her book: “I assumed when I got to the end of my book some solutions to the problem of fathers killing children would be obvious. They weren’t. I set out to gather facts I could on the killings, assuming the information would unlock the key to motivations and mechanism toward murder. They didn’t. In some cases I was convinced I got to the 'bottom' of a crime, but, just as I did during the lonely night I spent in the hotel room where William Parente killed his family, I found nothing but emptiness.”

The Manhattan Barnes & Noble is located at 83rd & Broadway. The book reading begins at 7 p.m. For further information regarding the Loyola Scholarship contact Amanda Robinson at arrobinson@loyola.edu.