Here’s another father apparently murdered by his ex-wife (WSAZ, 4/28/11).
The facts are still out on this one, but Crystal Seigler Clark has turned herself in to Mingo County, West Virginia Sheriff’s deputies and her daughter Chloe has been placed with West Virginia Child Protective Services. Police believe Clark shot her husband, David Clark to death.
His body was found inside his house in Varney, West Virginia on April 25th Crystal meanwhile had fled with Chloe to Tennessee, but later called to let officers know where she was. She was picked up by U.S. Marshalls and has waived extradition to West Virginia.
Police connect the shooting to the custody battle over Chloe that was just heating up at the time of David’s death. The two seem to have been separated and had joint custody, but conflict had developed over custody of the little girl.
Deputies are charging Seigler with David Clark’s murder and they also suspect she abducted Chloe, so an amber alert was sent out Tuesday night. They say the two parents had joint custody of the child, but at least one of them was trying to change that.
“I think they was having a little bit of trouble, and we believe a custody battle was about ready to get started,’ Chief James Smith with the Mingo County Sheriff”s Office said.
We’ll learn more about this case in the near future, but for now a couple of things occur. First, the article linked to is actually a series of short pieces that take the story as it was first reported and develop it over several days as facts come in. In all there are some six separate pieces and one goes into some detail about the trauma faced by Crystal’s father as he worried about both his daughter and granddaughter.
Interestingly though, from reading the pieces, you’d think David Clark had come to earth from a galaxy far, far away. In six pieces filed on three separate days, not one gives any background on David Clark. Does he too have parents? Siblings? Neighbors? What do they say about him? Was he a good man? An ogre?
Why is the deceased a non-person in this story?
And speaking of ogres, I suspect that’s what Crystal will try to make him out to be over the next few months. Will it be domestic violence or child abuse? Dead men tell no tales, so David won’t be able to rebut anything she says.
And speaking of domestic violence, note that none of the pieces describes this killing as such. Of course we don’t know yet who killed David Clark, but police sure have their ideas. And it’s likely not just a coincidence that Crystal took the child and fled the state on the same day he was killed.
So it’s noteworthy that no article has yet described this as domestic violence and no DV victim’s advocacy group has said ‘peep’ about it.
I of course know nothing about either Crystal or David. He may have been the devil incarnate for all I know. But the recent trashing of a decent man, Jean Pierre, whose wife drowned herself and his three children in the Hudson River a couple of weeks ago, has me a bit gunshy.
Pierre, you’ll recall has been all but convicted of murder by a media that are far too ready to find fault with a dad, the better to obscure who the real killer was – the mother, LaShanda Armstrong.
If Crystal Seigler Clark is smart at all, she’ll play on that same anti-dad sentiment. It may be her best hope of staying out of prison.