DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Forest Hills, Queens, New York - 1980)

Regular Dastardly readers will notice that I'm on a total history binge today. So if you are not a history fan, you will just have to bear with me for a while.

After seeing this case from 1980, I'm wondering when the earliest father-committed homicides related to child "visitation" might have been. (Since fathers routinely received full custody until around the 1920s, it's impossible to say when the earliest murders by custodial fathers might have occurred.) I imagine these killings started as soon as "joint custody" and "visitation" came into legal existence, especially as joint custody/visitation was granted to increasingly "iffy" fathers--like this fellow.

In this case, dad VALENTINO DONATELLI murdered his 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son while "exercising his visitation rights." Seems this unemployed daddy--who was on disability for "emotional problems"--took his kids to a motel and shot them both in the head. Of course, he then offed himself. Horrible.

Have the family courts learned nothing in the last 30 years?

From the New York Times, May 12, 1980

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70F16F9385C12728DDDAB0994DD405B8084F1D3

Man Kills Himself and 2 Children

A divorced man picked up his 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son Saturday in Forest Hills, Queens, took them to a motel room in Astoria and killed them and himself with single shots to the head, the police said yesterday.

The man, Valentino Donatelli, exercising his visitation rights, picked up the children, Claudia and Marco, about 11 A. M. They were to be returned to their mother, Maria Theresa Cohn, two or three hours later, in time to attend the baptism of a relative.

The bodies of the children and their 35-year-old father were found at 1:15 P.M. yesterday in the Westway Motel at 71-11 Astoria Boulevard, the police said. Mr. Donatelli and his son were in the bedroom and the daughter was in the bathroom.

When the children were not brought home, a search was organized by their stepfather, Mitchell Cohn, and another family member. They called the police after finding Mr. Donatelli's car in the motel parking lot.

Detective Robert Gabriel of the 114th Precinct said Mr. Donatelli had received "a medical discharge involving emotional problems" from the Marine Corps in 1962 and was unemployed and receiving disability payments. According to his ex-wife, he had never threatened his family, Detective Gabriel said.

A Westway Motel spokesman said no one had seen the children arrive. Calling Mr. Donatelli "kind of a steady customer--he'd been here several times," he described him as "a very low-key kind of person."