Cold-blooded dad gets double life sentence for murders of 4-year-old daughter, 7-year-old son (King William's Town, South Africa)

Once again, we have a sociopathic abuser dad--in this case PETER SHAW--who murdered his two children in order to "punish" their mother for "resisting his control." All too characteristically, this @$$ is framing himself as the True Victim in all this. Typical abuser delusional sh**.....

http://www.weekendpost.co.za/article.aspx?id=616200

Cold-blooded dad gets double life sentence

2010/10/18
Yolandé Stander WEEKEND POST REPORTER standeryo@avusa.co.za


CONVICTED King William’s Town child murderer Peter Shaw, 37, received a double life sentence yesterday for hanging his two young children from a doorway in their home in what Judge Jeremy Pickering called “a callous, cold- blooded and despicable” deed.

“The accused used his children as pawns to be sacrificed in his battle with his wife,” Pickering said during sentencing in the Grahamstown High Court yesterday.

On Good Friday last year Shaw – who is now divorced and whose marriage was falling apart at the time – took his daughter Robyn, 4, and son Shannon, 7, from their beds and hanged them by a rope in the doorways of their adjacent bedrooms. The horrific murders happened in the Shaw family home in Breidbach, King William’s Town.

Shaw tried to commit suicide afterwards, but failed. And, while he admitted that only he could have killed the children, he claimed he did not remember the murders.

Medical testimony during the trial suggested the children had not been sedated prior to their deaths.

Pickering said yesterday Shaw had hanged his two children to punish his wife, Tania, for resisting his control. “It is difficult to imagine a more callous, cold-blooded and despicable deed,” Pickering said.

“He now says it should be remembered that he, too, was suffering the loss of his children and that people did not realise how hard this was for him. That he was the cause of the deaths of two innocent children appears to have escaped him entirely in his hypocritical attempts to portray himself as one of the victims.

“His evidence in this regard is once again a striking illustration of his utter self-absorption.”

Pickering also said that by his conduct Shaw had devastated the lives of the rest of the family.

He referred to testimony in mitigation on behalf of Shaw, which suggested that the children would at least have died a relatively quick and painless death. According to the medical evidence they would have suffered only a short period of convulsions before the cut-off of oxygen to their brains caused them to become comatose.

“This submission overlooks and ignores the bewildered terror they must have experienced when ... their supposedly loving father and protector proceeded to hang them. It is not difficult to imagine the even greater terror which must have been experienced by the child who was the second to be hanged upon seeing the body of his or her sibling, and upon realising what fate lay ahead.”

Pickering said only one sentence would be appropriate on each of the two counts of murder “and that is a sentence of life imprisonment”.

Correctional Services has yet to decide where Shaw will serve his sentence.