Prepare yourself, folks. This story does not have a happy ending.

A mother who was going through an acrimonious divorce and custody battle walked into a living nightmare when she discovered that her estranged husband had murdered their twin daughters before committing suicide back in 2012. There are few things in this world more devastating than a parent losing a child; especially when the cause of death is filicide. For reference, filicide means the deliberate act of a parent killing their own child(ren).

Robert King, the girls’ father, allegedly affixed flexible tubing to his van and snaked it into the bedroom where three-year-old twin daughters, Caroline and Madison, were resting. After he did this, he cut both of their throats before turning the knife on himself.

Virginia police stated that they received a call from the girls’ mother, Kristina Hooper, after she ventured to the home when she was unable to reach her estranged husband via telephone. When police arrived, they found Kristina weeping on her knees at the end of the driveway. She then told the police, “My babies are dead, they’re in the house.”

King and his daughters died due to carbon monoxide poisoning and the trauma inflicted to their necks, as reported by the Hanover County chief medical examiner.

King is actually the party that filed for divorce, claiming that his wife had “abandoned” the family a month prior. However, Hooper has a different story. She claims that King’s kleptomania, paranoia and verbal abuse were the reasons their marriage unraveled. In fact, the divorce decree cites that the separation was due to a decline in King’s mental health which “created living conditions which were intolerable and constituted constructive desertion and cruelty.”

Despite all of that, a family friend assured reporters that there were no “red flags” concerning King’s intentions or behavior. The friend, Nathan Cox, said, “You don’t take something from someone that’s not yours…and in this case, he took two lives that weren’t his.”

This gruesome case was not an easy one for the police officers, either. Sargent Chris Whitely, who responded to the call from Hooper, stated that, “I don’t know if there’s any training that can prepare you for an incident of this sort.”

Some of you may be wondering why I am writing an article about a tragedy that happened more than two years ago. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about a man running the Twitter account @HelpSpreadThis. Steve’s main mission with this campaign is to bring awareness to all of the abuse inflicted upon our children, and he brought Kristina’s story to my attention. Just because Caroline and Madison left their earthly bodies years ago does not mean that their story is any less important now. In fact, it’s crucial to remember these sweet angels and others like them. Otherwise, how will real change ever take place?

I intend to reach out to Kristina and see if she’s willing to answer some questions for us so we can see what she’s been doing since her children were stolen from her. As a mother of two little girls myself, the fact that she’s functional seems downright miraculous to me. What a brave and inspiring woman she is. And what a damn shame that she had to discover just how strong she was by losing her beloved daughters to a psychopath.

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