Nature versus nurture, genetics or environment.
It’s long been a debate among scientists — which exerts a greater influence on human behaviour. Are our personality and behaviour traits set into our DNA, or are we the product of our circumstances, with our behaviour influenced more by what we learn, by what we are exposed to in our lives?
That debate came up again in my mind with the recent revelations that one of the two teenaged boys convicted of the brutal rape and slaying of Kimberly Proctor in Victoria is the son of another murderer.
The father of Kruse Wellwood is Robert Raymond Dezwaan, who, in 2001, sexually assaulted Cherish Billy Oppenheim, 16, in Merritt and then beat her to death, leaving her badly damaged body covered with rocks and debris off a deserted road.
When I read of the connection, shivers went down my spine because earlier in my career, I was one of the reporters who covered Dezwaan’s sentencing hearing after he suddenly decided to plead guilty to second-degree murder.
In 2003, I went to our sister paper, the Merritt Herald, for a few weeks to fill in as they searched for a new editor. Unexpectedly, I found myself driving to Kamloops to cover the sentencing hearing in a case that had scarred the whole community. Even as an outsider with no emotional connection to the case, the experience was terrible. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote that day, quoting the victim’s mother, Shelley Oppenheim Lacerte:
“‘Our baby girl, our angel. I can’t believe she has been stolen from us,’ she sobbed, at one point losing her composure altogether. She put her hand to her forehead and the wail she uttered was raw pain. The cry chilled those gathered in the courtroom with its anguish. Family, lawyers and news reporters cried themselves — even RCMP members had tears welling up in their eyes.”
Even now, I cannot forget the wails from a grieving mother whose daughter was so brutalized in her final hours of life. I didn’t sleep well the night after the sentencing.
I wrote with a frenzy, as though trying to rid myself of the horrific testimony, the knowledge that another human being could inflict such pain, as the judge pointed out, for no reason at all.
But it didn’t go away easily.
Now, the son of that man has committed an eerily similar crime, raping and killing another innocent teenaged girl, desecrating her body and dumping it on a trail bridge.
And I wonder, is there a killer gene? Is Wellwood’s psychopathic behaviour somehow inborn? Or did the actions of the father somehow contribute to twisting Wellwood’s development? Psychiatrists noted both teens involved in Proctor’s killing were at a high risk to re-offend and that rehabilitation is unrealistic.
The connection of son to father seems just too pronounced to ignore, too sick and twisted to set aside.
I didn’t sleep well again last night.
-Tracy Hughes is the editor of the Salmon Arm Observer