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A horrific case out of Mandan, North Dakota, is raising questions that should sound painfully familiar by now.
Twenty-two-year-old Kailey Erhart has been charged with murdering two of her children and attempting to murder a third. According to court documents, Erhart was captured on video holding a pistol and telling her husband, “Say goodbye to your kids,” before the unthinkable unfolded.
Police responding to the home found a scene that would haunt anyone for a lifetime. Officers say Erhart, covered in blood, was holding a knife to her own throat and demanding that police kill her. Inside the home, they found three children suffering from severe neck wounds. A 1-year-old survived after emergency surgery. A 5-month-old and a 3-year-old did not.
According to investigators, Erhart later told police she remembered placing the children on a bed after their throats had already been cut. She also reportedly said she could not remember everything that happened.
The details become even more troubling when viewed through the lens of what happened before the killings.
Court records indicate that Erhart's husband had previously contacted mental health services because she had threatened both herself and the children. She had recently been committed to a psychiatric facility and was taking medication. Despite those concerns, she had been cleared to be around her children.
That last fact should make every parent stop and think.
Whenever a tragedy like this occurs, we are immediately told that we need to have a serious conversation about mental health. Then the conversation usually lasts about fifteen minutes before everyone returns to arguing about politics on social media. Meanwhile, families are left trying to understand how someone with documented mental health struggles and prior threats against her children was nevertheless deemed safe enough to return home.
The case also arrives while Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy is standing trial for the deaths of her three children. Clancy admitted to killing the children before attempting suicide herself. Supporters have rallied around her defense, raising substantial sums of money and arguing that mental illness was the driving factor behind the murders.
The Clancy case has produced a strange cultural divide. When fathers commit acts of violence against their children, public sympathy tends to be scarce. When mothers do it, many activists immediately begin searching for systemic explanations, social failures, inadequate support networks, and medical complications.
Mental illness is real. Postpartum disorders are real. But so are dead children.
The difficult question is whether our institutions are actually getting better at identifying truly dangerous situations or whether they have become so afraid of making the wrong call that they routinely ignore glaring warning signs until it's too late.
In North Dakota, a father reportedly warned authorities. Mental health professionals were involved. Medication was prescribed. Hospitalization occurred. Yet two children are dead and another barely survived.
At some point, society has to ask whether the system's definition of "safe" bears any resemblance to reality.
Because for the families burying children, explanations offered after the fact are little comfort. The warnings existed before the tragedy. The intervention existed before the tragedy. The professionals were involved before the tragedy.
And still, the tragedy happened.
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