Murder in a Small Town - Update

This morning I received an e-mail from a friend of the family torn apart by the events of Monday morning, on which I first blogged here. I believe the writer's view should be shared, and I am doing so with his consent. The family name has been deleted. You can find it in newspaper articles, but I have no wish to show up in Google searches about the incidents any more than necessary.

As a longtime friend of the F---- family, I am obligated to tell you that your written words could not be further from the truth about T-- F----. You don't know T--, his family, or his life story, so please do not be disrespectful and presumptuous by placing this tragedy in a neat and tidy box for the sake of punctuating your view points. He was a simple, down to earth man of no pretense. No designer clothes, no fancy cars, no luxury lifestyle to allude to. His shore house was purchase for $150,000 hard earned dollars many years ago and had only been on the market for 2 weeks. Hardly enough time to conclude a "soft market" was doomed to ruin him. He understood his business was at the end of it's cycle and had been involved in plans to change careers. He was street smart and came from no money. He was not afraid nor ashamed to downsize. Many close to this family belive foul play will be found somewhere in the crime scene. Some one else must have been in the house that morning and caused this horrible event. This was not the result of a man who "snapped" over finances.

I am sorry that this person, and anyone else who knows this family and read this or my original posting, felt I was being disrespectful, and I apologize if that's how it came across. That was not my intent, and as someone who has dealt with a similar situation in my life, I should have shown more sensitivity. Apparently more people read this blog than I thought, including people in the geographical vicinity.

I can't decide whether I hope this person is correct or not. As I learned long ago when a churchgoing man who lived in a big white house in a prestigious part of town killed his family and disappeared for 18 years, and realized again years later when a friend of my own family died from complications from alcoholism -- and we never even knew the friend drank -- you never really know what goes on behind the doors of the homes of even your closest friends. I understand the need to not believe anyone you know capable of such an act of violence. But if the writer is correct, then there is someone very nasty running around Bergen County and the police are so far barking up the wrong tree. There is enough about this case that sounds odd that I'm just not sure what the truth is, nor am I convinced we will ever know.