That Time My Son Got Sucked into the Criminal Justice System

Luigi Mangione's Mom and I Have Something in Common

Trigger warning: discussions of suicide. If this is upsetting to you, feel free to stop reading now.

Luigi Mangione’s mom and I have something in common: Both of our sons got caught up in the criminal justice system.

The experience was (understandably) jarring, and was during the last horrible stretch of my son Kyle’s life, before his suicide in April 2021.

It would take a whole ‘nother post, but Kyle tried to kill himself many different ways before he finally did it. But near the end of the seven-year long stretch between 2014, when his attempts began, and 2021, he decided to make a “suicide mission,” perhaps his idea of going out with a bang — literally. He planned to travel to Florida, meet with a friend who had agreed to “dance on the beach with him,” and then shoot each other in the head. (I know; I don’t even want to try to parse the logistics of that).

(They had met on a forum for people to discuss suicide and get support — a forum I will not name, because it keeps getting shut down — the Internet powers that be decided people should not be able to discuss this online, even though those people have given up discussing it with people they know, who tell them to take a walk).

However, his plan went awry. He had taken one of my credit cards, and one of our cars, a Toyota RAV4, and headed down south from our home in Alexandria, Virginia. He stopped for gas in North Carolina, and, having never bought gas for a car before (he’d only driven a little at that point), accidentally put diesel fuel into the engine.

Then he was apprehended at the gas station by the police, because we had called them after we discovered him missing. It’s hard to call the police on your own son, but we were of course worried he had run off to off himself, as he had done many times before. But never by stealing one of our cars and driving somewhere.

Kyle was then put in jail for approximately two weeks in the North Carolina jurisdiction where he was caught.

He was placed in a single-man cell, as they knew of his mental health issues, and he was on suicide watch. We were not able to talk with him on the phone, but at some point (forgive me but I don’t remember how this wound up happening) I spoke on the phone to another inmate, a friendly young guy who claimed Kyle was doing Ok but he was talking him down from freaking out. He suggested some food and snacks we could purchase for Kyle’s jail canteen, as it were.

My daughter cautioned me that the guy could be scamming us, but he sounded so earnest and concerned for Kyle, I figured $25 was not too much to lose if I was wrong.

Kyle was extradited to Virginia, where we picked him up and brought him home. He had little to say, as usual. His outward appearance was wonderful though. He was in perfect shape, his hair had grown out to a healthy length (he had shaved his head some months back because his psoriasis was bothering him).

Exhausting and depressing schleps to the Fairfax County Virginia courthouse ensued. The judge could see Kyle had serious mental health issues and ordered him into a residential treatment program.

Another treatment. Another period of no progress. More drugs thrown at him (never were newer treatment options such as TMS and ketamine suggested to us).

We eventually picked up Kyle from the program and brought him home. He had one last try at life. He took a job at a Safeway nearby which I drove him to. I remember looking down at his arms in the car and seeing some red marks. I shuddered. I was broken inside at that point and each new horror felt like more paint thrown at an already soaked Jackson Pollock.

Later we found out he never received his canteen food.

And after Kyle died, very few people showed up for us.

Any illusions I had about people being basically good were suspended. Maybe a lot of people were mostly good, but there were some real shitbags out there. That was the harsh truth. You either accepted that or you got steamrolled over in life.

Rather, “people are a mix of good and bad,” as Barack Obama said when former DC Mayor Marion Barry was implicated in a scandal. This was true for that young man, Kyle, me, you, Adolf Hitler, and Mother Teresa.

And yet, accepting that some people did evil, were evil, does not have to mean you have no hope for humanity.

Anne Frank wrote, “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

Would Anne Frank have written that when she was dying of typhus in Bergen-Belsen? We’ll never know.