WILLISTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont’s homicide count is on course to match the record levels that were set last year. It comes as two recent cases of parricide, or killing ones parents, begin to wind through the court system.
Twenty-nine-year-old Jordan Lawyer was back in a Franklin County courtroom Wednesday, just over two weeks after he was arrested for murdering his father.
Prosecutors showed a video interview of Lawyer’s mother, Robin, speaking to police about the incident at their Enosburgh home. “I got in-between and told him to stop, leave him alone. He just had that look on his face. I know that look. Jordan was not there, something bad was there,” she said in the video.
Experts say cases where defendants kill family members often underscore mental illness. “The assumption, if you are having conflict with your family and you’re an adult, you can sever that contact. In general, the younger the paricide offender or the older the paricide offender is, we question mental illness,” said Penny Shtull, a criminology professor at Norwich University.
Similarly in Pawlet, where Brian Crossman is accused of shooting and killing three family members last month. Court paperwork shows the suspects in both cases have a history of mental health issues and had sought in-patient treatment.
The five deaths in those two murder cases bring the total for the year to 19, putting Vermont on pace to equal last year’s total of 27, which was the highest in three decades. And that was after a similarly high total of 25 murders in 2022.
Shtull says much of that higher trend has been fueled by drug-related killings. “We are mirroring the rest of the country in terms of gun-related homicides, homicides arising out of disputes, or drug-related disputes. In that case, it’s very much the same,” she said.
Further examination of the data shows more than 80 percent of the homicides this year were committed by men, which Shtull says is on par with national crime rates. Police have been successful at catching the killers, with just one of this year’s cases remaining unsolved.
Jordan Lawyer is in the custody of the Department of Mental Health. Judge Allison Arms on Wednesday said she will be issuing a decision on whether to continue to hold him without bail. His next hearing has not been scheduled.