Father Who Decapitated His 4-Year-Old Daughter Was Schizophrenic

John Patrick Violette, 37, of Clayton, NC, appeared to his friends and neighbors to be a loving, attentive father who doted on his family. So the whole community was horrified when the media reported that on the afternoon of January 12, Amber Violette came home from work and found the head of her 4-year-old daughter Katlin lying next to her body in the hallway, and her husband missing.

U.S. Marshals located John Violette at a hotel room in Washington, D.C. early the next morning. Authorities said he was quoting the Bible and screaming uncontrollably when they arrested him. During his initial court appearance in Smithfield, NC, Violette was impassive and unresponsive. After Violette was charged with murder, his lawyer, Robert Denning, asked a judge to send his client to the Dorothea Dix state mental hospital so psychiatrists there can do an assessment to see if he is competent to stand trial. "He doesn’t seem to grasp what’s going on," Denning said.

Denise Violette, John’s sister, told reporters that in the mid-1990s, her brother spent time at a mental hospital in California, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. "I look back and I think, ‘We should never have let him out of that place,’" Denise told The News and Observer of Raleigh, NC.

She added that she thinks the source of her brother’s mental breakdown in California were the drugs he experimented with. "I thought it all had to do with the bad choices he made," she said.

From California Violette moved to Hawaii, where Denise went to visit him. While she was there, her brother told her that men had been following him. She convinced him to move back to California, which he did, but his behavior became even more erratic and paranoid. He would hide from people who weren’t there, and one time he even attempted to jump out of a moving car his brother-in-law was driving.

After being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, John Violette was put on medication to control his emotions. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that can cause people to see and hear things and people that aren’t there. According to mental health experts, the condition can remain dormant for long periods of time, with a person seeming well adjusted and happy, and then suddenly erupt into a serious break with reality, occasionally with dramatic results.

When John Violette moved to North Carolina to live with relatives, his illness appeared to have become dormant even though he had stopped taking his medication. He met Amber Marks at his church, and eight years ago they were married. Whether Amber knew of John’s past diagnosis of schizophrenia is uncertain.

To all appearances, John Violette loved his family and his life. According to his sister, he and his family would have slumber parties in their living room, setting up tents and sleeping bags. John worked at Lowe’s Home Improvement in Clayton, and he and his wife would meet at home every day for lunch. The day before Katlin died, John had quit his job at Lowe’s, so he and his daughter were having a "daddy-daughter day" at home on Friday. Amber joined them for lunch, and then went back to work. By the time she came home that evening, her idyllic family life had been irreparably shattered.

Neighbors told investigators that Violette had left the house and come back with children’s toys piled high in his station wagon. When he got out of the car he appeared to be talking to himself. "He was mouthing something, talking to himself," said neighbor Lori McCreary. "I don’t know what he was saying. It looked like he was in a rage of some sort."

McCreary told reporters that she has been unable to stop hearing Amber Violette’s sobs. "She kept saying, ‘My baby’s dead. My baby’s dead.’" McCreary said. "We just held her."

City officials called in crisis counselors to offer assistance to emergency responders who were overwhelmed by what they saw when they arrived on the scene. EMS Capt. Marvin Parrish, one of the first people to arrive, said that it was one of the worst crime scenes he and his co-workers had ever had to see and deal with. "There’s really not words to explain what we went through," he said. "It’s pretty bad."

Denise Violette said that the ordeal has been a nightmare for the family. "Even now, I think I will wake up and this will be someone else’s family," she said. "It is so beyond understanding."