The Castleton Massacre
Canadian | CBC Books | CBC News | Posted: August 17, 2022 4:05 PM | Last Updated: August 17, 2022
Margaret Carson and Sharon Anne Cook
A former United Church minister massacres his family. What led to this act of femicide, and why were his victims forgotten?
On May 2, 1963, Robert Killins, a former United Church minister, slaughtered every woman in his family but one. She (and her brother) lived to tell the story of what motivated a talented man who had been widely admired, a scholar and graduate from Queen's University, to stalk and terrorize the women in his family for almost twenty years and then murder them.
Through extensive oral histories, Cook and Carson painstakingly trace the causes of a femicide in which four women and two unborn babies were murdered over the course of one bloody evening. While they situate this murderous rampage in the literature on domestic abuse and mass murders, they also explore how the two traumatized child survivors found their way back to health and happiness. Told through vivid first-person accounts, this family memoir explores how a murderer was created. (From Dundurn Press)
On May 2, 1963, Robert Killins, a former United Church minister, slaughtered every woman in his family but one. She (and her brother) lived to tell the story of what motivated a talented man who had been widely admired, a scholar and graduate from Queen's University, to stalk and terrorize the women in his family for almost twenty years and then murder them.
Through extensive oral histories, Cook and Carson painstakingly trace the causes of a femicide in which four women and two unborn babies were murdered over the course of one bloody evening. While they situate this murderous rampage in the literature on domestic abuse and mass murders, they also explore how the two traumatized child survivors found their way back to health and happiness. Told through vivid first-person accounts, this family memoir explores how a murderer was created. (From Dundurn Press)
Sharon Anne Cook is the author and editor of 12 books on Canadian women's history. She is a professor emerita at the University of Ottawa and teaches graduate courses in the history of education. Cook lives in Ottawa.
Margaret Carson is a retired college instructor and the eldest of two children who survived the Castleton massacre. She lives in Mississippi Mills, Ont.