Ken Ventanilla still wears his wife’s engagement ring and wedding band on a chain around his neck and can’t forget the day he woke up and she and their son were gone.
Ventanilla tells the Press Telegram that whenever his wife Charlene would take off rings off before a shower, he would grab them and hide them. It was a joke among the couple and Ken would do this so he could have the chance to slip the kings back on his wife’s finger.
“The experience with her not only as a wife but as a mother to my two boys, I can’t even ask for anymore. She was the best,” Ken said. “That’s why, until this day, I feel like I’m just going to wake up, like this is not real. She was the most unexpected person that something like this would ever happen to.”
On the morning of September 13, 2016, Ken awoke to find Charlene and baby Shane stabbed to death in the couple’s Long Beach, California home. Ken remembers all the gory details, saying, ““And I stared at the bed thinking, ‘OK they’re asleep, but why is there all this juice spilled on the bed?’ It looked like it was cranberry juice or something on the bed. It just wasn’t sinking in.”
After hoping this gruesome sight was a terrible dream, Ken accepted the reality that his wife had killed their newborn baby and then herself. Charlene was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she stabbed Shane and then turned the knife on herself.
Ken explains that up until last week he wasn’t ready to tell his wife’s story publicly, but now Ken wants to dispel any rumors that Charlene didn’t love her family. In the days before she killed Shane, Ken describes that his wife became increasingly paranoid.
She became obsessed with Shane and his older brother Vincent’s health, and she’d put her hand on their forehead to feel their temperature, even though they were both well. Charlene’s paranoia would peak in the early hours, and Ken became so worried that he moved the boys out of their bedroom and had the entire family sleep together in the living room. “I guess I was fearful,” Ken said.
“I immediately had an eerie feeling that moment,” Ken said. “And I call out her name. ‘Charlene. Charlene.’ She doesn’t respond.” Ken believes his wife was suffering from postpartum psychosis, and although rare, about one in every 1,000 women will experience it after giving birth.
It is believed that Charlene became so disconnected that she felt as if an outside power was controlling their movements and that killing her child was her best course of action. Ken is sharing his family’s story in hopes to help other women experiencing postpartum depression or psychosis.
Do you know anyone who has experienced either of these horrible conditions?
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[Featured Image Credit: Press Telegram]
Husband Shares The Chilling Details Of Why His Wife Killed Their Baby And Herself is an article from: LifeDaily