Hardback (Introduction, excerpt): The deliberate, calculated, serial execution of all family members by one of the children is an extremely rare crime termed parricidal familicide, that represents less than 1 percent of all homicides in the world. Survived By One: The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer, published on 6 August 2013, is the true story of one such unconscionable act.
Blurb: On 8 November 1985, five members of the Odle family - parents, Robert and Carolyn, each approximately thirty-nine, Robyn, fourteen, Sean, thirteen, and Scott, ten - were brutally murdered in their home in Mt Vernon, a small town in Southern Illinois, sending shockwaves throughout the nation.
The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in US history.
The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in US history.
Tom Odle, the eldest son and only surviving member of the family, was charged with the murders the following day. He was eighteen years old. His capital murder trial revealed that his mother, Carolyn Odle, dominated the household and was a controlling, manipulative and emotionally detached woman with a penchant for corporal punishment, mostly tormenting him and his brother, Sean. His father idly stood by and did nothing to defend them.
Although she was considered an upstanding member of the community and was president of the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) at her children's elementary school, the trial exposed the complex "correlation between the public persona and the private life of the maternal target." It also revealed "a dynamic within the Odle household that is typical of dysfunctional families with an abusive element."
The court would learn that Tom's core motive for the mass murder of the entire Odle family was to kill his mother, Carolyn.
Although she was considered an upstanding member of the community and was president of the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO) at her children's elementary school, the trial exposed the complex "correlation between the public persona and the private life of the maternal target." It also revealed "a dynamic within the Odle household that is typical of dysfunctional families with an abusive element."
The court would learn that Tom's core motive for the mass murder of the entire Odle family was to kill his mother, Carolyn.
Tom was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death at the age of nineteen - the youngest death-row inmate in the Illinois prison system - and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life.
On 11 January 2003, in response to the growing number of death-row prisoners who had been exonerated due to wrongful convictions, Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the death penalty of all death-row inmates in Illinois, and ultimately changed Tom's sentence to natural life without parole.
The commutation of his death sentence was an epiphany for Tom. Prior to the commutation, Tom lived in denial, repressing any feelings about his family and his horrible crime. Following the commutation and the removal of the weight of eventual execution, he was confronted with an unfamiliar reality: a future.
As a result, he realized that he needed to understand why he murdered his family. He reached out to Dr Robert Hanlon, a neuropsychologist who had examined him in the past. Dr Hanlon engaged him in a therapeutic process of introspection and self-reflection, which became the basis of their collaboration on this book.
Dr Hanlon tells a gripping story of Tom's life as an abused child, the life experiences that formed his personality, and his tragic homicidal escalation to mass murder, seamlessly weaving into the narrative Tom's unadorned reflections on his childhood, finding a new family on death row and his belief in the powers of redemption.
As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the United States, Survived By One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur. However, Survived By One also offers a never-before-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.
Tom said in an interview in 2009, "You can't just put people in cells and leave them. You've got to get them educated. Educated people make educated decisions. So if you send an educated person back to the world, he's going to make educated decisions and hopefully, be educated enough that he won't land in the penitentiary again." Tom is the first and only former death-row inmate among the 167 death-row inmates whose sentences were commuted to achieved a college degree.
On 9 March 2011, the death penalty was abolished in the State of Illinois.
In 2012, Tom was transferred to the Dixon Correctional Center of the Illinois Department of Corrections and has remained there since. He said, "My story could be used as a teaching tool if someone else comes down this road, if they feel this is the only thing they have left. Options. When you're young and you get involved in drugs, you are really not aware of the world. Life is so narrow, and you're not really thinking about tomorrow or looking for opportunities. You think, 'I've got to resolve this right here, right now.' It's a little picture compared to the big picture. Be proud of it cause it's the only one you get."
What lessons can we derive from Tom's story? Reverend Gary Fore's address is perhaps worth thinking about. He said, "If one child passes through here and figures alcohol and drugs are really not the fun they figure them to be, that they're really not worth it compared to the pain they bring..." and perhaps his most salient point, "If one parent passes through here and realizes that choosing up sides and being abusive to each other in the family is not healthy...then these (the Odles) have not died in vain."
The biggest factor in the shaping of a potential family killer is a history of childhood abuse. "It's hard not to overstress that," said Dr Hanlon.
Tom receives no financial compensation for his contribution to this book.
Tom said in an interview in 2009, "You can't just put people in cells and leave them. You've got to get them educated. Educated people make educated decisions. So if you send an educated person back to the world, he's going to make educated decisions and hopefully, be educated enough that he won't land in the penitentiary again." Tom is the first and only former death-row inmate among the 167 death-row inmates whose sentences were commuted to achieved a college degree.
On 9 March 2011, the death penalty was abolished in the State of Illinois.
In 2012, Tom was transferred to the Dixon Correctional Center of the Illinois Department of Corrections and has remained there since. He said, "My story could be used as a teaching tool if someone else comes down this road, if they feel this is the only thing they have left. Options. When you're young and you get involved in drugs, you are really not aware of the world. Life is so narrow, and you're not really thinking about tomorrow or looking for opportunities. You think, 'I've got to resolve this right here, right now.' It's a little picture compared to the big picture. Be proud of it cause it's the only one you get."
What lessons can we derive from Tom's story? Reverend Gary Fore's address is perhaps worth thinking about. He said, "If one child passes through here and figures alcohol and drugs are really not the fun they figure them to be, that they're really not worth it compared to the pain they bring..." and perhaps his most salient point, "If one parent passes through here and realizes that choosing up sides and being abusive to each other in the family is not healthy...then these (the Odles) have not died in vain."
The biggest factor in the shaping of a potential family killer is a history of childhood abuse. "It's hard not to overstress that," said Dr Hanlon.
Tom receives no financial compensation for his contribution to this book.
About the author: Robert E Hanlon, PhD, is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist with a specialization in forensic neuropsychology and is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry and clinical neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg of Medicine in Chicago. He has more than twenty-five years of experience as a forensic expert, evaluating hundreds of murder defendants and death-row inmates and testifying in many murder trials. His publications include more than thirty articles and chapters in professional journals and textbooks.
About Thomas V Odle: Odle is an inmate at the Dixon Correctional Center, Illinois Department of Corrections. In 1986 at the age of nineteen, Odle was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the mass murder of his family. Odle has spent his entire adult life in maximum-security prisons, including seventeen years on death row. In 2003 the governor of Illinois commuted Odle's death sentence to natural life.
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