Brothers, 19 And 21 Kill Parents, Sister And Grandmother
A suspected murder-suicide has left six members of one family dead in suburban Dallas after two brothers made a pact to kill their relatives and then themselves.
One of the brothers, aged 19, detailed the deadly plan in a rambling six-page suicide note that was posted online, in which he talked at length about his years-long battle with depression and self-harm, expressed anger at the latter seasons of the TV sitcom The Office and ranted about inadequate gun control in the US.
Officers with the Allen Police Department responded to a home in the 1500 block of Pine Bluff Drive at around 1 am on Monday after receiving a call requesting a welfare check.
The call came from a friend who was concerned that someone at the home was suicidal, according to police talking to The Dallas Morning News.
The family were immigrants from Bangladesh and the local police department had no prior interactions with them.
It is believed that the massacre was carried out by the two brothers, identified by a family friend as 19-year-old Farhan Towhid and 21-year-old Tanvir Towhid, as CBS DFW first reported.
‘Apparently, two brothers made an agreement to commit suicide and ended up taking the entire family with them,’ said Allen police Sgt. Jon Felty.
The killing claimed the lives of Farhan’s twin sister Farbin Towhid, their parents Iren and Towhidul Islam, and a grandmother, 77-year-old Altafun Nessa.
She was visiting from Bangladesh and was set to go return home next month.
Farbin was a talented artist, who had a full scholarship to New York University, FOX 4 reported.
The family members were likely killed sometime on Saturday, but they were not discovered until Monday morning.
Police confirmed that Farhan, formerly a computer science student at the University of Texas at Austin, linked his lengthy suicide letter from his Instagram.
The letter, which was published through Google Docs and reviewed by DailyMail.com, begins with the words: ‘Hey everyone. I killed myself and my family. If I’m going to die, I might as well get some attention.’
He goes on to say that he was diagnosed with depression in the ninth grade, and describes in graphic detail cutting himself with school scissors and knives, until he hit a ‘breaking point’ and told his father about his struggle.
Farhan said he was put on medication, received therapy, found a good group of friends and became popular.
‘My life was perfect, but that didn’t change the fact that I was depressed,’ he writes.
‘I would still have the urges to cut myself or end up crying myself to sleep. I tried doubling my medication which worked, but only temporarily. Every solution was always temporary.’
After experiencing a breakdown earlier this year and dropping out of college, Farhan said he found himself spending much of his time watching The Office with his older brother, who he said also suffered from crippling depression, despite being a ‘genius.’
Farhan then launches into a bizarre rant about how the comedy series should have ended after the seventh season, when the character of Michael Scott, as played by Steve Carrell, exited the show, instead of continuing on for two more seasons.
Farhan writes that he and his brother continued watching The Office until February 21, when his sibling walked into his room with a proposition: ‘if we can’t fix everything in a year, we’ll kill ourselves and our family.’
Farhan explains his decision to kill his family before committing suicide by saying that were his loved ones to go on living without him, ‘they would be miserable. They would spend the rest of their lives feeling guilt, despair, and a multitude of other adjectives that mean sad.
‘Instead of having to deal with the aftermath of my suicide, I could just do them a favor and take them with me. None of us would ever have to feel sad ever again.’
He adds: ‘I love my family. I genuinely do. And that’s exactly why I decided to kill them.’
Farhan writes that the plan he and his brother hatched was simple: ‘We get two guns. I take one and shoot my sister and grandma, while my brother kills our parents with the other. Then we take ourselves out.’
He notes that because ‘gun control in the US is a joke,’ all it took for his brother to get the firearms was to go to a store and sign some forms.
‘There was a question asking if he had any mental illnesses but—get this—he lied,’ Farhan writes.
‘He literally just said no. They didn’t ask for proof or if he was taking any medication (he was). … Thanks for making the process so easy.’