As you may notice one of my pictures on here and a couple in my dicription are  of Stephanie and Ashley Daubs...... well I went to school with them and they were killed in a car accedent May 29th, 2006....



Newpaper Reports About Stephanie and Ashley

May 29, 2006
Three years ago, Ashley Daubs, 15, -- a Clarke Road student -- and her sister, Stephanie, 12, were killed when their father, John Daubs, purposely drove his car into a dump truck. Police called the crash a double murder-suicide.

A debate over release conditions has been simmering in London after the deaths of Ashley Daubs, 15, and her sister Stephanie, 12, in a car driven by their father John Daubs, 49, on May 29 on Clarke Road. London police confirmed this week they believe John Daubs intentionally drove his car into a dump truck. Daubs was charged in March with uttering death threats against his wife, Debbie, between Dec. 1 and March 21.
Police released Daubs with an order restricting his contact with his estranged wife. There were no provisions about access to his children, even though they were the witnesses to the death threats and, said sources, called police. London police will not answer questions about the risk assessment done when Daubs was charged.
Ashley Daubs, 15 and Stephanie Daubs, 12. Ashley and Stephanie were killed when, according to police, their father intentional swerved into a head-on collision with a dump truck, killing all three of them. Police first thought the collision was an accident but later changed their assessment in the light of additional evidence. John Daubs had been charged with uttering threats against his estranged wife, Debbie, the mother of the girls, and had been ordered to stay away from her. (May 2006)

John Daubs drove his car half a kilometre from his trailer to the campground entrance, where a sign warned of a danger farther on -- dump trucks on the road.

"I think his mind just gave up." -- A longtime friend of John Daubs


Daubs then wound his way through Fanshawe Park Conservation Area another 1.9 kilometres to Clarke Road.

As soon as he turned north in his 1981 Chevrolet Citation, he passed the sign putting the speed limit up to 80 kilometres an hour.

About one kilometre north, his vehicle swerved suddenly into the path of a dump truck.

Just after 7 p.m., on May 29, John Daubs was killed. So were his daughters in the car, Ashley, 15, and Stephanie, 12.

The severity of the collision, the suddenness of the swerve on a dry, clear road, the existence of a suicide note and death threats against his estranged wife led police to a working theory Daubs killed himself and his daughters.

No one knows what went through his mind in the few kilometres before the collision.

In fact, in the single moment of the shocking deaths, it became apparent no one really knew John Daubs in life at all.

"I think his mind just gave up," says a longtime friend.

Says another woman, Tina Mowry: "I've actually been thinking the last couple of days, I am lucky he didn't come around with a gun and shoot me first. He did that to his kids. (Why) wouldn't he do this to us?"

In those two reactions lies the central question of what was inside John Daubs's mind.

Was he mentally ill, perhaps so depressed he lost touch with reality and killed his beloved daughters?

Or was he just a mean, controlling, violent man who took this daughters' lives to seek revenge on his estranged wife?

After The Free Press published comments by a suicide expert, advocates against women abuse criticized attempts to link the deaths of the Daubs girls to mental illness.

"Mental illness is never a cause of domestic violence," said Megan Walker, executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre.

"It is all about power and control," said Kate Wiggins, executive director of Women's Community House.

Mowry would buy that theory.

A longtime resident of a Dundas Street trailer park Daubs managed, she knows the violent and controlling side of John Daubs.

When she and her husband moved in eight years ago, they got along fine with Daubs. Then about two years ago, he started to change. He began visiting a trailer that was notorious for drug abuse. Mowry says she and others complained about the wild parties in the trailer, but Daubs told her it was under control.

"What he was doing in there, I do not know."

Daubs had his favourites in the park who could do no wrong.

Mowry and Daubs, however, clashed over upkeep of the park and trailers. Last August, things heated up. Mowry needed rocks dumped near her trailer moved.

"Shovel it out yourself," Daubs said.

"No wonder your wife and kids left you," Mowry shot back.

Daubs started swearing at her. Her husband jumped and warned Daubs to stop swearing. Daubs picked up a shovel and motioned toward the two.

Then he dropped the shovel and got back on his tractor, muttering, "Anger management, anger management, anger management."

It was clear to everyone the marriage with Debbie had been in trouble for years.

"I knew he was very controlling of Debbie. He didn't like the fact she went back to work after the girls were born. He thought she would find another man there."

Despite the run-ins, the way Daubs died shocked everyone in the park.

"It didn't surprise me he killed himself. It was a shock he took the girls," Mowry says. "They always seemed to be fine. They always rode up on the tractor with him. They were always laughing and carrying on. He was always with the girls."

He was always with the girls, one source says, because he had to control their lives, too.

How he got that way is a mystery. Most family members and friends will say little about Daubs or what he was like as a child.

"I know I am in the minority," says one of his closest friends. "I still liked John."

The elderly woman says Daubs was always ready to lend a hand, from changing an air conditioner in her trailer to giving her a drive to do chores or go on outings, all without asking for money.

But in all the time she knew him, more than 10 years, she learned little about his personal life before he became the trailer park manager. "I think he did bottle things up."

Daubs appeared to be estranged from some of his relatives.

"He had problems in his family," she says.

The friend said she often heard John verbally abuse Debbie.

"I used to give him heck and he gave me heck right back. He never got nasty with me at all, though."

Years back, stories go, Daubs was physically abusive to Debbie, but that had ended, she said.

"Debbie always gave him a lot of chances. She worked really hard to make the marriage a go."

Several months ago, they separated for the last time. The girls lived with Debbie, but saw John.

There is no record of the Daubses in family court, suggesting if custody battles were on the horizon, they had not reached court.

All of this suggests to the elderly friend that Daubs began suffering from a mental illness.

Patricia Van Egmond, mental health public educator with the Canadian Mental Health Association of London-Middlesex, stands by her suggestion mental illness could have played a role.

If Daubs spent his lifetime truly trying to control people around him, abusing those who broke ranks, a homicide/suicide suggests it was strictly violence against women, Van Egmond says.

"That's not mental illness. That is thwarted character development, when you are hungry for control. If you say, 'If I can't have her, no one will,' that is a disturbed way of thinking, but not mental illness."

But if Daubs didn't have a long history of abuse, or serious control issues, there's a chance depression and psychosis played a role.

"It may have been depression so low it became a break from reality."

Van Egmond points to the example of David Carmichael, found not criminally responsible for killing his son in a London hotel room in 2004.

Carmichael suffered from delusions brought on by his deep depression, believing his son was doomed to a living hell.

The studies of murder/suicides offer no conclusions to Daubs's actions.

Among the common factors of murder/suicide is severe depression, with a triggering event a threatened separation.

If Daubs was convicted of uttering death threats, he might have seen his daughters less.

If, as sources have suggested, Debbie had started seeing someone new, his control over her would be ending, too.

The trouble is, separation is also a triggering event in straight-up domestic murders that do not involve suicide or a hint of mental illness.

In the scientific literature on filicide-suicide -- the killing of children before killing oneself -- five motives are described.

One reason is "acute psychosis." Another is the altruistic belief by the parent he or she is saving the children from a bad life. Another is "spouse revenge suicide." Mixed in both is substance abuse.

Even Daubs's multi-page suicide note, its existence confirmed by several sources, will not hold the answer, Van Egmond says.

Suicide notes by their very nature tell a distorted view of the writer and his or her reality.

"We don't know what was going on in his mind," Van Egmond concludes.

That leaves family and friends, and the rest of us, wondering how to treat Daubs now.

A mean, selfish man?

"A lot of people are angry at him," Mowry says. "Those girls were just living their lives."

Or a troubled soul who drifted so far from reality he killed his loved ones?

That is the view the longtime friend will take.

At the girls' memorial service, she took special note of one passage in the Lord's prayer.

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."



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