The Murder of The Odle Family 

That whole abused during childhood thing can go either way I guess. My parents were physically and somewhat psychologically abusive to me and my younger brother. At around 14yrs old, I realized that getting punched in the face by your father doesn't fix whatever it is he was trying to fix. I decided at that age that I wasn't going to do that to my children. And I've got 2 sons now, both adult, and I've never laid an angry hand on either of them. They grew into good men. Same goes for my brother; he has a 12yr old son who he shows nothing but love and proper parenting.

The parents were "fed up with their son and his behavior"?! Imagine how "fed up" the children felt at the abusive hands of their mother and a father who allowed it. The wording makes it sound like the parents didn't have a child taken away by CPS. This is a terrible outcome of systemic child abuse.

I'm a bit surprised that I've never heard about this case. How tragic that the cycle of abuse that began with Tom's maternal grandfather ended up destroying so many lives.

I am from Mount Vernon Illinois. I was about 10 when this happened. It was terrifying. My girlfriends were neighbors and classmates of the family members. My aunts best friend lived across the street and knocked on the door while the murders were happening.

That drawing is far too accurate for a police sketch. I've never seen one look exactly like the suspect.

How horrible! The mother was a monster and the father complicit in that terrible abuse. What wretched parents! Tom knew what he was doing but the abuse he received can be a roadmap for an ending like this. I feel bad for the other children who never had a chance.

Good one, Ash ! First of the year winner !This story hit home. My familys story is quite similar, without the murder, thank God. My mom married very young to a very nice but completely enabling man. She brought with her the abuse and inherited bi polar traits from her upbringing and her moms genes . Pop was a Boeing Aircraft career man and was gone a lot. My brother and two sisters and i survived as best we could. Sexual abuse and the whole enchilada. It's amazing to realize how great our family looked on the outside, compared to what was going on inside. A therapist heard our story once from me. She stopped me after a bit and asked, "No suicide or violence and / or prison with you siblings ?" She was stunned that there wasn't. I was stunned she asked. When it's your story, it becomes kind of "yea whatever" sometimes. I've been working with others for years now that have similar stories, mostly with the addiction issues that often result as a way of coping. Im pretty open about our story, bringing these issues out of the darkness into the light is our only hope. Thank you for presenting this families history in a perfectly balanced and kind way. You're a very skilled teller of difficult tales.

I'll never understand people who grow up with abusive/neglectful parents then become what they hated so much when they were young. My "mom" completely neglected me unless she put me down or told lies about me to whoever would listen. I got pregnant at 16 & swore I'd never do that & 5 kids later, I never have. Trust I've had to fight the urge occasionally, but I tell myself "oh that's what she would say" & it stops me cold. Tom definitely took it to the extreme but it's sad knowing that if he'd just been given some love, attention & support, I guarantee this wouldn't have happened. In this case I'm glad he didn't get the death penalty & is getting a chance to figure things out.

During my life i wasn't aware of all these kinds of things. I remember John List but i thought it wasn't like that all over and on. Growing up in my little world things like that didn't happen. Now the place where i grew up is crime ridden. Weve heard of awful things happening here and there where i live now but its rather safer. Thank you Ash. Im going to relisten.

It's no wonder these boys were screwed up

Those siblings were killed in such a brutal, up close and personal way by their big brother. No empathy at all. 😔

I was born and raised and still about 20 mins from Mt.Vernon, I still have the newspaper article with the picture of him in custody. This book and Tom’s versions are a bunch of BS. I have sent this to a family member, I’m sure you will be getting an earful from her.

So he was "abused" but when he got a chance to get away from them in the army, he quit and returned home.... so much was he "abused"... he is a monster simple as that...

I have doubts about Tom's sincerity and Dr. Hanlon's conclusions but if the book can help prevent another family tragedy, then maybe the deaths won't have been for nothing

Her man wasn’t a good man because he let the mother be cruel to their children.

I was good friends with Tom Was at his house with his dead father and mother and brothers inside! Terrifying to know that now! Tom was strange but nice to me.

It's so sad that he killed his siblings. As for his parents, if the abuse allegations are true, they sound like a pair of scumbags who were messing with his head for all his life & basically pointed him in the direction of disaster. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I feel sorry for the siblings, and but I'm afraid I feel none for those rotten parents

I was s**ually abused by a stepfather from 6 to 9 years old. I think all abused children "break" psychologically in order to survive, and the characteristics of how they break vary individually, but each with a core conviction of worthlessness and more or less damage to their ability to form deep relationships. I was praying Tom would at least spare his brother Sean, but no. Of course not: In his endorphin and adrenaline saturated revenge trip, every family member was complicit, by omission if not commission. Noone attempted to intervene on his behalf in his entire life, at least apparently indifferent to his pain. I'm not excusing him; nothing excuses murder of anyone.

That mom was a wacko!!! Terrible!

6:50 that’s obviously not a police sketch. Someone just made a sketch from the photo.

Just saying, a parent who loves their children does NOT turn a blind eye to abuse! Cowardice is not love and Robert was a 100% cowardly father. The only innocents I see in this story are the children :(

It sounds like a lot of people let Tom down. It doesn't condon murder but you wonder what would have happened if someone would have stepped in and helped him as a child. No wonder he had issues with his mother being so cruel and his father just allowing it to happen.

I'll never have kids, because I had extremely abusive parents and a meth addicted older brother. I can't risk repeating that cycle.

The parents pretty much deserved what they got, but why kill the other siblings? Esp the other brother who was also abused! I guess I'm in the minority, but I have no sympathy for Tom. I'm also tired of excuses for people like him. There are many (too many) people who suffer what he did without harming anyone. The 3 siblings were younger than him and did not abuse him, and his reasons for killing them were totally selfish and self-serving. If you're in Tom's position, you can either decide to lash out and get revenge on everyone indiscriminatly, or you can decide to break the cycle - God bless those who chose the latter! Not much sympathy for the former.

Crazy, such a deranged crime. Thank you Ash 🌳

So mom hated her boys....

This is why you don’t abuse your kids and why you don’t pick favorites.

Terrible amount of abuse. The crime was wrong but the abuse is a contributor

Sad it ended like it did.😢

Thanks for the videos

The mom deserves no respect and no one should mourn her This whole tragedy is her fault and her husband too

I had never heard of this story. Many aspects remind me of the List family murders. Although it was the List father who killed, the passage of time between the killings, waiting for each member and clustering most of them together.

I am so happy for the new video! ❤ love this channel

Wow! Talk about a tragic ending to an ongoing cycle of abuse. Sad story indeed.

Sadly sounds like a cycle of not so great parenting lead to this. Not justifying what he did but the way you get treated, treat others, etc. sometimes play out not so good...

"Out of control freight train"? The guy who blindfolded his siblings and said he had a surprise for them? And showed them the bodies of their family? That shrink is incompetent.

Thank you, you're always kind and concise in your presentations

I chose not to have children because I had a brutal mother and feared that I would be the same. I just didn’t want to take a chance. I don’t regret my early decision.

That grandfather of his really messed up that whole family... The sins of the father keep passing down.

I get the parents. Dad knew what was going on but did nothing and let it happen. Mom was just awful. The siblings? I don't get it.

Why the WHOLE family??!!! Mom, if anyone, was the most deserving, if anyone was.

What drove him to kill? Beyond evil mother and worthless dad...like that would not destroy a kid in ways one cannot imagine?!? Pretty damn obvious!

Hi Ash, so glad you're feeling better ❤ thanks for another great video 👍

I am not excusing Toms behavior but we all have to agree that the neglect/abuse he received as a child could have brought out this terrible event.

I can vaguely remember this happening at the time. I remember the family photo, though, and I still feel like none of them really look like they should be in the same photo together. You can see the mom looks absolutely squirrelly….

As someone who works with children who have endured similar trauma in early life I must question the qualifications of the doctor who was willing to publish private correspondence and information from counseling sessions, the fact that an individual is aware of his actions in no way indicates that he suffers from no mental illness. I'm not surprised by the sentence, an abused child who kills is often seen as a monster; while parents who kill their children rarely receive more than twenty years, if that. It's a reflection on our society that children are still widely seen as property rather than people.

those poor kids. What he did to them was so violent and they trusted him bc he was their big brother :(

I'm glad you're back and feeling better. Thank you for an intriguing story. ❤

They always got mental issues . If the abuse was that bad why did they have to give him a deadline to leave i would just leave …

I'm speechless.

New to your channel, very well done also nice voice for narrative, hello from Anchorage, Alaska

Couldn't blame him for getting back at his evil mother!

How can one say a child is an unwelcome burden? Close ya legs for a start!

I’m so sorry that Tom has abused and it’s tragic that it came to this.

This is 2 counties over from where I live and happened when I was 14. It's sad she continued the cycle of abuse. It sounds a lot like Ronnie DeFeo except the father was abusive in that case.

Nice work. What do I think? Well that mom made him what he was. So lesson learned?

5:57 is there a difference between being ‘chained’ and ‘shackled’? 🤔 lol

It’s hard when you see your less than loving mother in yourself. And it’s truly frightening when personality disorders aren’t considered mentally I’ll. I suspect it’s because it’s not fixable.

Wow what a surprise for Friday! It is a shame Tom didn't mean a wonderful girl who would give him the love he didn't get at home. I was mistreated by stepparents but I was never unkind to my younger siblings. I certainly didn't consider murder.

Do not frustrate your children to sin. It seems the abuse brought out the part of him that was like his mother sadly.

Thank you

Definitely one of your best, thanks for distracting me from my shit day 😌🙏😌

Tom was the poster child for what the adult child of abusive parents can become. Not all of us do, we overcome it, but this is the outcome for many kids just like tom.

Fly high beautiful Angels.

Sadly, we only have the murderer's side of the story. We don't really know what happened between the kids and their mother. A drug addict and convicted thief is the most reliable truth teller about what his home was really like. Please. He just pulled a Ronald DeFeo and ya'll fell for it.

I'm an artist. There's absolutely no way that's a police sketch at 6:18. That's a drawing that was done directly from the photo beside it.

Hope he never gets out

She hated her son because of how her father treated her.a misandrist to the ump degree.

Why didn’t the state take him away from her

So we only have his side of a story? victim my ass....

❤🧘‍♀🌳

He looks like a psychopath

Here there, sorry I missed chat~~~Thanks for the video

For all those showing sympathy for Tom, do not forget we only have HIS version of events about his life, before all this happened. Millions of kids are brought up in similar circumstances and yet do not kill. I do feel that this particular story was narrated with a very strong bias towards Tom. How many of us, of the same generation as him, did not have strict parents and rules to follow? I suspect he was a bad seed from the start and the non-loving atmosphere did not help. Think of all the other cases we have heard of children who were given everything they wanted by parents and yet still ended up killing them. As for gullible reporters and writers, who fall for the lies told by such murderers, that is nothing new. I have no sympathy for Tom at all. He took the lives of three young siblings, whose whole lives were ahead of them. No excuse at all for that.

As much as I agree his mother deserved a punishment, prison would of been better for child abuse and each day be reminded what a horrible mother she was, his father also deserved prison. Our children are what we made them to be and she created a monster.

God this is horrible

Shame about the siblings but no sympathy for the parents

So if he sufferred so much at the hands of his parents why he didnt stay in the army,,, he returned home... I feel his story is a BS

As a kid who was adopted by parents like that, i feel REALLY torn passing judgment on this boy/man for killing his parents. And if his siblings had been shoved on him by those disinterested parental units, you can even follow part of his logic for offing his siblings. It would make total sense for him to believe they felt as rejected and hopeless as he did, and even that they might never get over it. Doesn't make it right, but it does feel understandable. It's not any one of the tiny things they did, it's the mass accumulation of years of being chipped away at, with no chance to even know there "could be" a future beyond the interminably hopeless present.

This is a generation curse! She brought it on her family.

The doctor screwed him again with the book

That mother was horrible and she got justice

I blame his parents. They made him what he is.

That's PTA

Tom got picked on too much. Nothing good can come out of that. The mother could have stopped all her extracurricular activities and committed herself to being a stay-at-home mom, paying more attention and getting herself more involved with her family's welfare, especially when things were getting out of control and she noticed Tom getting worse and worse. Tom seemed to be more of a handful to raise, and that's possibly why his mother took a strong dislike to him, being that he wasn't an angel and someone who needed to be kept in line more than the other siblings..Sean's only fault seemed to be that he overate. He was a growing boy so what's with feeding him like he wanted just as long as he didn't grow into a balloon. I think the onus should have been on Tom because he should have known to separate from his family in order to develop a life away from them (temporarily) since he knew how his parents were and weren't going to change. It's unfortunate all this happened. .

Greetings😊🙌💕✨

👍

You gave away the killer in the first 10 seconds 😐

When boys boys had been taken into care for having bruising on them Don't by their mum and dad who stand let her do it the two are f.p . With completing , they should have got kids back spacey the boys

To be fair...it's the parents fault especially the mother

He never really had a chance did.

I feel sorry for him because how messed up would his head be after that treatment

Horrible

It's too simplistic to make judgement based on a 20 minute review like this. Get off your judgement thrones, folks.

There should be clear access to sterilization operations for women especially, of any age so they don't have to have kids. Or a clear and non judgemental way of disposing of your kids no matter their age. Abuse not only comes from bad people but frustrated people who hate being stuck with their kids. Your life is OVER when you have kids and a lot of even good people resent this. A lot of suffering could be avoided if family, children, and all that nonsense wasn't hyped up and forced on people and if women had access to pills or sterilization. I would have had a hysterectomy the first day my period started had I the money because I hated having my period and I knew for a fact I did not want kids. Even as a child I seen no value in children and being bullied just made me hate kids and realize that parents never knew the kind of people thier kids were.