West Virginia authorities revealed that a Greenbrier County mom had left three notes in the family’s destroyed car, after killing five children and setting the house with their bodies inside on fire.
25-year-old Oreanna Antoinette Myers also took her own life outside the charred home on December 8, 2020, noting that her mental illness “won.”
The slaughtered children were Myers’ three sons and two stepsons. They were identified as Shaun, 7; Riley James, 6; Kian, 4; Arikyle Nova, 3; and Haiken Jirachi, one-year-old.
The motive, as explained by Myers in her notes and text messages, was her untreated mental health and her husband’s recklessness with her condition.
“Money will come and go, once I go there’s no replacing me,” she told her husband in a text message. “I beg and cry for help but never get it. It’s my mental health that needs tending to – help me – I do not care anymore.”
She shortly before committing suicide called him to say that she left something in the car and that apologized for not being “strong enough.”
The husband, who was constantly absent at work, would later find three notes inside the vehicle she destroyed: A note with numbers to call, a confession, and a will.
“This is no one’s fault but my own. My demons won over me. Sorry, I wasn’t strong enough,” she wrote in one letter.
“I had shot all boys in the head. I had set the house on fire. I had shot myself in the head. I’m sorry mental health is serious. I hope one day someone will help others like me. Mental health is not to joke about or take lightly. When someone begs, pleads, cries out for help, please help them. You just might save a life or more lives. Thank you, O.A.M.”
