Police Confirm Steve Sueppel Killed Family, Then Took His Own Life (IA City)

[Hobarticus]

Source: KWWL, Waterloo

Update 4:55 P.M.
Police say they believe an Iowa City man killed his wife and four children, then tried to drown himself before dying in a fiery freeway crash.

Iowa City police found the five bodies yesterday (Monday) morning after receiving a 911 call directing officers to a suburban home.

In a news conference this afternoon, investigators say they believe Steven Sueppel killed his wife, then tried to kill himself and his children in their garage by carbon monoxide poisoning. When that failed, he killed the children individually.

Lieutenant Jim Steffen says investigators couldn't be sure how the children died, but they think it was by blunt force trauma. Steffen says two baseball bats might have been used.

Steffen says that after the children died, Sueppel tried to drown himself in the Iowa River, then made the 911 call and a few minutes later crashed into the freeway abutment.

snip

Police told reporters there was no specific reason why Sueppel did this. The messages and notes apologized for his actions and indicated his dispair over the embezzlement charges, the loss of his job and the effect the situation has had on his children.

Read more: http://www.kwwl.com/News/index.php?ID=23224

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Update to a story posted earlier in LBN...

[Kittycat]

1. Jesus Christ! A Baseball Bat?

[Thepricebreaker]

32. guns are bad.... n/t

[havocmom]

2. Oh, there's a specific reason he did it.

He was a coward.

[Taverner]

3. And he has insanely bad judgement

If he were merely a coward, he just would have ran or offed himself.

But to take others with you shows a level of Narcissism and an extreme lack of empathy.

[Guaranteed]

4. Insanely bad judgment?

Narcissism? Extreme lack of empathy?

You can't think of any stronger words for someone who offed five members of his family?

I don't care what kind of trouble you're in, you don't hurt other people like that, ESPECIALLY your own family.

[Taverner]

5. Oh I can think of a lot of words.

But if you want to zero on why he's a bloated sack of shit scumbag, I'm giving you a clinical reason :)

[Fedja]

7. Harsh assumption

Suicide directly counters the innate primal drive for survival. Behind every suicide there's a traumatized and suffering soul, and I at least don't assume myself capable of truly understanding what it's like. In much the same way, I don't assume I can impose my values on that person and decide on their judgment. Sure, what he did is a tragedy, as is every loss of life, and it makes the whole event that much sadder. Still, for someone in his mental state, the lines aren't clear, if there are any lines at all.

[grneyemike]

21. Your character shows through your posting

And when the day you seek compassion, humanity and comfort comes, may your own words be thrown back in your face as you forget that there are survivors of this man and his family. Taverner, stop making posts as you are an arrogant asshole without a heart, soul, or base humanity.

[Honeycombe8]

26. You can say THAT again. Babykillers are sacks of shit scumbag. There...

I said it again for you. And that's the truth.

Killing oneself is a suffering soul. Killing children with baseball bats is evil itself...done only by sacks of shit scumbags. Too bad he's dead, so he can't be publicly condemned and made to face the horror that he inflicted on children and an innocent woman.

[superconnected]

12. That person posted it well. Extreme narcism has to be part of it.

Why take others with you if you want to die. This man was egocentric. And yeah a monster to boot.

[grneyemike]

22. Only a Narcissist would write such a post..

And for someone to make such a post and want others to read it, shows his own narcissism and extreme lack of empathy. Don't you think that his extend family is in pain, is grieving...not only the loss of their son or daughter, but the loss of their grandchildren. You arrogant unfeeling selfish coward of a poster, who is also using insanely bad judgment in writing such a post.

[Festivito]

10. Everyone has a price. What's yours?

I like to keep mine at a hundred times the gross world product for ten years running.

I suppose, though, at some point I'd break.

You?

[havocmom]

15. It would have to be more than I can dream

They can take anything but my good name. I don't mind being poor. I understand poor and my needs are simple. I am much too simple not to be honest.

[Festivito]

17. Can't you even see a point at which you turn human?

Human being synonymous with the word flawed.

Are you so simply honest that you run about telling kids about Santa Claus, protecting your good name from any degree of being a sellout to an easy lie. Hey kids, he's either there or he's not, just like this guy's either strong or he's a coward.

There is no such thing as a breaking point. You're either strong to the end, or we call you a name.

I think, if we sense what he feels, we can slow the next ones, if not stop them altogether. But, sensing is such a non black and white nuanced human thing.

[havocmom]

19. Someone with a gun to my daughter's head would get my cooperation

otherwise, nope. Shoot me, shoot my husband, sister, brother, hell, the dog. Money never meant anything as a motivator to me, and millions of other people for that matter. Your notion that your price may be the same as everyone else is false.

[grneyemike]

20. Arrogant Pathetic Do-Nothing Posters

How dare you all make judgments and make libel statements on something that you know nothing about? Did you live through what this family was living through? Making statements that don't do anything but cause additional hurt, pain, and aggrevate and already horrible situation. There are many extended family members that are hurting and grieving. And for you to make statements like "he's a coward..etc." only prove your own inhumanity, lack of character, and your own cowardness. How easy it is to make these kind of statements in the privacy of your own home through a computer? Can you look in the eyes of his grief-stricken mother and make those statements? Find the compassion in your postings and feel for those who were close to the family by saying prayers or sending heart felt wishes of peace.

[havocmom]

30. Welcome to DU

And you know nothing about us. Some here have done a lot of work with families in bad situations

Still say he was a coward. He beat his kids with blunt instrument after putting them in the garage to huff fumes didn't kill them. You think a brave person does that? The man seems to have committed a crime and got busted. So he brutally kills the kids? COWARD and a sick one at that.

[girl gone mad]

33. I have all the sympathy in the world for the families..

of these murdered children.

There is nothing in my heart but anger for a man who would so methodically murder innocent children because of his own failures.

[devilgrrl]

6. What a selfish prick

eom

[shallowthroat]

8. Embezzlement, laundering, murder... what a douchebag

http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=4513309&page=1

Anyone that thinks this m'fer was not just a greedy sob is kidding themselves.

What a POS.

[zanne]

9. He had an inflated sense of his own importance..

I read an explanation from a psychiatrist once about people who murder their families. He claimed that the person in question, usually the father, thinks that his family will not survive without him after he commits suicide so he kills them all. Makes sense to me, but what kind of a person thinks that much of himself?

[superconnected]

11. What a monster, glad he's dead.

http://www.kwwl.com/Images/EditorImages/Sueppel,%20Family%20xmas%20crop.jpg

[grneyemike]

23. Only a monster would say such a thing....

Posting his family picture, how cruel and inhuman you are. Don't you think that his family is grieving enough? Would you say such a thing to his mother to her face? What about Grisela's family, would you make that same statement to them? Only an uncaring, lack of character monster like yourself would make such a post. I wonder if someone would make the same statement about you..Glad that you are dead....hmmmm. I wonder.

[superconnected]

24. Only A monster would say that! Look in the mirror.

The pic came from the news and I posted it so people could see those beautiful kids. That helps take away the de-sensitation of having 5 other groups of people killed on the same day - many kids - a house fire in one state, and a car wreck in WA state.

[Honeycombe8]

27. I wish he were alive to face society for the horror of killing babies with baseball bats.

No boo hoo hoos for the monster, but rather for the innocents who needlessly suffered because the coward didn't want to see the looks on their faces when they realized what a low down scumbag he really is. So...better to "protect" them from the realization, and bash their little heads in.

Then, as cowards do, he sentenced himself to death and took the easy way out, rather than face society for what he's done.

For those who are shedding tears for the monster, their tears instead should be shed for those innocent babies he slaughtered.

[SnowGoose]

13. Well, since we're all just making declarations, I'll make mine

No one in their right mind kills their four kids with a baseball bat.

I don't know if the guy was a crook or narcissistic or whatever, but I do know he was messed up in the head.

[Orsino]

25. Thank you.

Let's reserve "evil" and related terms for the scumbags who do this sort of thing for personal gain, and spare a little bit of sorrow for the deeply ill who can't help it.

[Honeycombe8]

28. Sure they do. The prisons are full of "monsters" who have harmed children, but know right fromwrong

He does appear to have been insane, since he apparently knew his embezzling was wrong/against the law (that indictment was probably a clue). And he apparently knew that bashing defenseless babies' heads in was wrong.

Evil exists. You don't have to be "crazy" to be evil. Even Jeffrey Dahmer was not "crazy."

[Beaverhausen]

14. How long until the news reports that he was "off his meds"

seriously- how else to explain this? That poor family.

[Honeycombe8]

29. Even being "off his meds" is no excuse. His decision to go "off his meds."

It's like a drunk saying vehicular homicide is not his fault because he was drunk at the time. Hello....you got yourself drunk.

We are responsible for our actions.

[Thickasabrick]

16. I just read another story about this that said he first tried to kill

the kids in the car/garage, then when that didn't work he tried to drown them and himself in the river, and when that still didn't work he took them home and killed them.

If true, can you imagine what those kids went through during the first two failed attempts? The horror of your father turning into a monster trying to kill you? What went through their precious little minds. I do not understand how a human being could do this. This just makes me so angry.

I am so sick of hearing about adopted kids from other countries being adopted by americans and ending up dead.

[LiberalFighter]

18. He didn't want his wife and kids to have a chance at better life after he was gone.

[NoodleyAppendage]

31. Shades of the Shining (Kubrick's vision, not King's).

Insanity matched with the proper stressful conditions producing tragedy.

J