Family Secrets: My Cousin Committed Murder/Suicide

On Thursday, June 22, 2017, my first cousin Joe Aaron Baker, who was sixty-one at the time, shot two people in broad daylight after engaging in a brief argument. In the moments that followed, perhaps out of remorse, or the fear of returning to prison, he turned the gun on himself. Sadly, the tragic events of that day were not the first time he had lashed out in violence.

Joe Aaron, known to us simply as Aaron, was one of eleven children born to my Uncle Leo and his wife Margaret. Raised in a tar paper shack in a holler of West Virginia without such basic amenities as running water or a telephone, the kids scrounged by as best they could on the money my uncle earned painting houses. While most of the siblings managed to stay out of trouble, Aaron had been a malcontent from the start.

Truth be told, I only met my cousin a handful of times. We lived over two hundred miles away, making it difficult to build relationships. Even so, we made the trip to Greenbrier County every summer so my parents could spend time with these people who were virtual strangers to me.

My memories of Aaron are mostly gleaned from stories my mother would share of his many brushes with the law, which usually involved petty theft. Among other things, she believed that he was responsible for the disappearance of a small handgun that had…