Is Mom Evil? No, she's just lost. The case of Cheryl Sanders, who lost her life in an attempted assassination of her former husband (father) and his wife

Cheryl Sanders and her new husband died when they attempted to assassinate Cheryl's former husband and father of their two children. This would never have happened if the district attorney had listened to the husband in the first place. The case bears similarities with (1) Donna Adelson, the maternal grandmother who implicated her own son to murder her son-in-law and the father of two small boys, (2) a case in Finland, where a mother murdered the father of their child by pouring gasoline over him while he was asleep and set him on fire, (3) Sarah Mudge, who died while setting the house where her former husband and children was asleep. The father also died. Here's some psychological science on why people in general misinterpret domestic violence, and a model to be use for rational entrepreneurial thinking, and a list of 105 cases of women's lethal domestic violence. 3 pages.

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.

On February 12, 2020, ex-wife Cheryl Sanders and her new husband, Robert Reed Sanders, lost their lives while they were trying to assassinate Cheryl Sanders former husband and his new wife.

Cheryl and her new husband, a man who agreed to murder the father of two children.

Link to source: Elliott, 2020.

Cheryl Sanders had two daughters with the man she was trying to assassinate.

Note. This would never have happened if the district attorney had listened to the father in the first place.

The daughters' asked the surviving father: Is Mom Evil? The father: no, she's just lost.

The case bears many similarities with:

• Donna Adelson, the maternal grandmother who in a similar way planned and hired two hit men to assassinate her son-in-law (father of two young boys): Dan Markel, in July 2014. Donna also involved her own son – Charlie Adelson. Both are now serving life in prison for their involvement in the assassination (Österberg, 2025), and there are speculations that the mother – Wendi Adelson – will also be prosecuted.
  
  
• A mother in Finland, who together with a friend murdered the father of her child by pouring gasoline over him while he was asleep and set him on fire. She's now serving life in prison.

  “Court of Appeal sentences woman for murder of ex-husband in Eckerö. A woman is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her ex-husband in Eckerö on Boxing Day 2020. The Åbo Court of Appeal upheld the district court's verdict on Tuesday. The woman's friend has been sentenced to eleven years in prison for the crime. They threw fuel on the man who was sleeping in his home” (Svartström, 2022).

• An almost identical case happened on the other side of the planet where a mother murdered her former husband and father to their four kids. She was also ready to kill the children.
  

  “A mother-of-four who firebombed her ex's house while her children slept had claimed in an earlier Facebook post that if she and her kids ended up dead, it would be murder.
  Sarah Mudge, 30, broke into Stanley Obi's house in New Beith, in Brisbane's south, at 2.55am on Thursday, doused him and his new girlfriend in petrol, and set them alight while her three kids were in the next room.
  
  His new partner, 30, and children managed to escape the inferno before the father-of-two was dragged out by a brave neighbour, but he died in hospital from catastrophic burns” (Karp, 2022).

Here's a list of 105 cases were the perpetrator of lethal violence is a woman, and where the victims are typically the children or the husband

Why is this happening?

The construct is called Domestic violence, and due to “natural stupidity”, members of our species often rely on information which is prototypical (Kahneman och Tversky, 1972), available (Tversky och Kahneman, 1973), or just easy to access (Kahneman and Tversky, 1977), as well as dysrationalia – the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence (Stanovich, 1993). Due to its constructive properties (Bartlett, 1932; Schacter and Addis, 2007), It's also easy to memory-hack the human mind (Shaw, 2016).

Therefore, people in general, especially men for some reason, are convinced that the typical perpetrator of domestic violence is a man.

It can also explain how Cheryl Sanders was able to manipulate her current husband to risk his life trying to take out Cheryl Sanders former husband and father of their children.

In order to avoid natural stupidity/dysrationalia/memory hacking, I propose Rational Entrepreneurial thinking (Österberg, 2021, chapter 3). The model suggests that we use (1) epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al. 2010), (2) numeracy (Brooks och Pui, 2010), and (3) disjunctive reasoning (Stanovich, 2009) in concert.
Note. Numeracy is the foundation for instrumental and epistemic rational thinking (Stanovich, 2011, 2016).

Since the 1970s, research on domestic violence using Conflict tactics scale (Straus, 1979; Straus et al 1996) or similar, shows the following distribution:

• Physical domestic violence: women account for >50% of the incidence and injuries.
  
  
• Fatal domestic violence is equally unlikely (0.000005) to affect children, men, or women.
  
  
• Psychological domestic violence. Typically female, and is explained by high levels of neuroticism and borderline personality disorder (Jiang, Dong och Wang, 2022; Ode et al. 2009; Ruffalo, 2024; Weisberg et al. 2011; Zalewski et al. 2014).

Ergo. The typical perpetrator of domestic violence is a woman.

(Archer,2000, 2004; Bergkvist, 2002; Bates, Graham-Kevan och Archer, 2014; Bates och Graham-Kevan, 2016; Bates, 2018; Bates, Kaye, Pennington och Hamlin, 2019; Crick och Grotpeter (1995); Thornton et al. 2012).

Listen to Dr.Bates (34 minuter): Dr Elizabeth Bates: Intimate Partner Violence

Here's the suviving husbands own testimony: I Survived an Assassination Attempt | $1M REWARD

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.

More about my expertise:

Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter