When a husband is cheating on his wife, it’s only natural for the wife to have suspicions about her husband. Eugene Maraventano, a 64 year-old man from Goodyear, Arizona, seemingly misunderstood the dynamics of marital suspicion relating to infidelity when he murdered his wife and son after his own liaisons with several prostitutes.
Maraventano, who can fairly be described as a lunatic, feared that by having sex with prostitutes while working in New York, he himself had contracted HIV or some other type of sexually transmitted disease. He also feared that he had passed on HIV or a disease that may cause cancer to his wife, Janet, 63. Janet had reportedly been ill over the past few months, and she had undergone several tests that did not reveal any cancer. Fearing that his infidelity had caused her to become ill, rather than coming clean about the enormous risks he had exposed his wife to, Maraventano decided to end her suffering himself. Retrieving a 14-inch knife from their kitchen, Eugene stabbed Janet twice while she slept.
In addition to his suspicions about the health of his wife, Maraventano suspected that his son Bryan was mentally handicapped, because the 27 year-old did not have a job, friends, or a girlfriend, and spent all of his time playing video games. Shortly after murdering Janet, Eugene murdered his son with the same knife on account of concerns over what would happen to Bryan after the death of Janet.
As part of his misguided plan to save his family, Maraventano had planned to commit suicide. Shortly after the murders, he taped a suicide note to his son’s body, and attempted kill himself with the kitchen knife he had used on his family, but failed. He attempted suicide several more times in the days that followed the grisly double murder using a plastic bag wrapped around his head, but continued to fail. Finally, Maraventano called 911 to report the murders and his own injuries from the botched suicide attempts. “I killed my wife and son,” he told emergency dispatchers.
UPI reports that Maraventano had considered killing his wife with a gun, and had made arrangements to purchase one, but ultimately decided against it. “I’m not a violent person,” he said in court documents, defending his decision to “humanely” use a knife.
After he was arrested, Maraventano was taken to a nearby hospital for his self-inflicted injuries, and is currently being held on $2 million dollar bail.
Note: Credit for the image used in this story goes to MCSO via ABC15 Arizona.