The worst nightmare

I was horrified to read, earlier, that Sheila Kelly, aka SL Viehl/Lynn Viehl/Paperback Writer, whose writing blog is one of the most respected on the circuit I frequent, has just discovered that her mentally ill adult son has been arrested on suspicion of murdering two people. I've been reading Sheila's blog for a year or so now, and find it enormously interesting and helpful. Every word comes through as honest and straightforward, and I cannot imagine the courage needed to be upfront about something like that with thousands of total strangers - though actually I suppose that if you have to deal with something so dreadful, the reaction of strangers you don't need to meet is really not a significant issue for you.
I realised, reading her terrible news, that one doesn't usually spare a thought for the families of murderers or other serious criminals. It's as if they normally spring from a vaccuum, unless they are known to have suffered abused or otherwise traumatic childhoods, that could serve as some sort of excuse or explanation for their behaviour. But I imagine that there must be many murderers of this type, with loving, supportive parent/s who cannot be blamed in the slightest for what their child has done. It's hard to imagine a worse situation - for not only is the child you knew no longer that person - how can you reconcile the little child you once cuddled with the perpetrator of atrocities? - but also it must be very hard not to assume the guilt for the child's crime, much as you feel bad if your child hits another at playgroup. You never stop feeling responsible for a child. And to know that you nurtured, and still love, someone who can do something like that - what a terrible, terrible dichotomy. I feel so desperately sorry for her, and for the whole family - how awful, too, to be one of the younger children, and to know your brother has done something so dreadful.
It goes to show how grateful we all should be for the good in our own lives, taking nothing for granted. I imagine that Sheila Kelly would gladly renounce every one of her twenty-something published books, if she could undo the twist that a cruel universe put in her son. Those of us with children who - so far, at least - are whole and sound in body and mind should be thanking God/the universe/whatever else we believe in for our blessings (not to mention the blessings of having said children in the first place), not moaning about their deficiencies or our own unachieved ambitions.
And how can one reconcile the knowledge that a loved one has done something like that, with a career that involves fictionalising similar events? I've only read one of PBW's books, the first vampire (Darkyn) one, but as I remember there was a certain amount of violence in that, and I get the impression that her SF books have had plenty of action in them. I have a close friend who lost a baby at birth as the result of medical malpractice. It took her months to be able to see the most casual media depicition of a baby or infant without reliving the horror and grief of her loss, every time. You can't write scenes of violence and fear without reaching into part of your mind to imagine such things, imagine how it would feel to exercise evil power or feel it. How can you reach those parts of yourself when you know that a child, which also seems a little like part of yourself, someone who once kicked and wriggled inside your own body, has acted in this way for real?
I can't begin to presume to comment on this dreadful situation. If I were sure there were anything to pray to, I'd pray for her and her family. As it is, I'll just think about them a lot, and wish them as well as possible in the circumstances.