Who was Stephen O'Loughlin? Anti-vaxxer kills 9-year-old son in murder-suicide amid custody row with ex-wife
In a bizarre turn of events, a 49-year-old man from San Francisco murdered his own nine-year-old son before killing himself. Stephen O’Loughlin, the regional vice-president at an investment firm, was known to be a staunch anti-vaxxer and was involved in a custody battle with his ex-wife over their son. San Francisco police recovered both the bodies of the father and son from O’Loughlin’s apartment at SF’s Marina district on Wednesday, January 13. The wounds on both their bodies were inflicted by gunshot.
His ex-wife and the mother of the child, 41-year-old Lesley Hu grew concerned and informed the police after she found out that her son, Pierce’O’Loughlin, did not attend his school. That was when police discovered the shocking incident. They are now continuing the investigation branding the crime as a murder-suicide.
Who was Stephen O’Loughlin?
Stephen’O’Loughlin was a well-established business development professional who was serving as the regional VP at LoCorr Funds, a firm specializing in investment management. However, in his personal life, he was a notorious anti-vaxxer and his stance against vaccination has been dubbed as ‘cult-like’.
O’Loughlin and his wife divorced in 2016 over multiple disputes between the two. Their difference in opinion about vaccinating their child was one of the major reasons for conflict. They often fought over the fact whether Pierce was a ‘healthy or sick child’. Hu, who works as an executive vice-president at a firm, wanted to vaccinate his son since his birth. However, O’Loughlin’s rigid beliefs against vaccination stood in the way.
In 2012, he had joined a self-help group that brainwashes him into believing that vaccination was unnecessary and basically a government conspiracy to “mind-control” people. As a matter of fact, he already donated thousands of dollars to the group by the time of his divorce.
Lately, the couple was mired in a nasty legal battle since July 2020 as Hu was trying to get full custody of his son so that she could vaccinate the child, without O’Loughlin’s interference. Just a day before the murder-suicide was discovered, he had reportedly given his consent to Hu for vaccinating their son.
Did O’Loughlin kill his son over ‘stuffy nose’?
Hu’s attorney Lorie Nachlis had claimed in a statement shared with San Francisco Chronicle that O’Loughlin was suffering from some mental illness that was left untreated, adding that the father took this horrid step simply to establish ‘ultimate control’ over Hu.
“Pierce wasn’t killed because of a disagreement over a stuffy nose and he wasn’t killed because of a disagreement regarding vaccinations. He was killed for much more complex reasons,” read the statement by Nachlis. The ‘stuffy nose’ reference comes from O’Loughlin’s weird habit to obsessively videotape his son’s breathing multiple times throughout the day ‘to document a stuffy nose’.
O’Loughlin’s attorneys, on the other hand, had claimed during the custody proceedings that he did not want his son to be vaccinated because the child underwent serious side-effects from his shots as a baby. They ruled out O’Loughlin’s anti-vaxxer beliefs to be behind Pierce’s non-vaccination. However, the child’s mother refuted such claims stating that her son’s doctors have strongly advised in favor of complete vaccination. At present, Hu has sought privacy from the media to mourn the tragedies.