Family Secrets

A family secret is a secret kept within a family. Most families have secrets, but the kind and importance vary. Family secrets can be shared by the whole family.
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And in each case, those truths were ultimately dug up. A German-born Jew, Rinkel once faced possible annihilation under the Nazi regime but managed to escape along with a brother. Tragically, his parents ended up perishing in the Holocaust. Carrying the weight of this dark history with him, he started life anew in the US, where he regularly attended synagogue and reaffirmed his identity as part of a prominent Jewish organization.

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In , he tied the knot with Elfriede Rinkel. A former dog handler at the Ravensbruck concentration camp, in her previous life, she spent 10 months keeping enslaved Jews in line, vacating her post once the Nazis discontinued operations. Later, she relocated to San Francisco, where she met Fred Rinkel and fell in love.

Rinkel kept silent about her deplorable employment history, even hiding it from her brother, who had fought for the Germans. She quickly confessed to working at Ravensbruck but explained it as a product of financial need rather than genocidal fervor. Nonetheless, at 84 years old, she became the first woman ever prosecuted by the Office of Special Investigations.

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As a consequence, Rinkel was deported to Germany. In , Robert Hale challenged the federal land ownership in famously petulant fashion. His insolence made him political gold to those who opposed land use regulations. As the public got to know Pilgrim, they were seemingly transported to a bygone era.

10 Family Secrets That Will Truly Horrify You

He sported an unkempt beard, shunned television, and gave all 15 of his children Christian-themed names. The family seemed to live simpler but happy lives premised on wilderness survival, kindness to others, and deep religiosity. No one would have guessed that behind the guise of purity stood an abominable abuser that regularly raped and beat his children.

When he felt his boys were out of line, Pilgrim would viciously whip them, forcing his wife to secure their hands and gag them with cloth if they screamed. Once confronted with his crimes in a court of law, Pilgrim declined to put up a fight, pleading no contest instead. He remained unapologetic to the end, dying behind bars in To those who knew them, Gerald and Alice Uden were the spitting image of wholesomeness, unassuming churchgoers who were spending their twilight years in relative solitude.

Before Alice and Gerald ever crossed paths, they were married to other people. In , Alice Uden married a man named Ronald Holtz. Less than half a year later, she would try to divorce him, but no one could seem to find him.

34 People Reveal The Horrifying Family Secret That Shook Them To Their Core | Thought Catalog

In , Gerald Uden shot his ex-wife, and her two sons also mysteriously vanished. Eventually, Alice and Gerald would meet, marry, and raise children together. By the time the truth came to light, the Udens were in their seventies. Sensing that the jig was up, Gerald confessed to shooting his ex-wife and stepchildren with a rifle she bought him as a present.

34 People Reveal The Horrifying Family Secret That Shook Them To Their Core

Alice, on the other hand, framed her actions as just. Disavowing the story she allegedly told her son, Alice now claimed she shot Ronald Holtz as he was about to attack her daughter. A jury would find her guilty of manslaughter. For almost 30 years, no one had seen or heard from Joseph Tarricone. In , after visiting his daughter in Hawaii, the Washington resident seemingly just vanished. Virtually everyone who knew Tarricone, including his seven children, were left to wonder what became of him. But his disappearance was no mystery to Renee Curtiss and her older brother, Nicholas Notaro.

They were the ones who made it happen. Before Tarricone went missing, he had been romantically involved with Curtiss. But Curtiss grew weary of her then-suitor and, investigators believe, recruited her brother to get rid of him. Notaro consented, dispatching of Tarricone with two bullets to the head. To dispose of the body, he and Curtiss cut it to pieces with a chainsaw and buried the remains.

For decades, they managed to keep mum about their coldblooded crime. Suddenly, the jig was up. Notaro, who had recently killed his own wife, copped to killing and dismembering Tarricone.


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    4. He was sentenced to life behind bars. She, like her brother, received a life sentence. In , UK dentist Colin Howell married his first wife, Lesley, with whom he fathered four children. Their relationship seemed to be going swimmingly until the also-married Hazel Stewart came along. The two began a torrid affair. Repeated attempts to salvage their respective marriages failed to stem the infidelity. But something had to give. So Howell and Stewart gave in to a different urge: In , Howell poisoned his wife to death with carbon monoxide. From there, Stewart waited patiently as Howell proceeded to gas her husband to death.

    Despite having literally killed to be together, Stewart and Howell went their separate ways, each remaining silent about their murderous betrayal. Howell remarried and established himself as a seemingly straight-laced family within his community. But in , he started to crack. One day, as second wife Kyle Jorgensen fed one of their children, Howell interrupted her to confess his sins.

    Initially, he seemed resolved to turn himself in. But Jorgensen, concerned about the impact on their children, stayed his hand. As time passed, life took a huge downward swing. Jorgensen, whether driven by vengeance, guilt, or a combination of the two, abandoned her previous position and urged Howell to turn himself in. Colin Howell received a year prison term. A judge required co-conspirator Hazel Stewart to spend a minimum of 18 years behind bars.

    Her husband died without warning, seemingly of natural causes.

    Family Secrets

    Five months later, her autistic son Shaun died from what were believed to be seizure-related complications. And the following year, her daughter Sarah needed emergency medical attention for a flu-like malady that turned out to be organ failure. We may conceal them out of shame, fear of ridicule, criticism, or condemnation. There are shared secrets parents choose to keep from their children, rightly so; perhaps intending them to be shared when the children are older if the time feels right; or perhaps we intend some secrets never to be shared.

    Sometimes, a parent will entrust a child with a secret and instruct them not to the other parent. Knowledge is power, but can also be a burden, and it's rarely justifiable to enmesh children in webs of deceit. Secrets take up a lot of energy in keeping them locked away whilst holding inside the constant fear of being discovered. Of course, we have a right to our privacy, but it's difficult when that privacy impacts on someone close to us, who may have a desire, or need, not to be kept in the dark.

    One way of resolving such dilemmas is to consider this formula when it comes to weighing up the relative merits of secrecy or disclosure. Our upbringings will vary in how our families managed secrecy and openness between family members. For some of us, a measure of secrecy in family life seems inevitable and only to be expected, and we are not that threatened by the possibility of some things being hidden or private. For others, secrecy is always unhealthy and seen as evidence of mistrust, so we want to live in a family where everything is out in the open.

    It is clear why this is such a powerful topic and there are often no simple answers. If you are holding a family secret and wondering how to manage it, it can be helpful to think through the likely things that could happen if you disclose it in any way. These are just a few questions that can be useful to think through. You are here Home Relationship help Help with family life and parenting Family common problems Family secrets.