Barbara Daly Baekeland
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Barbara Daly Baekeland was a wealthy socialite who was murdered by her son, Antony Baekeland on November 11, 1972. She was the wife of Brooks Baekeland, grandson of Leo Baekeland, founder of Bakelite plastic.
Her murder took place at her London home, where Antony stabbed her with a kitchen knife. Antony was 25 at the time. She died almost instantly. When police arrived they found Antony ordering Chinese food over the phone. He later confessed and was charged with murder.
Before meeting Brooks Baekeland, Barbara was a model and would-be Hollywood starlet. During their marriage she was known for her unstable personality, rude outbursts and bouts of severe depression. She led a decadent lifestyle of drinking and risqué sexual encounters. In time her husband Brooks left her for a younger woman, which was followed by divorce. This led to severe depression and a suicide attempt (her son Antony saved her).
[edit] Relationship with Antony Baekeland
She had a bizarre relationship with her son, Antony, who was homosexual. There were no boundaries or lines of privacy. They shared everything and every experience, developing an intense co-dependence, one that resulted in incest.
Barbara had tried to "cure" her son by hiring willing girls to take him to bed, when this failed she decided to seduce Antony. In an attempt to cure Antony of his homosexuality, Barbara coerced him into having sex with her. It's been said that this incestuous incident led to her murder.
Though Antony displayed signs of schizophrenia, his father called psychiatry "professionally amoral" and refused to pay for treatment. Barbara and Antony's enmeshed mother-son relationship worried her friends. Indeed, Antony's erratic behavior was cause for concern, and over the years the two had several threatening arguments involving knives.
After the murder, Antony was institutionalized at Broadmoor Hospital until a bureaucratic mistake resulted in his release in July 1980. He then relocated to New York City, where he lived with his grandmother for a short time until he stabbed her also (she survived). Antony was sent to Rikers Island, where he suffocated himself to death with a plastic bag on March 20, 1981.
[edit] Savage Grace
The story of the Baekeland murder has recently been made into a film called Savage Grace (2008) starring Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Eddie Redmayne and Elena Anaya. The film is directed by Tom Kalin and written by Howard Rodman, based on the book of the same name by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson.
