Nigeria, May 16 -- Shortly after midnight on 16 April, a terrified teenage boy placed a 911 call from inside his family's residence in Annandale, Virginia. Moments later, police officers arrived to encounter a scene of unspeakable devastation. Cerina Fairfax lay dead from multiple gunshot wounds, while the body of her estranged husband, former Virginia lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, was later discovered upstairs, in what authorities described as an apparent murder/suicide following an acrimonious divorce dispute.

No intellectual exercise can diminish the savagery of such an act. Two children will spend the remainder of their lives carrying the psychological wreckage of that night. A woman lost her life. A man annihilated his own. Y...