Deadly Control: Exclusive Report!

Elizabeth Hoult Fontaine

Monday afternoon, in a California courtroom, a domestic relations judge in family court ordered the woman pictured above to return that afternoon to court with her daughters. Her custody was revoked and the children were ordered temporary sole legal and physical custody to a relative back in the State of Texas.
Although investigators are continuing to work this case, it appears clear Elizaberth Hoult Fountaine pulled the trigger that also took the life of her mother.

Found dead behind a front door decorated with a Christmas wreath, their bodies intertwined in the entryway of the home of a friend where they were staying, were Catherine Fontaine, 4, and Julia Fontaine, 2, and Fontaine’s mother, Bonnie Hoult, 67, a retired psychologist.

According to news accounts in L.A., an attorney for Howrey, LLP’s Irvine office [where she was employed], Elizabeth Fontaine filed for divorce last December. About a month ago she left Orange County and moved her daughters and mother to Houston, Tex.

In court documents, Elizabeth Fontaine, who was also a lawyer, made explosive accusations against her husband, claiming he had molested the girls and had an addiction to pornography.

A court psychologist interviewed Catherine 4, documents show, but didn’t see enough to find that molestation had occurred. There was a four-day hearing in August on whether Elizabeth acted in good faith in making the accusation. In the end, a court commissioner allowed the kids' father  unmonitored visits, even as he awarded primary custody to Elizabeth. The divorce was granted in October. Records indicate no charges were ever filed against the former husband.

The mother and kids, with the court's permission, were allowed to move out of state to Texas where she re-opened the case and took her daughter Catherine to be examined by a psychologist, and 3 other experts who reported finding evidence of molestation, according to the court documents.

Within two weeks, a Texas court ordered that the father of the children not have contact with his daughters. He accused his wife of court-shopping, and that is how she was ordered back to the court in California.

The bottom line, a mother murdered her children. The person with whom we first place our trust in as children.


I expect to receive some unique "fan" emails for bringing attention to this case and for what I am about to say:

This mother is no different then the men I highlight weekly on this blog for slaughtering members of their own family.

She was a lawyer and had an upper hand in a legal system that the majority of women who live in violent relationships going through family court deal with everyday. These mothers often pay the price themselves because their child disclosed sexual abuse to them, a therapist or the courts. And many abusers use custody as a means of power and control. It is these women who often find the cell door slam shut on them because they are protecting their children. These mothers, too many to count, deal with the same issues that Elizabeth Fountain faced.

They, too, are in contempt of court because they refused to comply with a court order and turn over the child to the abuser. Most women in the family court system do not have the funds to pay for a skilled lawyer to assist them in matters of divorce and custody.


It is these women whom I directly assist or tragically write about after a homicide. The difference is Elizabeth Hoult Fontaine had a choice. Instead, she murdered her mother and two helpless children who did not deserve to die.

Family Murders: A Dangerous Epidemic

In a small town in Memphis, yet another slaughter of an entire family. As the American public read these tragedies with our morning coffee, do we ever stop and think, perhaps these killings and so many others exactly like them in recent months, are basically out of control ? Do we really care to know if any of these could have been prevented?

Is this what the American Family has become ? Are we left with being deathly afraid of our own flesh and blood?

We can watch these killings all day long like a drug as we become increasingly inundated with one tragic event after another । Or we can take our heads out from under the rock where we all have gone to hide. I have a suggestion, let us start to pay attention to our friends, relatives, co-workers and those we once knew as our neighbors by providing some old fashioned human interactive contact.
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Six people, including two children, were found dead in a home Monday night in Memphis' Binghampton -----
Memphis Fire Department spokeswoman Melanie Young said firefighters responded to a 911 call at a home at 722 Lester at 6:11 p.m. Monday, where the bodies and wounded children were found.
The wounded children- a 7-year-old boy, a 10-month-old girl and a 4-year-old whose gender wasn't immediately known, were transported to Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center.
According to hospital spokeswoman Jennilyn Utkov, the children were taken to the emergency room to be treated. No further information was available about their conditions.
Sources told Action News 5 the four adults found dead suffered from gunshot wounds, while two children were found stabbed to death. The three children found alive were also stabbed. All nine victims were found in the same room.
Neighbors identified the person living at the home as Cecil Dotson. Dotson's sister Nicole was frightened for her family members.
"You know when you come to stuff like this you think the worst," she said. "You think someone is dead. I am scared to death, all my nieces and nephews are in there and his baby mama and I don't know what's going on."
Though the bodies were discovered Monday night, it was unclear exactly when the murders took place. Neighbors in the area reported hearing a disturbance at the home over the weekend, including the sound of gunshots around 8:30 p.m. Sunday.
As news of the grisly find spread though the neighborhood, residents gathered in spite of the rainy weather to watch from afar as police conducted their investigation.
Homicide detectives could be seen speaking with relatives sitting in a car near the house where the killings happened.
"It's sad you come home to find out something like this has gone on," neighbor Leo Baker said. "I've been living here for 10 years. It's kind of sad, and scary too."
Baker said he didn't know the family living in the house.