Salt Lake mom, Karina Clark, shoots dead daughter, 9, before turning the gun on herself in murder-suicide, a week after getting a tummy-tuck
Mormon Mother and daughter die in tragic wrenching murder-suicide near Salt Lake City, Utah and family says 41-year-old woman struggled with mental illness
Karina Clark shot dead her nine-year-old daughter Madison Clark before shooting herself in early December, a week after getting cosmetic surgery
Sources said the mother-of-four who struggled with depression, was also struggling to wean herself off post-surgery prescription medication
Mother and daughter were found dead on Dec 31 in their Magna, Utah home
Madison was shot three times and her mother once – cops believe bodies went undiscovered in home for three weeks over holidays
Karina Clark who lost her husband to suicide, years ago, was trying to quit pain pills after tummy-tuck surgery a week before deaths
Karina Clark killed her daughter Madison Clark [seen with her in photos L-R], in murder-suicide
A Mormon mother has killed her nine-year-old daughter before turning the gun on herself in a grisly murder-suicide, police say.
Karina Clark, 41, and Madison Clark, 9, were found dead on December 31 in the home where they lived on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, after a neighbor asked cops to do a welfare check.
The neighbor had left a Christmas present on the family’s doorstep several days prior, and was concerned after noticing that it had sat untouched.
‘Madison had just been baptized in the LDS [Latter-Day Saints] church and they both had so much going for them,’ Clark’s adult daughter Bailey Miller wrote in a Facebook post.
Madison was shot three times and her mother once, Miller said. Police told her the bodies lay in the house in Magna, Utah for 24 days before they were discovered.
Karina Clark, [left] and her daughter Madison Clark, 9, [right], were found dead on December 31, in the small home where they lived on the outskirts of Salt Lake City.
A neighbor asked police to do a welfare check on the mother and daughter after leaving a Christmas present on their doorstep and noticing it went untouched for several days.
Authorities believe the bodies of Karina Clark and her daughter Madison lay undiscovered in this home in Magna, near Salt Lake in Utah for 24 days, before they were discovered in the course of a wellness check
‘My mom, despite what has been done, was a good person,’ said her older daughter, Bailey Miller.
‘She struggled from mental illness for a while but her heart was always in a good place. That is why this incident is just so shocking.’
Friends and neighbors expressed horror at the grisly murder-suicide in the normally peaceful neighborhood.
‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ Ben Cummins, a neighbor who said Clark offered to send Mormon missionaries over to help him get settled when he first moved in, told the Desert News.
‘It’s in your neighborhood. It’s right next door to you. And you feel like, “Why didn’t I see something?”,’ he said.
9-year-old Madison Clark was fatally shot by her own mother who was suffering from depression and dependent on prescription drugs to fight post surgical pain
Clark was highly active on Facebook, making daily posts on the site that stop abruptly on December 7.
Friends said she struggled with depression and had recently had surgery.
Her social media posts indicate the procedure was an abdominoplasty, or tummy tuck, after a bariatric surgery had helped her lose over 100lbs.
She was released from the hospital on November 30, just a week before the suspected date of the shooting.
The day before police suspect the murder-suicide occurred, Clark posted on Facebook that she had gotten DNA ancestry tests for herself and Madison for Christmas and awaited results.
Clark [left], who recently had surgery had posted that she was struggling to kick taking prescription pain medication just days before she died in a murder-suicide, killing her daughter Madison [right]
Clark had recently had surgery and said she was struggling to quit taking pain medication
On December 6, Clark wrote on Facebook: ‘I tried to get off my pain meds today. I didn’t take one for 20 hours, but right before bed, the pain was bad enough that I knew it would be a miserable, broken sleep… so I caved.
‘Perhaps I can just take them in the eve’s for a few more days before quitting them completely. I mean… I’ve only been out of surgery for 6 days, right? I just don’t like being dependent on anything.’
Later that day, she wrote: ‘I bought Ancestry DNA kits for myself and the kids for Christmas. Madison and I did ours today and sent them in!’
Her final post at 4.03am on December 7 was to share a video supporting President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Young Madison and her mom Karina Clark, seen in a family photo from several years ago.
Clark had three older children, two of whom also lost their father to suicide, the family said in a fundraising appeal to help pay funeral expenses.
The family has been left struggling to understand why Clark had taken her young daughter’s life as well as her own.
‘My heart aches to what had to have happened that night,’ said Miller.
‘I have been filled with anger and sadness and have begged God to give me some sort of reason.’
Karina had 3 other children besides Maddie named Gibson Clark and the twins Bailey and Brandon Miller. The twins have already lost their father earlier in childhood to suicide.
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