Surviving the Unimaginable Oprah talks to Christine McFadden

Apr 12, 2007 06:04:07

What's the worst thing that could happen to a mother of four? It happened to Christine McFadden the day her ex-husband killed her children.  for months afterwards, Christine wished she'd died with her kids.  But now with a new husband and newborn twins, she's learning to live again. When Chrisinte McFadden, a veterinarian in Merced, California, went out for her early moring walk on March 26, 2002, her four children were still sleeping, Melanie, 17, Stanley, 15, and Suart, 14, were the kids from her first marriage; 5 year old Michelle was from her second marriage, to a former sheriff's deputy named John Hogan.  Christine had divorced Hogan in 2001 but had made room for im in Michelle's life.  And so while it was unusual, upon returning home that morning, to see his truck parked in the driveway, she wasn't alarmed.  Having to deal with Hogan would be irritating, but Christine was used to that.  Then she went inside and came upon Melanie lying dead on the hallway floor.  While Christine was out, Hogan had shot and killed all four children witha a .40 caliber handgun, then shot himself in the head.  My whol life -- it's gone, Christine told me when she appeared on the show two years after the murders.  Three years later, at 49, Christine has emerged from the bleak place.  Last April she married Gerald Corman, a family law judge.  And on January 26, she gave birth to their twin daughters, Nicole and Claire.  The decision to have more children wasn't one Christine made lightly, but it seems to have been the right one; Around the girls, she is joyous, doting, engaged-altogether achanged woman, ready to move forward.