Headscratchers / Flowers in the Attic

• Christopher, Sr., is a thirty-six-year-old middle-class man with four dependent children, masses of credit card debt, and a job that requires a great deal of travel. Why didn't he have life insurance?!
  • It's possible that the masses of debt would have been paid off with any life insurance payments or any residual savings. Likewise, in that time period, one mostly got life-insurance if they were elderly or terminally ill.
• Corrine gets whipped by her mother Olivia as punishment for running off with Christopher Sr. and later on, she's shown at the party in a strapless dress with no visible scarring or wounds. How did she heal so fast?
  • Either makeup or the whipping lacerations weren't deep.
• Why did Corrine attempt to kill the children through a slow, lengthy process of feeding them arensic-laced donuts instead of simply using a more powerful poison that would kill them instantly?
  • Arsenic is difficult to detect, tasteless and odorless. Though the book takes some liberties, if Corrine had used something stronger, it’s probably safe to assume Chris at least would have realized there was something wrong with the food.
  • She could not seem to face the direct methods, like shooting or stabbing them. She could live in denial that they died of illness instead and she did not really kill them.
  • Poisoning is actually very hard to do in real life. The fast-acting poisons can be difficult to obtain, and usually pose a risk to the one doing the poisoning too. There are actually a couple of poisons that can be created by combining certain garden chemicals, but that would require someone with extensive knowledge of how to create it. She also has four people to get rid of rather than one, all of whom live in the same room.
• The children choosing not to expose the crimes due to how the public would judge them and not wanting their family separated. Aren't there laws restricting media about exposing underage victims and witnesses of violence and family issues in order to protect their privacy?
  • As children, they probably aren't aware of those laws. Unfortunately it's also not uncommon for abused children to fear judgment or getting in trouble themselves if they talk about their abuse, and for siblings to fear getting split up in foster care.
  • In the 1960s, it is very likely that those kinds of privacy laws didn't exist yet. Given the high-profile perpetrator and the sensational nature of the case, it's possible that the children really would be dragged through a highly publicized trial if they chose to expose their mother's crimes.