Murder can make us pay attention — to things we should have been paying attention to all along.

On Dec. 18, five-year-old Kenneth White, a Berne-Knox-Westerlo kindergartner, was slain in his Thacher Park Road home in Knox — his body pitched into a snow bank across the street.

Last week his father, Jayson White, went to court to try to get custody of Kenneth’s twin, Cheyanne, and their younger sister, 4-year-old Christine. We don’t blame the judge for saying no. Jayson White had not visited any of his three children in the more than eight months they had been in custody of their aunt, Brenda VanAlstyne, in Knox.

All of us need to pay attention to and take care of those we love while they are alive.

Brenda VanAlstyne, 42, is not being allowed now to visit Christine and Cheyanne. They are in the custody of Albany County Child Protective Services. The Albany County Department of Children, Youth, and Families, according to media reports on the court session, has filed an abuse petition alleging that Brenda VanAlstyne has mental-health problems that she has not attended to, impairing her ability to care for children.

Again, we find no fault with the county for trying to protect innocent children from harm. But why were children — including the slain Kenneth White — allowed in her custody in the first place if she is now unfit even to visit?

And what about where they all lived? In addition to the three White children and Brenda VanAlstyne, Kenneth VanAlstyne lived in the roadside trailer with Tiffany VanAlstyne, Brenda’s 19-year-old daughter, and an 18-year-old man Brenda VanAlstyne had taken in.

In the midst of his murder investigation, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said he found safety problems in the trailer. He said the wood stove was not adequately vented, and a large space heater, near clothing, appeared dangerous.

Apple said he would call the town’s code-enforcement officer, stating, “I think there are serious deficiencies in that trailer that put people’s lives in jeopardy.”

The town has now inspected and found the trailer not fit to live in. Yet another example of not paying attention until tragedy struck.

That leaves us with perhaps the saddest neglect of all: The accused murderer, Tiffany VanAlstyne. Any murder is heinous — that of a child particularly so.

But we cannot help but wonder if she had gotten help earlier if things may have turned out differently. When she was arraigned, Tiffany VanAlstyne cried when telling the judge she was bipolar and took lithium. Her mother told us as she stood in the courtroom after the arraignment, with tears in her eyes, that Tiffany loved her 5-year-old cousin Kenny; he was a favorite and Tiffany often helped her by looking after him.

The murder took place in the half-hour Brenda VanAlstyne was away at Kenneth’s school and had left Tiffany in charge of the young children.

The district attorney said that he is “1,000-percent” confident in the murder charge and he may be right.

But again we ask: Could something have been done beforehand? Long beforehand.

At a candlelight vigil at the school last week, which nine hundred people attended, a BKW alumna, one of Tiffany’s classmates, told us, “She was always quiet. She never talked to anyone.” She was considered strange. 

Could someone have helped her before she was left in charge of young children or, failing that, not allowed her such responsibility?

Asking these questions is not mean-spirited. Kenneth White’s mother, Christine VanAlstyne White, told us after the candlelight vigil, “Let everyone know that Spider-Man is looking down on them.” The superhero was his idol, but Kenneth White needed us, as a society, to look after him.

The sheriff said Kenneth White was tossed like a piece of trash. If we share that outrage, let us turn its intensity to ourselves, on each of us who make up this society. If we can learn from these mistakes, perhaps we can mend the holes in our social safety net to prevent future tragedies.

That would truly light a candle in the dark.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer