Gary Anderson says he is still struggling to understand why his daughter Amanda Karolkiewicz and her six children were killed in their Grand Haven Township home, days after authorities confirmed all eight died of gunshot wounds. Speaking from his Royal Oak home, the father said he cannot make sense of what happened inside the house on July 24, when investigators say Kristopher Karolkiewicz shot the children and Mandy before setting a fire and shooting himself.
Anderson said he loves his daughter, the six children and even Kristopher, and he described the 47-year-old as a good husband and good father, a view that sits in sharp contrast with the authorities’ finding that Kristopher killed Amanda and the children, ages 5 to 15, and then died by suicide. That gap — between the family memory and the criminal findings — is what has kept this case so difficult to absorb for relatives trying to understand the loss.
The deaths have been ruled homicides for Amanda and the children and suicide for Kristopher, but police have not determined a motive and continue to investigate. The household loss was total: all eight died of gunshot wounds, and the family’s pets also died in the fire. Relatives confirmed the children’s names as Keegan, Bennett, Caroline, Ella, Smith and Teddy.
New details have only deepened the uncertainty. Social media posts showed Mandy and her daughters had returned from a trip to China on July 17, and a family spokesperson said there is no way to confirm that Mandy wrote the Reddit posts that described a strained family life. In those posts, the account said Mandy had no contact with her father, his side of the family, her sister Molly and her husband’s father and his side of the family in July 2024.
For Anderson, the search for meaning has already run into its hardest wall. The public record now confirms how the family died, but the reason Kristopher Karolkiewicz did it remains unknown, and that is the question investigators have still not answered.
