Their lives were too short.

Twins Caroline and Madison King were only 3 years old when their father, Robert D. King, killed his daughters in what the Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, working with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, said was a murder-suicide on Saturday, Jan. 28.

King’s motive, if known, has yet to be released. On Thursday, his estranged wife, Kristina Hooper, talked about her daughters.

“They were fun loving little girls. They made so many people happy. I have no idea why their father did this.”

She said the girls liked to go grocery shopping with her. “They each would get their own little basket and go shopping. They’d put things in their baskets. Sometimes I’d take one or two things out, but they usually got some of the items they picked out.”

A favorite stop for the girls involved ice cream. “They both liked vanilla. I like peanut butter-flavored ice cream, and they enjoyed our trips to get ice cream or getting it from the ice cream truck when it came around.”

Caroline and Madison attended the Cherub preschool.

“They would come home exhausted every day after being there for three hours,” Hooper added. “They enjoyed it so much.”

She said the twins enjoyed having books read to them and listening to nursery rhymes on a computer. They would sing along and play them over and over.

“I would read to them every night before they went to bed. I slept with them. The three of us slept in the same bed,” Hooper continued, “and it was such a peaceful, loving time. That is something I’m really going to miss.”

Unlike most little girls, Hooper said her daughters did not like dolls. “They really were not into dolls. They liked coloring and painting, puzzles, playing outside, and playing with my son’s Matchbox cars, but they never liked dolls.”

She said her twins were similar in a lot of ways. “They could both be a little bossy. Type-A [personality], I guess. They both had so much personality. Sometimes when they would sing a song, they would sing it in their own particular way.”

Hooper said she and King were going through a divorce and the girls reacted to the change in their young lives.

“They were going through a hard time with our divorce,” she said. “It seems like they were just getting used to what was going on.”

Hooper said she wanted to thank the community for their outpouring of support. “It’s just been unbelievable — more than I could have ever imagined.”

These days, Hooper said, she is faced with getting back to reality.

“I’m not sure it has really hit me yet. I want to keep things as normal as I can and not make too many changes. I’ll try to get back to work in a couple of weeks. I think about the girls all the time and am sure I’ll think about them every day of my life. They were smart, fun loving and full of energy, and I just don’t understand why this happened. I just don’t understand.”

Photo courtesy of Kristina Hooper
Twins Madison, left, and Caroline King get a big hug from their mother, Kristina Hooper.