Cases where people kill their
families and then commit
suicide are mercifully rare.
Less extreme forms of domestic
violence and child abuse are more
common. Acts of partner conflict
can fall on a broad spectrum, ranging from verbal criticisms to cases
of a family homicide followed by
suicide. The research identifies
several risk factors that may indeed
predict more severe domestic
violence cases.
In a seminar titled Men Who Murder
Their Families: What the Research
Tells Us, an expert panel discussed
a recent spike in news reports of
“familicide” cases. Panelists included
Jacquelyn C. Campbell of Johns
Hopkins University, author David
Adams, and Richard Gelles of the
University of Pennsylvania.
Campbell, Anna D. Wolf Chair
and professor at JHU’s School of
Nursing, discussed the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s
National Violent Death Reporting
System. Of the 408 homicidesuicide cases, most perpetrators
were men (91 percent) and most
used a gun (88 percent). A 12-city
study that Campbell conducted of
these cases found that intimatepartner violence had previously
occurred in 70 percent of them.
Interestingly, only 25 percent of
prior domestic violence appeared
in the arrest records, according to
Campbell. Researchers uncovered
NIJ Journal / Issue No. 266
Men Who Murder Their Families: What the Research Tells Us | 11
much of the prior domestic violence
through interviews with family and
friends of the homicide victims.
“Prior domestic violence is by far
the number-one risk factor in these
cases,” Campbell said.
She also explained that most people
who commit murder-suicide are
non-Hispanic white males who kill
their mates or former mates. Prior
domestic violence is the greatest
risk factor in these cases. Access to
a gun is a significant risk factor, as
are threats with a weapon, a stepchild in the home or estrangement.
However, a past criminal history is
not a reliable or significant predictor
in murder-suicide.
In the aftermath of a family murder
followed by a suicide, communities,
police, researchers and others search
for explanations. In difficult financial times, it may be natural to look
for economic influences, especially
when the killer has recently lost a
job or has enormous financial
problems. Campbell found that
unemployment was a significant
risk factor for murder-suicide but
only when combined with a history
of domestic violence. In other words,
it was not a risk factor in and of itself
but was something that tipped the
scale following previous abuse.
Adams, author of Why Do They Kill?
Men Who Murder Their Intimate
Partners, offered his perspective
based on years of research and
experience working with domestic violence cases. His comments
focused mostly on guns and jealousy
in these violent crimes. When we
consider prevention, guns are essentially the “low-hanging fruit,” he
suggested. He cited research, similar
to Campbell’s data, showing that 92
percent of murder-suicides involved a
gun in a sample of 591 cases. Adams
Ninety percent of the
time the best predictor
of domestic violence is
past behavior.
compared high rates of intimatepartner homicide in the United States
with the considerably lower rates in
other wealthy countries. He noted
that America has the most permissive gun laws of any industrialized
nation. He made a similar comparison among U.S. states that have
restrictive versus permissive gun
laws and lower versus higher homicide and suicide rates. Three reasons
guns are used frequently is that they
are more efficient than other weapons, can be used impulsively, and
can be used to terrorize and threaten.
In the research for his book, Adams
asked those who killed with guns
if they would have used another
weapon if a gun were not available;
most said no.
“The most common type of killer
was a possessively jealous type, and
I found that many of the men who
… commit murder-suicide, as well
as those who kill their children, also
seem to fit that profile,” Adams said.
“A jealous substance abuser with a
gun poses a particularly deadly combination of factors; one that was
present in about 40 percent of the
killers I interviewed,” he added.
Gelles, professor and dean of the
School of Social Policy & Practice
at the University of Pennsylvania,
said that 90 percent of the time the
best predictor of domestic violence
is past behavior. He said the proximate social and demographic factors
that are related to all forms of family violence except sexual abuse are
poverty, unemployment and family
stressors, which include disagreements over money, sex and children.
The economy always is a distal factor
that is translated into family relations
through poverty or employment or
self-image or stressors.
Recent economic problems may
produce increases in child abuse
and neglect and domestic violence.
In the subset of men who kill their
entire families, there is a small
increase in atypical familicide. These
atypical cases are not the possessive, controlling husbands with guns.
The familicides that are represented
by men who kill their wives, their
children and themselves are what
the famous French sociologist
Emile Durkheim called “anomic
suicides.” These occur when there
are radical and significant changes
in the person’s social and economic
environment.
The United States experienced
economic disruptions in 2001 and
in the recession of 1990. However,
they did not produce huge waves
of violence, either in child abuse
or domestic violence, Gelles said.
Anomic suicide “is not suicide
because you’ve lost all your money
but suicide because the rules of the
game have changed — because
what you thought would be true
about your life and your family and
your 401(k) and the loyalty of your
company has suddenly been disrupted,” he said. Gelles suggested
that this difficult disruption mixed
with an “overenmeshment” in
one’s family could underlie these
familicides.
Overenmeshment is a condition
in which perpetrators either view
“their family members as possessions that they control or [they]
don’t see any boundaries between
12 | Men Who Murder Their Families: What the Research Tells Us
NIJ Journal / Issue No. 266
their identity, their wife and their
children. And so these are suicides of
the entire family, where the anomic,
overly enmeshed individual can’t
bear to leave the pain behind and
so takes his wife and children with
him,” he said.
If the familicide cases signal a more
general increase in domestic violence, one result could be a dramatic
increase in child abuse and a subsequent burden on the foster care
system, Gelles said.
Visit the NIJ Web page, “Murder-Suicide in Families,” to watch or listen to
the seminar or to read the transcript: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/topics/
crime/intimate-partner-violence/murder-suicide.htm.
The discussion also touched on new
concerns, such as how abusers use
threats to intimidate. The panelists
focused on the point of separation
as a vulnerable period.
Bernie Auchter is a senior social
science analyst with the Violence and
Victimization Research Division at NIJ
