A familicide is a type of murder or murder–suicide in which an individual kills multiple of their own close family members (children, spouses, siblings, or parents) in quick succession. In half the cases, the killer lastly kills themselves in a murder–suicide. If only the parents are killed, the case may also be referred to as a parricide. An individual who commits familicide is called a familicider.
Familicide of others Familicide carried out by outsiders is used as a form of enhanced kin punishment or to eliminate rivals. In ancient China, the "nine familial exterminations" was the killing of an entire extended family or clan, usually for treason. Machiavelli advocated the extermination of a previous ruler's family to prevent uprisings in The Prince. Sippenhaft (English: kin liability) was used in Nazi Germany to punish and sometimes execute the relatives of defectors and anyone involved in the 20 July plot. La Cosa Nostra began killing the relatives, including women and more recently children, of informants (pentiti) and rivals in the 1980s.
Family annihilators
Definition and statistics Family annihilators are a specific type of familicide perpetrator. Forensic psychiatrist Park Elliott Dietz first introduced the term in 1986. He characterized family annihilators as typically the senior male of the household who is struggling with mental health issues and who kills each family member present, sometimes including pets. After murdering the others, he may commit suicide or force law enforcement to kill him.
Between 1900 and 1999, there were 909 mass murder incidents in the U.S. (defined as four victims within a 24-hour period). Of those, more than half occurred within an immediate family. Although the familicide cases are relatively rare, they are the most common form of mass killings. However, statistical data are difficult to establish due to reporting discrepancies.Berton, Justin. "Familicide: Experts say family murder-suicides, though rare, are most common mass killing" . San Francisco Examiner, June 20, 2007.
Familicide differs from other forms of mass murder in that the murderer kills family members or loved ones rather than strangers. This has a different psychodynamic and psychiatric significance, but the distinction is not always made.Malmquist, Carl P., MD. (1996). Homicide: A Psychiatric Perspective. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, .
A study of 30 cases in Ohio found that most of the killings were motivated by a parent's desire to stop their children's suffering. According to ABC News contributor and former FBI agent Brad Garrett, people responsible for killing their families tend to be males in their 30s. Many of these crimes occur in August, before school starts, which may delay detection and investigation.
In Australia, a study was done of seven cases of familicide followed by suicide in which marital separation followed by custody and access disputes were identified as an issue. Some common factors such as marital discord, unhappiness, domestic violence, sexual abuse, threats of harm to self or others were found in varying degrees. It was not clear what could be done in terms of prevention.Johnson, Carolyn. Familicide and Custody Disputes: Dispelling the Myths. University of Western Australia, FamilicideAbstract_CarolynJohnson.pdf
Birmingham City University researchers Elizabeth Yardley, David Wilson, and Adam Lynes co-authored "A taxonomy of male British family annihilators, 1980–2013", examining British familicides in the period. Newspaper articles were used as references. The study concluded that most of the perpetrators were male. Men who murder their entire families usually do so because they believe their spouse performed a wrongdoing and that the spouse needs to be punished, they feel that the family members caused a disappointment, they feel that their own financial failings ruined the point of having a family, and because they wish to save their family from a perceived threat.
Far fewer women commit familicide, and those who do usually have different reasons, including perceived or imagined loss of custody of children. Male family annihilators are typically driven by loss of control, including financial crises, separation or divorce, and may demonstrate evidence for domestic violence, while for women perpetrators, battery, abuse or mental illness is more common, the act itself more likely premeditated and more likely to include victims under the age of one.
A literature review done in 2018 noted contextual and offense characteristics of familicide. Among the 63 articles reviewed 74–85% noted relationship problems or separation. This article also found evidence of financial problems, intoxication, and use of firearms. This literature review unveiled that 71% of these offenses were motivated in regard to conflict between parents and 29% associated to the perpetrators' situation in life. Lastly this article reported two studies, one of which found that many of the motives involved feelings of abandonment, psychosis, and narcissistic rage. The other study found that 60% of these perpetrators were suicidal and 40% homicidal.
Narrative Yardley, Wilson, and Lynes divide familicides into four groups: anomic, disappointed, self-righteous, and paranoid.
In this typology, the "anomic" killer sees his family purely as a status symbol; when his economic status collapses, he sees them as surplus to requirements. The "disappointed" killer seeks to punish the family for not living up to his ideals of family life. The "self-righteous" killer destroys the family to exact revenge upon the mother, in an act that he blames on her. Finally, the "paranoid" killer kills their family in what they imagine to be an attempt to protect them from something even worse.
Notable familicides
Walter Calverley, April 23, 1605, Calverley Old Hall, Yorkshire, England. Calverley stabbed his sons William and Walter to death and also stabbed his wife. He was executed by pressing. George Forster, December 5, 1802, London, England. Forster allegedly killed his wife and child by drowning them in the Paddington Canal. Juhani Aataminpoika, October 18, 1849, Heinola, Finland. Aataminpoika killed his mother, stepfather and their two children, who were his siblings.Suomenlinnaan vangittiin ihmisiä vihaava peto – Juhani Aataminpoika kierteli Hämettä ja murhasi vastaantulijoita (in Finnish)Suomen historian pahin sarjamurhaaja tappoi 12 ihmistä – Ilta-Sanomat (in Finnish) Leah Charlton, May 8, 1890, Liverpool, England. Charlton, who had an unidentified mental illness, slit her three children's throats before attempting suicide. Frederick Bailey Deeming, July 26, 1891, Rainhill, Lancashire, England. Deeming killed his wife and four children and fled to Australia. Marty Bergen, January 19, 1900, North Brookfield, Massachusetts. Bergen killed his wife and two children with an axe, then slit his own throat. James Reid Baxter, April 8, 1908, Invercargill, New Zealand. Baxter killed his wife and five children, then himself. Mateo Banks, April 18, 1922, Azul, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Banks shot dead three siblings, two nieces, one sister-in-law and two family employees. Charles Lawson, December 25, 1929, North Carolina. Lawson killed six children and his wife with a 12-gauge shotgun, bludgeoned the bodies to make sure they were dead, and then walked into the woods and shot himself. Magda Goebbels and her husband Joseph, May 1, 1945, Berlin, Germany. The Goebbels fatally poisoned their six children before committing suicide together. John Etter Clark, June 3, 1956, Erskine, Alberta. Clark, a provincial politician at the time, used a rifle to kill five members of his family: his wife, son and three daughters. Also among the dead were a visitor and a hired farmworker. Lowell Lee Andrews, November 28, 1958, Wolcott, Kansas. Andrews shot his parents and sister. Troy axe murders, September 28, 1964. William G. Gravlin, a fireman who had recently exited a state hospital after slashing a cousin's wife, murdered his wife, daughter, and five stepchildren with an axe. Alice Crimmins, July 14, 1965, New York City. Crimmins killed her two children with help from persons unknown. Charles Whitman, August 1, 1966, Austin, Texas. Whitman killed his wife and mother before committing the University of Texas tower shooting, killing an additional 15 people and wounding 31 others. Jeffrey MacDonald, February 17, 1970, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. MacDonald killed his pregnant wife and two preschool-aged daughters. John List, November 9, 1971, Westfield, New Jersey. List killed his wife, mother, and three children. Ronald DeFeo Jr., November 13, 1974, Amityville, Long Island, New York. DeFeo killed his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters. James Ruppert, March 30, 1975, Hamilton, Ohio. Ruppert killed 11 family members. Bradford Bishop, March 1, 1976, Bethesda, Maryland. Bishop allegedly killed his mother, wife, and three sons. Simon Peter Nelson, January 7, 1978, Rockford, Illinois. Nelson killed his six children, the family dog, and then assaulted his wife, before being arrested. George Emil Banks, September 25, 1982, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Banks killed 13 people, including 5 of his children, their mothers, and bystanders. This still remains the deadliest mass shooting in Pennsylvania. White House Farm murders, August 7, 1985, Tolleshunt D'Arcy, England. Jeremy Bamber shot his parents, his foster sister, and her two children. Frances Newton, April 7, 1987, Mount Houston, Texas. Newton shot her husband and two children. Ronald Gene Simmons, December 22–26, 1987, Dover, Arkansas. Simmons killed 14 family members ranging in age from 20 months to 46 years. David Brom, February 18, 1988, Rochester, Minnesota. Brom, 16, murdered his parents, Bernard and Paulette, his younger brother, Richard, and sister, Diane, with an axe inside the family home. József Istvan Barsi, July 25, 1988, Canoga Park, California. Barsi killed his wife and daughter Judith before committing suicide two days later. Murder of the DeLisle children, August 3, 1989, Wyandotte, Michigan. Lawrence DeLisle drove the family station wagon into the Detroit River, drowning his four children. He and his wife both survived. Lyle and Erik Menendez, August 20, 1989, Beverly Hills, California. The two brothers murdered their parents, José and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menendez. Schlaepfer family murders, May 20, 1992, Paerata, New Zealand. Brian Schlaepfer, who had suffered from mild depression, murdered six members of his family on their Paerata farm before killing himself. Ricardo Barreda, November 15, 1992, La Plata, Argentina. Barreda killed his wife, Gladys McDonald, 57, mother-in-law, Elena Arreche, 86, and two daughters, Cecilia, 26, and Adriana, 24. Jean-Claude Romand, January 9–10, 1993, Prévessin-Moëns, France. Romand killed his wife, two children, his parents and their dog, and attempted to kill his ex-mistress. Zakrzewski family murders, June 9, 1994, Okaloosa County, Florida. Edward J. Zakrzewski II, a United States Air Force sergeant, murdered his South Korean wife and their two children by fatally striking them with a crowbar and machete. Zakrzewski was sentenced to death for the triple murder. Bain family murders, June 20, 1994, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. Five members of the Bain family were shot to death, either by Robin Bain, the father of the family, or the eldest son David, who was the sole surviving member of the family. David was convicted on five counts of murder in 1995, but was acquitted in a retrial in 2009. Susan Smith, October 25, 1994, Union, South Carolina. Smith drowned her two sons in a lake and blamed it on an imaginary Black hijacker. Freeman family murders, February 26, 1995, Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Two brothers and their cousin murdered the brothers' parents and younger brother.