In the last week, Maryland was the site of two family eradications with 7 murders and two suicides

[Stinky The Clown]

This is really pretty overwhelming, even when you don't know the people. The young father killing his wife and three beautiful little babies happened about twenty ... thirty miles west of here. The older father who killed his wife and two teenage daughters was maybe 15 miles northeast of here.

Two families full of hopes and dreams were simply eradicated. Two men were so troubled they did this.

Sometimes you're unable to even know the questions to ask, let alone guess at what the answers might be.

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. I don't understand why the father takes the whole family with him. ugh

[babylonsister]

2. Wow. Family Eradications. .......... wow. nt

[Stinky The Clown]

3. What else to call them?

Both families were wiped out completely.

It hurts just to imagine it.

[depakid]

5. Aussies call them mass shootings

[babylonsister]

7. I wasn't critiquing your description because that's what they are.

But that sounds so...final? Calculated? Tragedy is the usual word used.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. But it is calculated...........

The murders/suicides are obviously well-planned. The NY guy made sure he got his whole family together in MD, where his older daughter went to college. The other man, with the three young children, made sure everyone was asleep before he shot them all.

Eradication is an excellent description. Annihilation.

It's just murder. Plain old murder. Of such innocents as to assume Biblical proportions ........................

[babylonsister]

16. Yes, it is calculated.

I wonder if this has happened my entire life, and I never knew because we didn't have 24/7 access?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

18. You got me thinking -

I wondered if "familicide" was a real word, so I did the google, and look what I found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familicide

One of the footnotes links to an article from 1995, and, from the little of the article that's online, I gleaned that there were references only as far back as 1960.

I suspect it's always been with us, but, as you say, the news business wasn't what it is today ........................................

[Stinky The Clown]

14. Even "tragedy" is somehow off the mark ......

A plane crash is a tragedy.

The Manson family caused tragedies.

This is familial. That just seems so far beyond "tragedy".




I wasn't carping about your comment. I'm just at a loss for words ......

[Tangerine LaBamba]

8. Don't forget how the second one went down .......

The family was from NY, and they drove south - father, mother, younger daughter - to spend the weekend with the older daughter, who was a student at Loyola College. She told her friends that she thought it was weird that her family was coming to visit since she'd only returned to school from Spring Break a day earlier.

One day earlier.

She had dinner with them the night they got there, and then went to see them at their hotel the next day. People reconstructing the events figured that the mother and younger daughter were already dead when the college student daughter used her passkey to enter their suite. She was assaulted with a blunt object, and murdered.

The father drove to where the older child was to make sure he'd have them all in one place so that he could kill everyone. Imagine that trip from NY to MD.

And why didn't he do it at home, before the older girl went back to school, when they were all together?

It's so morbid, so upsetting, so horrible .....................

[aquart]

4. A term we're going to be very familiar with.

[elleng]

9. We have become,

and I wrote wondering about rationales. Ego? Depression? Men?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

11. Men who fucked up financially and professionally .........

The NY guy who killed himself and his family in the Maryland hotel was deep in the hole - a Ponzi scheme gone bad - and was already writing rubber checks.

Kill yourself, man, but why take out your own children and your wife?

The word "victims" takes on a whole additional dimension ...................

[elleng]

20. Shame? Thinking it would be better for them?

Or for HIM?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

23. Men have always been defined, in their minds, at least,

by what they do, not what they are. When their jobs go bust, they seem to lose the largest part of their identity.

At that point, who can understand what goes on in their heads? I can't..........................

[elleng]

6. Can't even write about this.

Daughter interviewed at Loyola. Can imagine her among the friends.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. YOUR daughter?

Oh, god, that's disturbing. Even though ..... ah, it's just too close, isn't it?

We never know. Not for a second........................

[elleng]

19. Yes, Tange, MY younger daughter.

She's at WVU now.

[Honeycombe8]

13. This is happening more and more. Why do men (it seems to be men, usu.) think...

that it's in the best interest of other people that they die because HE will be dead and gone? I mean...who is so arrogant to think that his family just wouldn't be able to go on without HIM?

Their line of depressed reasoning seems to be something like, "I don't have my $$$ anymore, so I can't support my family. I must kill myself. There is no way out. And since I won't be here to support my family, and will also be leaving a ton of debt, I must also kill my 3 year old child, for his own good, so he won't suffer because I'm not here."

I don't mean to rag on men, but it does seem to be a particularly guy way of thinking, doesn't it? When women kill their children, it seems to be usually because they're batshit crazy or they have a purely selfish reason (she wants to get rid of the kids so her boyfriend who doesn't want kids will marry her).

[Stinky The Clown]

15. I can't defend the action .......

..... but neither can I understand it.

I know what you're saying, but to have even gotten to the point of planning - let alone doing - this sort of thing, their mind just isn't working the same as yours or mine.

[Mopar151]

17. I beg to differ

Moms take the kids with 'em, too., but they tend not to take out extended family.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

22. You're talking about something different -

the most instant and notorious example would be Susan Smith, right? But, she killed her children.

Mothers kill their kids, but I can't recall an instance where a mother killed her husband and children and then herself. I'm sure there have been such incidents, but the larger numbers of these familicides (I just learned the word) are committed by fathers/husbands who then kill themselves.

Susan Smith didn't kill herself................................

[Honeycombe8]

26. And there was that incident the movie "Small Sacrifices" was about.

Similar to Susan Smith, the woman killed her kids (one didn't die, so she was ultimately convicted, when the child testified who shot them all). Farrah Fawcett played the woman in the TV movie. She was great. Good movie. She killed her kids, the prosecutor surmised, because her boyfriend had made the comment, when breaking up with her, that he didn't want kids.

Then there was that woman in Houston TX a few years ago who killed her 5 kids because God told her to. She had gone off her medication and was certifiably nuts. Apparently God didn't tell her to kill herself. Just her defenseless children.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

27. Yep, women kill their kids,

for various reasons. Susan Smith did it because the man she wanted to marry wasn't interested in marrying a single mother of two little boys. Same as the story behind the Fawcett movie - which was great, I agree.

The woman in Houston was mentally ill and badly handled by her husband and her psychiatrist. She never should have been off her meds or left alone with those children. She and her husband had also been counselled against having more kids, but he was a serious Christian, so they just let God determine the number of kids they'd have.

God apparently didn't take into account the demons inside that poor woman's head. The husband divorced her after her conviction, and has since remarried, and is, I have no doubt, squeezing out another bunch of children. I hope he chose a wife who's not ill this time.............

[Honeycombe8]

24. Yes, they do. But for different reasons.

I can't think of any instance where a mother has killed her own children, then also killed herself, and it was either known or surmised that she did so because she thought it was in their best interest.

Usually moms kill their kids, like I said, because they're literally nuts, or for purely selfish reasons. And they don't usually kill themselves, too.

But there have been several instances this year and last year where men who have gotten into financial trouble and became depressed, killed themselves...but killed their family beforehand. Others surmising it was because they didn't want to leave their families behind, alone.

I just noticed is all.

[LeftyMom]

21. There was a case like that here a few years ago

The guy killed his family, drove to three or four other houses killing his and his wife's extended family, before taking his gun (s? I forget the details) with him and trying to hide out in kind of a wooded area. The cops caught him and he promptly killed himself in jail.

I don't think anybody ever did figure out a motive.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

25. Same thing happened in So Cal a few months ago,

right down to his setting fire to his house, where he'd returned after going to his inlaws' and killing a whole bunch of his ex-wife's family, including his own daughters.

Calculated. And this one was attributed to a bad divorce. Can you imagine? Killing your kids because you think you got a raw deal in a divorce?

[Art_from_Ark]

29. It seems to me, if that's the "Santa Claus killer"

you're talking about, then I believe he set fire to his in-laws' house with his homemade incendiary device. He was planning to go to Canada after that, but the fire had melted the Santa Claus outfit onto his skin so he went to his brother's house where he committed suicide.

[kristopher]

28. Here is a blog entry that seems to be fairly well researched...

http://neurologicalcorrelates.com/wordpress/2008/05/15/why-do-men-kill-their-family/

Here are some excerpts from the most recent report, “American Roulette: Murder-Suicide in the United States (2008)” (footnotes are deleted, but the source materials are cited in the published report):

Most murderers in murder-suicides are male

In this study, 95 percent of the offenders were male. Other studies analyzing
murder-suicide have found that most perpetrators of murder-suicide are male—more than 90 percent in recent studies of the United States. Another study which only looked at murder-suicides involving couples noted that more than 90 percent were perpetrated by men. This is consistent with homicides in general, in which 89 percent of homicides are committed by male offenders. However, most homicides involve male victims killed by male offenders (65 percent), whereas a male victim being specifically targeted by a male offender in a murder-suicide is relatively rare.

CALIFORNIA: In June, Kevin Morrisey, 51, shot and killed his wife, Dr. Mamiko Kawai, 40, and their two children, Nikki, eight, and Kim, six, in a parking lot. Morrisey left a note explaining that the failing business he and his wife owned was at a financial breaking point that could not be remedied. Morrisey purchased the handgun used in the incident less than two months earlier at a gun store near the location of the company. Morrisey’s brother and neighbors claimed he had once been employed by the CIA. A friend said, “They were the family we all want to be a part of.”
Most murder-suicides involve an intimate partner

The most prevalent type of murder-suicide was between two intimate partners, with the man killing his wife or girlfriend. Such events are commonly the result of a breakdown in the relationship. The average age difference between the offender and primary victim was 6.0 years. Overall, the age difference ranged from none to 23 years. (Other studies on fatal violence for spouses have found that there is a greater risk of homicide victimization as the age difference between the husband and wife increases.) In this study, 73 percent of all murder-suicides involved an intimate partner. Of these, 94 percent were females killed by their intimate partners.
CALIFORNIA: In March, 28-year-old Fredy Melara shot and killed his girlfriend of four years, 24-yearold Gabriela Gonzalez. He also shot his two daughters, aged three and 13 months, in the head before killing himself. Family members noted that Melara, a security guard, had been more controlling of Gonzalez after their recent move to the neighborhood. The couple was heard shouting and arguing just before the incident.
Most murder-suicides with three or more victims involve a male “family annihilator” — subcategory of intimate partner murder-suicide

Most multiple-victim murder-suicides involving a male murderer and a large number (three or more) of victims are perpetrated by family annihilators. Family annihilators are murderers who kill their wives/girlfriends and children, as well as other family members, before killing themselves. In many cases, a family annihilator is suffering from depression and has financial or other problems and feels the family is better off dying with him than remaining alive to deal with the problems at hand.
* * *
NEBRASKA: In January, Dick Wilkinson, a 62-year-old grandfather shot and killed his daughter, 26, son-in-law, 35, and two grandchildren, three and six, in their beds at the home in which they all lived. There were years of tension between Dick Wilkinson and his daughter, Jaime Lee, which involved allegations of she and her husband Darrell stealing cash from Wilkinson and allegations of abuse between Wilkinson and Jaime. In 2003, the court granted Jaime Lee a protective order against her father for one month before being dropped. The application for the protective order cited that Wilkinson kept guns and knives at home. The family had moved out of the home for a week because tension was so high. They returned the night of the shooting with plans to move out permanently within 48 hours.

There is a bit more with links to original studies and articles.