Homicide Between Adult Sexual Intimates: A Research Agenda

Abstract

Little research that focuses upon homicide-suicides between adult sexual intimates has been conducted to date. Yet U.S., U.K., and Australian studies on homicide and homicidesuicide show that a disproportionate number of those that kill and subsequently take their own lives are the husbands or estranged sexual intimates of their victims. This paper provides some retrospective data on the historical, demographic, and situational traits of this type of homicide-suicide in Australia by looking at what, if anything, differentiates homicides between adult sexual intimates that include the suicide of the offender from those that do not. A lack of significant variation was apparent in histories of domestic violence, alcohol involvement, and unemployment between those who committed suicide and those who did not. However, if the offender was a male estranged from his partner, born outside of Australia, who used a gun as the weapon and killed more than one victim, or was older with an ailing wife, he was more apt to commit suicide. Using anecdotal case study mate rial, causation or explanatory variables are also discussed. These appeared to cluster either around a theme of old age and ill-health or control and pathological-type of possessiveness. The author concludes that more research focusing on the differentiation between the two groups of offenders is necessary in order to better identify contributory variables and to develop risk elements and information for criminal justice practitioners and other service providers.

Hostility in Homicide–Suicide Events: A Typological Analysis with Data from a Chinese Society, Hong Kong, 1989–2003

“…However, on the other hand, Easteal (1994) and Selkin (1976) found that the backgrounds of HS offenders were as deviant as ordinary homicide offenders. They also found hostility in the majority of events in their samples.…”

“…Nevertheless, the HS phenomenon is far from homogenous, and not infrequently an HS event is dominated by the theme of revenge (Easteal 1994;Henry and Short 1954;Selkin 1976;Rosenbaum 1990;Wolfgang 1958). Wolfgang (1958) compared homicide-only and HS events in Philadelphia and found that HS offenders were as least as hostile as homicideonly offenders.…”

“…Although the guilt hypothesis has not been proven, it is widely accepted by researchers (Rosenbaum 1990;Easteal 1994;Gillespie et al 1998;Stack 1997). For instance, Easteal (1994) compared offenders in Australia who killed their sexual partners and then followed by suicide with those who did not. She found that these two types of offenders were indistinguishable in terms of demographic characteristics, motivation, offender-victim relationship, mode of killing and history of domestic violence.…”

“…hostility is overtly identified in an HS event, the HS phenomenon is regarded as an alternate form of homicide (Easteal 1994;Wolfgang 1958;Selkin 1976). On the other hand, if hostility is not overtly recognized, it is then more likely to be viewed as an extended form of suicide (West 1965;Cooper and Eaves 1996).…”

Psychiatric chrono‐epidemiology: its relevance for the study of aggression

“…For this type of patient, better risk assessment during ''highrisk time'' (certain periods of Spring and Summer, periods around major public holidays) might allow external treatment and care decisions and cycles to be timed more sensitively. Case reports indicate that in some circumstances, better assessment of psychiatric patients could indeed have prevented tragedy [Easteal, 1994].…”