Murder Followed by Suicide: Filicide–Suicide Mothers in Italy from 1992 to 2010

Abstract

The international literature shows that in 40-50% of the cases, homicides-suicides involving children under the age of 10 are committed by mothers. Here, we report some results on homicides-suicides, in the mother-child relationship, occurred in Italy between 1992 and 2010. We examined 36 cases of filicide-suicide mothers by consulting the archives of RAI, daily newspapers, and the ANSA news agency. We focused on: mothers and children's age, place of residence, date and place of the murder, number and sex of the murdered children, and modality of the homicide-suicide. At the time of the homicide-suicide, the average age of mothers was 35.4. The number of children killed by each mother was one, except in seven cases. All the women had underestimated psychopathological disorders and only six women were regularly treated. The dynamics and characteristics of the events were much more similar to suicides than homicides, so we can consider them as "extensive suicides."

Homicide in the western family and background factors of a perpetrator

“…Mothers who had committed filicide had various sociodemographic factors [3,12,25–27,29,37,39,42–47,49], problems experienced in childhood [12,25,34,39,42,43], psychological instability [12,25,27,29,30–32,34,36–40,42,44,47,48], unstable social relationships [12,25–27,32,37,39,42], experiences of insecurity [12,25–27,42] and violence offence [26,27,29,31,32,36,42,43,49] in their background.…”

“…The various social demographic factors included a low level of education [3,27,42,43], low status at work [12,25], a poor economic situation [37,42,44–46] and a lower socioeconomic class [12,25,47]. In addition, the background factors of mothers who committed filicide included unemployment [12,25,26,29,39,42–47,49], and they were either in a relationship or marriage [12,25,26,29,39,43–47,49] or separated from a relationship [26,27,32,36,42,45,46,49].…”

“…During the reading of the data differences were notice in the background factors of familicide perpetrators regarding the number of victims, the sex of the perpetrator and whether the perpetrator committed suicide. Based on this information, categories were created for analysis, dividing the background factors into five different categories: 1) background factors of familicide perpetrators with possibly committed suicide [3,7,22–26]; 2) filicide-committed fathers [3,12,24,25,27–41]; 3) filicide-committed mothers [3,12,25–27,29–32,34,36–39,42–49]; 4) filicide-suicide-committed fathers [6,32,35,36,49]; and 5) filicide-suicide-committed mothers [6,36,48]. The data analysis continued by underscoring background factors of familicide perpetrators that emerged through reading and by simplifying these factors and coding these simplifications.…”

Familicide in Italy: An Exploratory Study of Cases Involving Male Perpetrators (1992-2015)

“…Data provided by the ISTAT (2015a) with regard to victim–offender relationship for the 2002-2013 interval include domestic homicides whose victims were partner or ex-partner, other family members, and other relatives (see Figure 1), with the total of their homicide rate that was found to be relatively well conserved across the time period under study (for an overview of homicides in Italy, for example, Colombo, 2011; Preti & Macciò, 2012; for domestic homicides and homicide-suicides in Italy, for example, Ciappi, 2002; D’Argenio, Catania, & Marchetti, 2013; Merzagora Betsos & Pleuteri, 2005; Merzagora Betsos, Travaini, Battistini, & Pleuteri, 2011; Roma, Pazzelli, & Ferracuti, 2011; Roma et al, 2012; Russo, Delia, D’Arrigo, & Falduto, 2008, 2009; Verzeletti, Russo, & De Ferrari, 2013).…”

Filicide-suicide: An unusual variant of dyadic death

“…Evidence suggests that most homicide-suicide cases take place within the family. 9 Nock and Marzuk 10 proposed a classification of the homicide-suicide phenomenon, based on the perpetrator–victim relationship. The proposed typology included: spousal murder-suicide (the most common variant which usually involves amorous or morbid jealousy), familicide-suicide (typically the senior male who is depressed or psychotic kills every member of his family including his spouse, children and other relatives before committing suicide), extra-familial murder-suicide (usually the perpetrator is suffering from paranoia and kills people unrelated to him) and filicide-suicide (children are killed by parents, either mother or father).…”