FAMILICIDE - THE KILLING OF SPOUSE AND CHILDREN

A familicide is a multiple-victim homicide incident in which the kille r's spouse and one or more children are slain. National archives of Ca nadian and British homicides, containing 109 familicide incidents, per mit some elucidation of the characteristic and epidemiology of this cr ime, Familicides were almost exclusively perpetrated by men, unlike ot her spouse-killings and other filicides, Half the familicidal men kill ed themselves as well, a much higher rate of suicide than among other uxoricidal or filicidal men, De facto unions were overrepresented, com pared to their prevalence in the populations-at-large, but to a much l esser extent in familicides than in other uxoricides. Stepchildren wer e overrepresented as familicide victims, compared to their numbers in the populations-at-large, but to a much lesser extent than in other fi licides; unlike killers of their genetic offspring, men who killed the ir stepchildren were rarely suicidal, An initial binary categorization of familicides as accusatory versus despondent is tentatively propose d. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.