Amurder–suicide is an act where an individual intentionallykills one or more people, before or while alsokilling themselves. The suicide may be in response to the guilt one feels for the murder, or to avoid potential punishments, such asimprisonment. Some forms of murder also inherently entail suicide; such assuicide attacks, or when the operator of an aircraft with passengersdeliberately crashes it.
Many perpetrators ofspree killings, such asmass shootings andschool shootings, either end their own lives afterwards, or intend to bekilled by police. Some cases ofreligiously motivated mass suicides have also involved murder. All categorization amounts to forming somewhat arbitrary distinctions where relating to intention in the case ofpsychosis, where the intention(s) is/are more likely than not to be irrational. Ascertaining the legal intention (mens rea) is inapplicable to cases properly categorized asinsanity.
The term sometimes includes more general cases ofhomicide rather than strictly murder ('homicide-suicide'), meaning that cases ofmanslaughter are included.[1]
According to an analysis of theLondon Times' reports of murder (1887-1990) by Danson and Soothill (1996), there is a much higher proportion of British male murder-suicides, in general, than female. Overwhelmingly the women committing murder-suicide tend to kill their children and then themselves. Men, on the other hand, tend to kill their spouses or partners and then themselves.[2]
According topsychiatristKarl A. Menninger, murder and suicide are interchangeable acts – suicide sometimes forestalling murder, and vice versa.[3] FollowingFreudian logic, severe repression of natural instincts due to early childhood abuse may lead thedeath instinct to emerge in a twisted form. Thecultural anthropologistErnest Becker, whose theories on the human notion of death are strongly influenced by Freud, views the fear of death as a universal phenomenon, a fear repressed in the unconscious and of which people are largely unaware.
This fear can move individuals towardheroism, but also toscapegoating. Failed attempts to achieve heroism, according to this view, can lead tomental illness and/orantisocial behavior.[4]
In a study specifically related to murder–suicide, Milton Rosenbaum (1990) discovered the murder–suicide perpetrators to be vastly different from perpetrators of homicide alone. Whereas murderer–suicides were found to be highly depressed and overwhelmingly men, other murderers were not generally depressed and more likely to include women in their ranks.[4] In the U.S. the overwhelming number of cases are male-on-female.[5] Around one-third of partner homicides end in the suicide of the perpetrator.[citation needed] From national and international data and interviews with family members of murder–suicide perpetrators, the following are the key predictors of murder–suicide: a history of substance abuse, the male partner some years older than the female partner, a break-up or pending break-up, a history of battering, and suicidal contemplation by the perpetrator.[citation needed]
Though there is no national tracking system for murder–suicides in the United States, medical studies into the phenomenon estimate between 1,000 and 1,500 deaths per year in the US,[6] with the majority occurring between spouses or intimate partners and the vast majority of the perpetrators being male. Depression, marital or/and financial problems, and other problems are generally motivators.
Homicides which are later followed by suicide often make headline news; national statistics indicate 5% of all homicidal deaths are caused by murder–suicides. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control reports[7] that an estimated 1 million adults reported attempting suicide in 2011, and there were over 38,000 completed suicides in the same period.[8] The estimate of 624 murder–suicide events per year[9] indicates that around 1.6% of suicides involve murder.
In 18th-century Denmark, people wishing to die by suicide would sometimes commit murder in order to receive thedeath penalty.[10] They believed murder followed byrepentance would allow them to end their life while avoidingdamnation.[10]
