The Family Annihilator - Fathers Who Kill

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L. Lee ScottHaving discussed women who kill their children in another article (Mothers Who Kill Their Children), I feel it only fair to look at the other side. Fathers who kill their children, and frequently their wives as well, are known as "Family Annihilators" to criminal psychologists or psychiatrists, and to law enforcement. They are not mentally ill, but coldly calculating, and often spend months planning their crimes. Because they often kill themselves too, these crimes don't always make the news in media-friendly trials, but in the United States, there are 10 murder-suicides each week.

The major factors leading men to kill their families include impending divorce, male sexual jealousy, an obsession with control, and possessiveness, according to Dr. Jack Levin, a criminal psychology expert from North-Eastern University in Boston. A Scottish psychiatrist, and director of Priory Hospital in Glasgow. Scotland, Dr. Alex Yellowlees, says that there are definite differences between men and women who kill or harm their children. He says that women tend to be mentally ill, frequently suffering from post-partum depression. Men, on the other hand, feel rage, jealousy, hatred, and revenge when they kill their families.

American television leads most of us to seek a profile for killer "types." Dr. Levin has provided a profile of the family annihilator as a middle-aged man, who appears to others (outside the family) to be a good provider, a loving father, and a faithful and loving husband. But he tends to be isolated, with no close friends or support system of his own, aside from his family. He has suffered with feelings of inadequacy and some form of long frustration. Ultimately, he suffers some catastrophic loss which leads to his crime. This trigger may be the loss of his job, or loss of money through a bad investment, but sometimes it is the impending loss of his wife. He doesn't hate his children, although he may hate his wife and blame her for his own problems. He has previously been a controlling man, within the family, but now feels powerless. Dr. Levin's belief is that the family annihilator wants revenge against his wife.

Other psychiatrists, though, in several journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, 1992), find that Family Annihilators may believe that they have become unable to provide for their family, and state in suicide notes, or at their trials, that they are trying to save their family from hardships, particularly when financial difficulties are the triggering factor. Dr. Charles Patrick Ewing, a psychiatrist in Buffalo, NY, and author of the book "Fatal Families: The Dynamics of Intrafamilial Homicide" says that "if anything, [family annihilators] are over-invested in their families... They're being overly responsible" and feel they can no longer take care of their families, including their wives. They view their families as somehow an extension of themselves, and strive to make them fit some romanticized ideal. When they cannot, they feel like failures. This certainly describe the case of Robert Bryant, who in 2001 shot and killed his wife and four children, then himself, ironically on his 16th wedding anniversary, after losing his job, being disfellowshipped from his Jehovah's Witness congregation, and moving from California to Oregon.

In a 2006 report called "American Roulette: Murder-Suicide in the United States" the Violence Policy Center described the family annihilator as a subcategory of "intimate-partner murder-suicide" and states that this type of murderer kills not only his wife/girlfriend and their children, but often other family members as well, such as a mother or mother-in-law who resides with them, before killing themselves. Renowned psychiatrist and frequent expert witness Park Dietz says these killers are in complete control of themselves when they kill, so do not fit the requirements of legal insanity. They are not psychotic, they realize that what they are doing is wrong, and they could stop themselves, but choose not to.

Dietz testified against Kenneth Seguin in his 1993 trial. Seguin was accused of killing his children and wife, and plead that he was psychotic and delusional at the time, believing that his family was in great danger and could only be saved by going to heaven. Dietz showed how carefully Seguin had planned and prepared for the murders. First, he took the razor he later used to slit the throats of his children, and placed it in the pants he intended to wear on the night of the killings. He then waited until his wife had left the house, and wouldn't be able to stop him from taking the children away to kill them. Dietz recited the entire list of actions Seguin took that clearly showed he was not insane, but a murderer carefully planning his cold-blooded crime. Seguin was convicted.

Men who kill their families, these annihilators, usually have no criminal record. They are the perfect citizen, with jobs as doctors, lawyers, businessmen, military personnel, or even law enforcement officers. They are not drug or alcohol abusers, nor are they usually under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they kill. Their sudden attack on their family may appear to come out of the blue. Levin states, though, that if they had been seen by psychologists prior to committing their murders, those psychologists would have noticed warning signs of rage, and of blaming others for their problems. They would also notice that these men think of their families as their possessions. Some experts believe, however, that there may be prior patterns of domestic abuse in these families, even though it is not always reported.

As stated above, these crimes are not committed while the man is insane, either by the legal or clinical definition of insanity. Dr. Levin says, "These are executions. They are never spontaneous... they are not carried out in the heat of the moment... they are very methodical and it is often planned out for a long time." Men who don't commit suicide after killing their families, or who attempt suicide and fail, may try to plead insanity when brought to trial. Such a plea has yet to be accepted in any court in the U.S. or in Great Britain, because of the planning and execution of the crimes, and the lack of any discoverable mental illness. It should be noted that in the cases of women who kill for reasons other than psychosis or post-partum depression, such as Susan Smith, who killed her two sons because she believed they stood in the way of a new relationship in her life, pleas of insanity are just as unlikely to be accepted as they are for men.

In two recent cases of family annihilators in England, the case of Gavin Hall, who drugged and strangled his three year old daughter, and of Mohammed Riaz, who killed his wife, four daughters, and himself by burning down their home after locking the doors from the inside, newspapers reported heavily on the behavior of the wives prior to the men's crimes. The detectives handling those cases were angered by such reporting, however. Superintendent John Jones of Northampton, where the Hall killing occurred, pointed out that affairs are far from uncommon, and most people don't kill their children because of them. The problem lay not in the wife's behavior, but in the husband's.

Can crimes like this be prevented? Probably not. Dr. Yellowlees said that it can take a long time, even years, for a woman to realize that her husband views her as a possession, and that "initially, a woman can feel flattered" if her partner displays jealousy. By the time she realizes the degree of his possessiveness, it may be too late. Whether this obsessive possiveness leads to rage or frustration and feelings of failure, the family annihilator believes his best course of action is to destroy his family, and he does so with cunning and careful planning.

More resources

http://observer.guardian.co.uk

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