The killers in murder-suicides often see death as the only way to stay with an estranged spouse or keep a family together in the afterlife, experts say.
Assailants who turn the gun on themselves after killing their loved ones are often abusive and desperately obsessed with their victims, said Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who has testified in a number of high-profile criminal cases, including those of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski.
“A normal healthy independent person knows that they can forge on in life even after the loss of a relationship, but there area great many people who are so dependent on another they can’t see a future without them,” he said.
Sometimes called murder-suicides, homicide-suicide or familicide, this particularly shocking brand of carnage has visited the Shore twice in the pastweek.
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Between 2003 and 2014, about 18 percent of womenkilled bymen were victims in a homicide-suicide incident, according to a study of 18 states, including New Jersey, released last month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are unfortunately many local examples of murder-suicides. Among the most recent:
- Aug. 16, 2017: A 51-year-old man apparently killed his estranged wife, their 7-year-old son and the family dog with a hammer before slitting his own throat inside a home in Lacey.
- Aug. 10, 2017: A firearm was found inside the hand of a 42-year-old deceased woman, who had apparently shot her husband before herself, in a posh Holmdel house.
- October 2016: After a 32-year-old man was found hanging from a cable utility truck in Holmdel, authorities found his girlfriend, 29, dead from apparent head trauma in his home.
- September 2015:Before theirLong Branch home caught fire, a 30-year-old man killed his two sons, their mother (his common-law wife) and then himself.
- February 2015:A 25-year-old law student from Tinton Falls was shot and killed by her boyfriend in an apparent murder-suicide at Tulane Unversity in New Orleans.
MORE:Murder-suicides not uncommon at the Jersey Shore
As is often the case in domestic violence, warning signs of a homicidal-suicidal nature may never see the light of day, according to Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor of nursing at Johns Hopkins University.
Campbell co-authored a landmark 2006 research paper on the phenomenon of relationship violence involving men killing wives or girlfriends before taking their own lives.
She said the most common connection between the 100 cases of homicide-suicide they examined was a history of physical abuse that was rarely reported to police.
That limits the opportunity for the criminal justice system to step in and protect the victim and lays the foundation for a familiar pattern to take hold.
It goes something like this: The wife leaves the husband, triggering a semi-public downward spiralin whichhe becomes unemployed,stalks his estranged spouse and talks openly about suicide, Campbell said.
“He doesn’t have an identity separate from his family. He’s so enmeshed with being the father, the husband, that he doesn’t have a life apart from them," said Richard Gelles, a pioneer in the study of domestic violence and a former dean of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Work. "This isn’t a remorseful act. This is a very angry action. (He believes) she is essentially destroying his identity as a man.”
At some point, he will lean on their past emotional connection to persuade his victim into a face-to-face meeting, Campbell said.
“Sometimes she's willing to talk him one more time," she continued, "but then that’s when the homicide would occur.”
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These cases can become even more grisly when the assailant expands thescope of their attack beyond their significant other and to the rest of the family, including pets.
Dietz coined the term "family annihilator" in the 1980s.
"In this particular subset, there is usually some sort of spiritual belief thatafter death they will be together," he said.
Society has to improve at identifying thewarning signs before they turn to bloodshed, Campbell said.
“We have to recognize these threats of suicide that these abusive men make," Campbell said. "We have a tendency to think 'Oh, he’s just trying to manipulate her. This is just one more way of keeping her there.' Maybe that's true, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not actually suicidal.”
Because these deadly incidents are so often linked with domestic violence, Gelles urges victims of abuse to seek help.
"Don’t make an assumption that your partner is going to change even if he or she promises they are going to change," he said.
Signs of depression and talk of suicide should be taken especially seriously when combined with a deteriorating relationship.
Nobody should die this way, Dietz said.
"It’s treatable phenomena that leadto this," he said.
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Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com
