Experts eye murder-suicide perpetrators' traits

Vengeful ex-employees, abusive husbands or boyfriends angry over a separation, financially strapped and overwhelmed providers, depressed fathers, psychotic mothers: When do they cross a line, as only a very few do, and kill their families and themselves?

Police in Baltimore County say the deaths of a Garden City family, discovered in a hotel room Monday, were a case of murder-suicide. But they have not released details about who they believe was the killer.

Psychologists, sociologists and criminologists can only provide general descriptions of personality traits that often emerge in cases of what is called familicide or family annihilation.

The Washington, D.C.- based Violence Policy Center reports that in cases of murder-suicide, 95 percent are committed by men.

Louis Schlesinger, forensic psychology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said there were two different types of familicidal offenders.

One takes a proprietorial view of his wife, gets angry, and attacks her and everyone around her. The second type is "the despondent male," who feels he must kill his family and himself to spare them the humiliation or pain of what life will bring, Schlesinger said.

"It's not rational, it's not reasonable," he said. "If he tries to kill himself and survives, he views the [slain] family with sympathy. . . . He feels tremendous regret."

Some experts say they foresee an increase in such cases in financially stressful times, although some studies show suicides may decrease during times of national crisis or when events draw people together.

But Jack Levin, a sociologist and criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, said there is almost always a "catastrophic loss that precedes a family annihilation."

Triggers can be a loss of a job, money, a relationship or a loved one. Often, he said, there is a feeling of isolation.

"Most family annihilators, and typically it's the husband and father, have been frustrated and depressed over a long period of time," he said. "But they, unlike other depressed individuals, blame everybody else for their miseries.''

Or, he said, in cases when the man may be described as a dedicated husband and devoted father, the motive may be "a perverted sense of altruism that they'd be better off dead than live in this miserable existence."

In general, he said, most familicides are suicidal rampages, "but first the killer will take care of his loved ones."

If the person is religious, "He may feel he can reunite with loved ones in the hereafter, or wants to spare his loved ones the humiliation of his suicide."