Unrequited or Lost Love

The most typical pattern in this category, and the one represented by Linda, involved unrequited or lost love (90 people). The victims ranged in age from 16 to 60, although most were under 45 years old (76%) with an average age of 37. Most were white (92%) and male (91%), and they killed themselves by gunshot (52%), asphyxiation (29%), or overdose (16%). One individual killed himself by stepping in front of a truck. At least 21% were under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they killed themselves. Similar to Callanan and Davis’s findings (2009), our victims were much more likely to leave a note if they were not using alcohol. For this group, suicides were most likely to occur on Monday (21%) and least likely to occur on Friday (8%). The majority of individuals killed themselves at home (77%). No one committed murder-suicide, but 21% killed themselves in front of someone. However, of those who killed themselves in front of someone, only two of them left notes.

It was unknown whether 51 of the 90 individuals had ever expressed suicidal ideation or made threats, but among the remaining 39, 19 had threatened suicide, 9 had ideation, and 5 had both thoughts about suicide and had made threats. Linda, and at least 13 other individuals, had previously attempted suicide. Among the 39 individuals who were identified as having a mental illness, most were depressed (85%), while some were experiencing symptoms of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. It is not possible to determine exactly how many individuals were coping with other stressors in their lives, but some investigators’ reports mentioned drug abuse (21%), physical illness (17%), legal problems (17%), or financial problems (4%).

Approximately one-fourth (24%) of the individuals in this group left notes, often addressed to a specific person (73%) such as an intimate partner (64%). Over one-third left more than one note (41%), writing separately to parents (37%), children (32%), siblings (14%), friends (14%), and other family members (23%). In their notes the victims’ thoughts were organized (91%) and most talked about their love for others (91%) and their interpersonal problems (77%). Many provided a justification for their suicide (68%). For example, in the only double suicide in our entire sample, the couple wrote a joint note and stated,

The only other widespread theme in the notes was apology. Over half of the notes (55%) contained apologies to a specific person. One 46-year-old man, depressed over his impending divorce, repeatedly said he was sorry to his wife and children. Specifically, he directed the following to his wife, “Why have you turned into one of the most cold hearted people I have ever met. We had two beautiful children together and you did not understand how important all 3 of you were to me… I’m very, very, very sorry for what I have done, but this was out of control what the court and you did to me.” Some notes (50%) either contained an additional general apology or just a general apology. One middle-aged white man, who died of intoxication from multiple drugs and carbon monoxide poisoning, wrote, “I’m sorry but I just couldn’t cope with life anymore. And I’m sorry about the mess I’m leaving for all of you.” A third of the note writers cited a cause for their suicide, and in every case it was the end of a relationship.

Approximately one-fourth of the notes (27%) addressed God and another third addressed the afterlife, most often with positive or uncertain feelings: “I don’t know if I will go to heaven or not but I ask god for His forgivness.” Not surprisingly, God was often intertwined with the afterlife, sometimes in chilling ways. Andrew was 44 years old when his wife, Carol, and children moved out of the house. After they left, he told both Carol and his neighbor that he was going to kill himself. About a month later he called his best friend, told him that he loved him, then went to the patio at the back of the house and shot himself in the head. He left numerous notes throughout the house and they are excerpted here. One read,

Along with Andrew’s note was a diary of sorts. In it he spent dozens of pages reflecting on why Carol left, begging her to return and apologizing profusely. He talked about his “anger issues” and how both Carol and their marriage counselor told him that he needed to mature and stop being a “third child.” He also discussed how he had begun reading a book on codependency that she left in the house, paying special attention to the parts she underlined. He said he had changed and was doing chores and attending church services to become a good “Christian husband.” And then he asked, “What can I do to show you it is safe to come home?” Carol was afraid to talk to him. When he realized she was not coming home, he wrote the notes, which have a much different tone than the diary. In the note, it was Carol’s fault for shutting herself off from friends that would have counseled them to stay together, with no awareness that maybe she was shutting herself off out of fear. Then he intimated that she drove him to suicide and ended suggesting that their only future would be in heaven. The note reflects his conceptualization of heaven, not hers. He suggested Carol had been manipulative and yet one can read his note as an attempt to manipulate her. His words insinuated that she was to blame for his actions.

The length of the notes in our sample varied but many were over 150 words long (49%) with another forty-one percent 26–150 words long. In almost a third of the notes, evidence of constriction or of a rigid and narrow cognitive pattern appeared, with words like “I cannot live without you.” Approximately one-fourth (22%) left instructions, most often about how to dispose of their property or their bodies and about managing affairs.

What is interesting about the notes is not so much what they do focus on but also what they do not address. Three note writers (out of 22) mentioned having psychological pain, three unspecified pain, and two physical pain. Few discussed feeling tired (23%), ambivalent (18%), loved (14%), lonely (14%), like a failure (14%) or worthless (5%) or that life was not worth living (9%). They rarely discussed issues like the morality of suicide; problems at school, on the job or with the law; or feeling shame, hopelessness, sadness, joy, guilt, relief, apathy, or burdensomeness. No one talked about being abused or having trouble with body image, and none expressed apathy. They also did not use humor in their notes. However, in a “P.S.” one person did say, “Here is some smokes Rita you will need them.” Some either absolved others for blame (18%) or blamed others (14%), or gave advice (14%). Although no one explicitly stated he or she was angry, it was implied in a few notes. One woman’s entire note read, “Arnie thanks for ruining my life After what he has done Arnie deserves nothing,” while another woman wrote, “I am sorry to ruin your life Luke. I loved you.” Finally, one man wrote, “I told her I would never sign divorce papers. I am a man of my word.” In other words, the focus of these notes is on the relationship, not on illnesses or other life problems such as legal or financial issues.

In addition to the content, the tone and characteristics of these notes sharply contrasted with those written by individuals who were motivated to commit suicide to escape pain. Those motivated to commit suicide due to lost or unrequited love wrote notes that were longer, more detailed and contained more innuendo than those written by individuals who were escaping pain. In reading these notes, one has the sense that some felt too sensitive for this world. One note referenced the lyrics from a popular song “Vincent,” about the life and suicide of the Impressionist artist, Vincent Van Gogh. The quoted verse, “this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you,” expresses a lack of belongingness (McLean, 1971). Others were simply unable or unwilling to let go of the relationship and move on with their lives. Conversely, notes written by those escaping pain were shorter and more definitive, with a central focus on the pain, not on the relationship.

One explanation for relationship suicides can be found in reciprocity theory. Davis, Callanan, Lester, and Haines (2009) examined suicide notes left by individuals they believed were motivated to kill themselves because of relationship issues. They suggest that when one person in an intimate partner relationship feels they have been treated unfairly, or are not receiving benefits that are equal to their investment, the norm of reciprocity has been violated leading to “reciprocity imbalance.” Suicide can become a means of restoring balance. They discussed four modes of adaptation: suicide as retreat, suicide as exploitation, suicide as retaliation, and suicide due to exploiter guilt. Those individuals who were using suicide as a retreat were most similar to those in the lost or unrequited love category. In general, the notes did not express ill will toward the intimate partner, but rather the person saw suicide as the only way to stop the pain they felt from the relationship. Their notes were similar to ours with apologetic tones and requests for forgiveness.

Some notes in our sample suggested that the suicide may have been exploitative. The imbalance in the relationship felt by the individual who wrote the note was characterized by the victim continually taking advantage of the other person or leaving them “in a mess” (Davis, Callanan, Lester, & Haines, 2009). Suicide became the only way to restore balance. Some note writers explicitly discussed being sorry for leaving a mess. It was not unusual to read words like, “Please forgive me. This is the last mess of mine you will ever have to clean up…” By and large, though, the motivation for their suicide was not relationship issues but to escape from the mess that had become their lives. This often included legal and financial difficulties. In addition to evidence of tunnel vision, this note expresses the victim’s dual realization that the consequences of past actions will be too much to bear and remorse for creating a situation that could not be untangled:

In short, very little support was found for using suicide exploitatively, but individuals were clearly using suicide as a retreat from relationships.

Although a large percentage of the people who committed suicide in our overall sample did not do so exclusively because of interpersonal problems, it appears that those individuals who call hotlines are more likely to discuss interpersonal issues. When the content of calls to a suicide hotline were examined, a few themes—loneliness, social isolation, and interpersonal/family problems—accounted for the majority of calls (Barber, Blackman, Talbot, & Saebel, 2004). Males were more likely to discuss relationships that had ended while females were more likely to discuss current relationship problems, especially abuse. Unfortunately, the actions of perpetrators in abusive relationships may be too spontaneous for hotlines to be of any help. This could explain why the number of calls hotlines received was almost equally distributed between males and females. Females call but males act, especially in abusive relationships. However, males also give warning signs which go unheeded by friends, family and the criminal justice system.

For those individuals who are seeking to escape other adverse life circumstances, such as physical pain, a hotline may not provide a supportive outlet. However, a hotline can help alleviate pain from loneliness or social isolation. It can also help direct victims toward resources. For these callers, who resembled those individuals in our lost or unrequited love category, it was critical that those who staffed hotlines worked to reduce their feelings of social isolation and loneliness. However, these strategies may be completely ineffective when abuse is a part of the relationship.

Abusive Relationships

Paul and Emily had been married for six years and had one child. The relationship became physically abusive shortly after the birth of their child. Although he had never directly threatened to kill Emily, he had told mutual friends that he planned to do so and they had related this information to her. She left and obtained a temporary protection order (TPO) against Paul. In the space of a month, she had called the police twice when he violated the TPO. Each time, he parked his van a block from her apartment and sat in the driver’s seat watching. Once, he was arrested, and the other time he was admitted to a hospital so his mental health could be evaluated. During that same time period, he attempted suicide by taking an overdose.

They had a court hearing related to their divorce on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning, as Emily prepared to leave for work, she noticed he was again sitting down the street. She called police but when they arrived there was no one in the driver’s seat and the van was locked. However, an empty gun case and shotgun shell box were on the front seat. As they approached Emily’s house to search the premises, they heard a shotgun blast from the back of the van. They forcibly opened the vehicle and found that Paul had shot himself in the head.

The second group of suicides (61 cases) which were motivated by relationships with intimate partners involved emotional or physical abuse, and some ended in murder-suicide. In these cases, the perpetrator of the abuse was the person who committed suicide, not the person who was abused. Only five people left notes (8% as compared to 24% for those in the lost love group), and one of them wrote the note after he had murdered his girlfriend.

Ray and Pam were already married to others when they met at work and began dating. After a year, Ray moved in with Pam, but their relationship was contentious. A pattern developed. They would argue and Ray would move out for a period of time, and then they would reconcile and he would move back in. Although Pam had been abused by the husband she left, no records existed of any domestic violence with Ray. Late one evening, after another round of fighting, Ray wrote Pam an angry note that said, “I’ve had it with your cruelty and viciousness. You treat me like shit. You run my ass down or see how mean you can be. Well I’m not Walter and won’t take it from anyone.” However, this note ended with Ray saying he was leaving to work on someone’s truck, and it does not appear he intended to kill Pam. Ray did go to work on the truck. The next morning he killed Pam, wrote another note, and killed himself. In the second note he apologized for messing up so many lives. Even with no prior domestic violence, clearly anyone who kills an intimate partner is abusive. It is unlikely that Ray was never abusive, even if he had never abused Pam. Most men who murder their spouses and commit suicide have a history of domestic violence against their previous partners. Yet one study found that 41% of men who killed their partners had no history of prior violence with the women they murdered (Dobash, Dobash, Cavenagh, & Medina-Ariza, 2007).

The suicide victim’s ages in the abusive group are similar to those in the lost love group discussed previously, with a range of 19 to 71 and an average of 39 years, although most were under 50 years old (77%). Most were males (90%), but this group had slightly more ethnic diversity, with 82% Caucasian and 16% African American. Although we could not determine if 69% were using drugs or alcohol at the time of the suicide, we could confirm that 26% were using substances.

Aside from the vast difference in the percentage of people who leave notes, several things clearly distinguish this group from those committing suicide due to lost love. Thirty-four percent committed murder-suicide in the abuse group while no one in the lost love group murdered anyone. Not surprisingly, the method of suicide also changed, with the percentage of victims using a gun increasing 17%, from 52% in the lost love group to 69% in the abusive group. This decreased the percentage using some form of asphyxiation to 26%. All other methods had less than 5%. While only 17% of those individuals who were in the lost love group had legal problems, 39% of these individuals had legal problems, often from violations of TPOs. Finally, over a third killed themselves in front of someone (38%) while only 21% of victims in the lost love group killed themselves in front of someone. Moreover, six people in the abusive group did not murder anyone but their acts were particularly callous. Each of these cases warrants further consideration.

In two of these cases, the victims returned home from a night of drinking and woke their intimate partners. One man then said, “you’re gonna watch this,” before he placed the gun under his chin and fired. The second man threatened his intimate partner, then said, “I’m going to show you how much I love you,” before shooting himself. In a similar case, a woman who had been arguing with her husband told him to “watch this.” Her teenage children did not witness the shooting but heard the exchange from an adjacent room. Another man threatened his wife, then fled before police arrived. The next morning he was hanging from a tree limb outside her window. One woman, who had been dating a man for five months, became incensed when he told her he was dating another woman as well. While he was away, she snuck into his house, turned on his truck and asphyxiated herself. Her naked body was found in the driver’s seat of his car.

Perhaps the most disturbing case involved emotional abuse. Missy and Alan had been married for nine years and had three children, who were 8, 7, and 5. They had been in marital counseling for several months, but Alan had met someone else and moved out. Missy began writing in a journal as soon as he left. In it she indicates that God’s vengeance will come upon him for having an affair and expresses jealousy and hate toward his new partner, all the while begging for him to come back and telling him she cannot live without him. At times she wrote in the third person. She stated,

After she wrote the last sentence in that entry, an appreciable shift occurred in the journal. She moved to a new page and wrote a suicide note. Thinking that she could have “beat him to the punch” seems to have impelled her toward suicide. The tone of her writing changed and she began to write explicit instructions for her funeral and burial. She said,

She told her husband she forgave him, and chastised him to get himself right with God and to take care of “her” kids. She reiterated, “I just couldn’t take you being with her. If you really love me then you’ll leave her.”

Missy hanged herself in the closet of her bedroom and her 8-year-old daughter found her. When her daughter screamed, all of the children entered the room and saw their mother hanging in the closet. Finally, one called for help. Although she did not actually kill herself in front of someone, killing herself in her home when only her children were present virtually insured they would find the body. Both her actions and her suicide note indicate the control she was attempting to exert over her relationships.

It was unknown whether 40 out of the 61 individuals in the abusive group had ever expressed suicidal ideation or made threats, but 17 had threatened suicide, and two had ideation and had made threats. At least eight other individuals had previously attempted suicide. Among the 14 victims who were identified as having a mental illness, most were depressed (64%). It is not possible to determine exactly how many individuals were coping with other stressors in their lives. However, the investigators’ reports mentioned for some drug abuse (21%), physical illness (10%), or financial problems (3%).

For this group, suicides were most likely to occur at home (57%) on Monday (21%) and least likely to occur on Wednesday or Saturday (10%). Since many of the couples were separated, the weekend would likely be the best opportunity to see each other, especially if they were sharing custody of children. Sunday would also often be the day that transfer of the children would occur. These suicides were much more likely to occur in the winter (34%) when people are spending more time indoors together. In contrast, only 18% occurred in the spring. The season and days of the week stand out, as historically and in our own sample most suicides take place in the late spring (June) or early fall and on Mondays (Jamison, 1999). Miller, Furr-Holden, Lawrence, and Weiss (2012) found that Monday and Tuesday had the highest frequencies and rates of deliberate self-harm, both fatal and nonfatal. For month-of-year rate comparisons, April and May had the highest frequencies and rates of nonfatal self-harm. Fatality rates varied with minor monthly variation, but had peaks from February through May and in September.

This group presents a much different profile than the individuals who lost the love of a significant other. In general, these suicides are much more spontaneous, which explains the lack of notes and the use of guns. Although guns were also used in a high percentage of planned suicides, they are also the means of choice in spontaneous suicides in the United States, because two-fifths of all white American households have one, as do one-fifth of all black households (Morin, 2014). Relationships that involve physical and emotional abuse generally involve issues of power and control. The fact that almost half of these individuals killed themselves in front of someone, usually their intimate partners, represents a very different kind of control. It is almost as if they realized that although their partners and relationships were out of their control, they could still control one last thing: how they were remembered. Killing themselves in front of someone burned an indelible image in the memories their partners had of them.

Only one research study has been published on witnessed suicides. McDowell, Rothberg, and Koshes (1994) examined 1183 cases of suicide among Air Force personnel and their families. They found 50 cases where the suicide was completed in the physical, visible presence of another person. They proposed that these cases fit into a taxonomy with four categories: Russian roulette, violent divorce, homicidal rage, and reciprocal abandonment. We found no Russian roulette cases but we were using a nonmilitary population, which may account for the difference. The homicidal rage cases were murder-suicides and will be discussed at length later in this chapter. Reciprocal abandonment refers to cases where the individual feels “cut off and isolated from all that is important to them and responds in kind” (p. 219). The violent divorce cases are most applicable to the present discussion. They indicate that in these cases, “The wish to kill becomes sublimated by a wish to punish, which the victim accomplishes by forcing the spouse to witness the trauma of his or her death, leaving its memory like a Trojan horse in the spouse’s psyche. The act is always violent and often impulsive, usually with diminished restraint fueled by alcohol” (pp. 217–218). McDowell et al. (1994) further suggest that the suicides convey a message to the witnesses that they are responsible and the victim wants them to suffer. Although we can never know the exact reasons an individual chooses to kill himself in front of another person, especially someone he indicated that he loved, a clear relationship appears to exist between physical and emotional abuse and these suicides.

Recall that Davis, Callanan, Lester, and Haines (2009) suggest four modes of adapting to relationship reciprocity-imbalance, including using suicide as a retreat, exploitation, retaliation, or to alleviate exploiter guilt. Suicides as retreat and exploitation were discussed in the last section. Committing suicide for retaliation “gives such individuals an unfair advantage in the relationship; they literally have the ‘final word’” (p. 487). Davis, Callanan, Lester, and Haines found that the notes written by those who were determined to be using suicide as retaliation were full of blame and crafted so that surviving individuals would feel responsible and suffer guilt and remorse. Consider one mother’s note to her son: “I know you hate me. I’m not alowed to see my grandGirls. Thanks to you I killed myself.” Or Missy’s words from previously, “I wish I coulda beat him to the punch. I wish I could have left him. I just want him to feel the pain & heart ache I am feeling….”

Although we had only a few notes to examine, the actions of the individuals spoke much louder than words. Consider the man who was killing himself out of love for his girlfriend (“I’m going to show you how much I love you”) or the number of people who killed themselves in front of their partners. The focus of intervention in these relationships needs to be on the power, control, and abuse in the relationship and has to occur at the first signs of relationship imbalance. Power and control can also be accomplished through suicide threats, ideation, and attempts. Although threats should always be taken seriously, the victim can use these to control the relationship in many ways; e.g., his partner may stay in the relationship to prevent the suicide from happening, even though she no longer wants to be in the relationship. Ultimately, if she does leave the relationship, and the victim kills himself, she has to live with this knowledge. This is why the best intervention in these cases is to obtain professional help for each individual.

In theory, there should be some examples of suicide related to exploiter guilt in the abuse category. In exploiter guilt an individual becomes aware that s/he has exploited another and suicide becomes the only way to restore balance. This exploitation could have occurred over months or years or been a one-time occurrence. Although we did see a few examples of this, as in the case where one man raped his girlfriend and then killed himself out of guilt, it was rare. Exploiter guilt would require an individual to have a combination of tremendous self-awareness and to have engaged in exploitation. Generally, we found those who had been exploitative were not self-aware but rather self-centered. They were less accepting of responsibility and more likely to blame others and act out of retaliation.

Unknown Cause

Jimmy had been arguing with Molly, his live-in girlfriend, when she left the room to answer the phone. Moments later he emerged from their bedroom, placed a handgun under his chin and fired. According to Molly, they had frequent arguments, but prior to the shooting, there was nothing unusual about this specific quarrel. She had no idea why Jimmy killed himself.

In the final group of suicides which were motivated by relationships with intimate partners, it was difficult to determine the exact motivation for the suicide. In part, this was because no one left a note. All of these cases were precipitated by some interpersonal situation, usually arguments. However, in other cases the individual killed himself in response to other interpersonal stresses. One middle-aged man, for instance, killed himself because his wife was dying of cancer.

As in the other categories, the victims were mostly men (82%), white (94%), and ranged in age from 19 to 83 with an average age of 38. All three groups also had similar percentages of suicidal threats (24%) and ideation (14%). In some ways this group resembled the lost love group, including the low percentage of murder-suicide (2%) and parallel percentages in the method of suicide (54% guns and 34% asphyxiation). However, this group had the highest rate of known substance use prior to the suicide (32%) as well as the highest percentage of substance abuse history (30%) of any group. This is especially significant given the paucity of information available on these individuals. In other words, the rates were likely even higher. They also had the lowest levels of health and legal problems. This reaffirms that interpersonal relationships were likely the cause of the suicide but the exact nature could not be determined. However, substance abuse was probably a contributing factor. Finally, the highest percentage of these suicides occurred in the fall (35%), when family celebrations occur. The lowest percentage was in the winter, unlike the lost love and abuse groups, so extended family may have been part of the catalyst.

Suicides Motivated by Other Interpersonal Relationships

It was really hard for Ashley to determine where it all started. Since high school, she had struggled with substance abuse and depression. When she met Jacob, life was just one big party. However, when she became pregnant, Jacob sobered up and tried to convince Ashley to do the same. There were periods where she was clean, but there were more lapses than not. After six years and two children, Jacob left and took the children with him. He obtained full custody and moved out of state. Despite everything, Ashley adored her children and wanted at least joint custody. However, she began to use more drugs and her depression deepened. Eventually she lost her job, because she simply stopping going. She moved out of her parents’ house and began living in a motel. Shortly thereafter, she began expressing suicidal ideation to her family and friends. Ashley had a history of medical problems so it was relatively easy to plan her overdose since she had access to numerous medications. In her note, which was not addressed to anyone in particular, she said, “First of all, I want to appoligize for being such a huge burden on all of you! I talked to my kids today & they seem to be doing great! My dad told them that it is baby talk if they say mommy or daddy. It has to be mom or dad. So I guess I wasn’t the best mom after all! I miss them so dearly-no one could imagine. My mom tells me she’s tired of hearing me cry all the time. That’s all I know how to express myself! Sorry for hurting so bad….And let them [her children] know how much I loved them & will always look over them! I’m sorry I’m leaving you to hurt like this, but I’m tierd of suffering & being such a failure. I told everyone that if I didn’t have them by Christmas I’d be gone. I love you all!”

A small subset (8% of the total category) existed of individuals who were motivated by interpersonal relationships that were not with intimate partners. These most frequently involved children or multiple family members but cases also involved parents, grandparents, or siblings. Although a few cases were seen with conflict relating to children involving lost custody, like Ashley, it was more likely that adult children were involved. For example, one man’s adult children removed their mother from his care due to his substance abuse. In another typical scenario, the individual had a conflict with numerous family members, generally due to his actions. When it became clear that Carl was molesting his 8-year-old granddaughter, he was asked to move out of his son’s home and ostracized by the rest of the family. Instead of packing, he went in his room and shot himself.

Only 17 individuals were in this subset and only two left notes, but it still has some distinguishing features. Most notably, 82% of these deaths occurred in the summer (29%) or fall (53%), often connected to family celebrations. Given this, it is not surprising that approximately one-fourth (24%) killed themselves in front of someone, and there were two murder-suicides which will be discussed in more detail in the murder-suicide section. This group had the lowest rate of depression (35%) and substance use prior to the suicide (18%) but they were the most likely to have physical illness (29%). Like Ashley, some of these individuals may represent the “perceived burdensomeness” that Joiner (2005) discussed in his theory. This would explain why the suicides occur in close proximity to family gatherings, when their burdensomeness may be more obvious to them.

All of the groups in this chapter highlight the pivotal role of interpersonal relationships in many suicides. In fact, one of the stressful life events (SLEs) that is a significant predictor for both lifetime and incident suicidal ideation is the onset of serious problems with a neighbor, friend, or relative (Wang et al., 2015). However, these problems may be interwoven with qualities that are common in those who have a depressive disorder, making it impossible to determine if depression leads to interpersonal problems or vice versa. In any case, both depression and interpersonal problems can lead to reduced social support. For many individuals, social support serves a protective function, helping to inhibit suicidal behaviors.

Murder-Suicide

Darrell and Amber had been married for 11 years and the police had been called to their home over 30 times related to domestic disputes. Their daughter, April, was seven years old and their son, Tyler, was two years old. Despite numerous attempts to work things out, including family therapy, and substance abuse and batterer’s treatment for Darrell, the violence was becoming more frequent and unpredictable. Amber filed for divorce and acquired a TPO. Darrell was forced to move out. One Saturday morning, April went to visit a neighbor and upon returning found her mother in the closet, bound and gagged. Her father told her not to touch her mother and began barricading the doors. After a few hours of doing drugs and watching television, her father passed out on the bed. When April removed the gag from her mother’s mouth, she told her to sneak out a window and run next door to her paternal grandmother’s house and have her call the police. The grandmother did not want to see her son arrested so instead she called relatives who eventually agreed they needed to call the police. In the meantime, Darrell had awakened and was pouring gasoline all over the house. The police arrived and tried to break down the barricade but were forced to retreat when flames began shooting from the house. When they were able to enter the home, they found Tyler and Amber burned and unconscious. Tyler died at the hospital a short time later, but Amber lived with extensive damage to her lungs and burns over half her body.

Darrell and Amber represent a typical murder-suicide with TPOs, domestic violence and intimate partners as victims. In our sample 35 cases involved murder-suicide or attempted murder-suicide. In 5 cases, the perpetrator intended to commit murder, but the victims, like Amber, survived the attempts on their lives, often with long-lasting consequences. For these reasons, the attempted murder victims are included in the murder-suicide group. Many were impulsive crimes but oftentimes there were warnings that went unheeded.

Some debate exists as to how to refer to a person who kills someone else, then kills himself or herself, and the deaths are connected. The perpetrator obviously has not been convicted of murder but this term has been used in the common nomenclature and will be used here. Murder-suicide has been defined as a murder that occurs within one week of the suicide (Marzuk, Tardiff, & Hirsch, 1992). Although this range can be debated, it is unnecessary to do so for the current discussion because in all of these cases the murder and suicide occurred within 24 hours of each other. This discussion will also not focus on rampage killers who target victims who are strangers.

Although murder-suicide is relatively rare in the United States, with an incidence rate under 0.001 (0.1%) (Eliason, 2009), approximately three men murder a current or former female partner every day (Vagionos, 2014). Most of the victims in our sample were wives or girlfriends or ex-wives or ex-girlfriends (86% of cases). Warren-Gordon, Byers, Brodt, Wartak, and Biskupki (2010) found in 69% of their cases the victim of homicide was a wife or girlfriend while 0% were husbands or boyfriends. In a few cases there were additional victims, generally children or boyfriends. Motivation for the suicide could be determined for 27 cases with 24 of those clearly motivated by difficulties in an intimate partner relationship. Divorce or separation is a common precipitating factor in murder-suicide (Eliason, 2009). Not surprisingly, we found interpersonal problems were reported in 74% of the cases and almost two-thirds of all cases involved a history of domestic violence towards their victims.

Marzuk, Tardiff, and Hirsch (1992) proposed a typology of murder-suicide that included amorous jealousy, declining health, filicide-suicide, familicide and extrafamilial murder-suicide. Amorous jealousy most often stems from a relationship, like Darrell and Amber’s relationship, which has been chronically chaotic and marked with domestic violence and jealousy. The trigger is often rejection with the threat of withdrawal or estrangement. A new love interest may be involved, but the jealousy might be related simply to withdrawal of affection. Murder-suicides related to declining health are similar to altruistic or mercy killings and generally involve elderly couples. Filicide is the killing of one’s own child while familicide is the killing of most, if not all, members of the family. Finally, extrafamilial murder-suicide is the killing of those outside of the family such as employers or teachers, often in an act of vengeance. While the majority of our cases involved an intimate partner motivated by amorous jealousy, in some cases a child killed a parent (once for declining health), a parent killed a child (filicide) and an adolescent killed most of his family (familicide), including his mother, grandparents, and a family friend. None of the intimate partner cases, not even one with an 86-year-old perpetrator, were precipitated by declining health but rather all involved interpersonal problems. No case would be classified as extrafamilial.

The perpetrators in our sample were mostly white (86%) and men (89%). The average age of the perpetrators was 43 and, while approximately two-thirds were under 50 years old, there was a range from 18–86 years old. These numbers are consistent with other findings. Marzuk, Tardiff, and Hirsch (1992) report that the average age of offenders in three United States studies was 39.6 and 93–97% of offenders were male while 50–86% were white. In a more recent review of the literature, Eliason (2009) found most perpetrators were men between 40 and 50 years old and that depression was the most common diagnosis in cases of murder-suicide. History of mental illness could only be determined for six individuals in our sample. Five of those were depressed, and one was unspecified. Although substance use and abuse was difficult to assess, at least five individuals were described as having a history of substance abuse and five had been using substances on the day of the murder-suicide. Eliason reviewed a study suggesting that 30% of perpetrators tested positive for alcohol and 22% were intoxicated at the time of the suicide.

Bossarte, Simon, and Barker (2006) found that in cases of murder suicide, many of the perpetrators had some form of legal involvement. In our sample, 34% were dealing with legal problems, such as assault, kidnapping, divorce proceedings and violations of TPOs (it was unknown whether the other 66% were involved in any legal issues). One 56-year-old man stabbed his 22-year-old girlfriend outside of the grade school where his wife was teaching and then entered the school, stabbed his wife 14 times in front of her fifth-grade students, then shot her. She had filed for divorce, after 30 years of marriage, due to his domestic violence. He had been making threatening calls to her for weeks and she had obtained a TPO, which he had violated. Although his wife died, his girlfriend survived the attack.

This is actually an aberrant case as 78.5% of murder-suicides occur in a private home (Warren-Gordon, Byers, Brodt, Wartak, & Biskupki, 2010). Most of the murder victims in our sample were killed in or around their homes (80%), and many perpetrators killed themselves in front of others (37%). In McDowell et al.’s (1994) study of witnessed suicides, researchers concluded that “the witnesses (other than the victim) are incidental. They play no role in the central drama and their presence is as much a matter of happenstance as anything else” (p. 217).

The vast majority of perpetrators (89%) used guns when committing the murder or the suicide, or both. Similarly, Warren-Gordon et al. (2010) found a high percentage (77%) of perpetrators used firearms. The murders were most likely to occur on Monday (22%) followed by Sunday (20%), and least likely to occur on Friday (9%) or Saturday (6%). Murder-suicides were more than twice as likely to occur in the winter (32%) than in the summer (14%).

Only four women committed murder-suicide. Two of the four women committed the murder for altruistic reasons. Charlene signed her mother out of an assisted-care facility on Christmas Day and took her to a family gathering. Despite the fact that Charlene’s mother was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and could not even recognize her, she always made sure her mother attended family events. As the day was winding down and the rest of the family was in the kitchen cleaning, Charlene shot her mother in the head and then turned the gun on herself. The other woman who had altruistic motives killed her son. Seven years prior to killing her son, she had been in a car accident which left her with a severe head injury. She left a note for her surviving children which mostly contained instructions but also said, “What can I say except my life has been rough & I am so tired. My mind is not right and I can’t go on like this anymore. Liam (the child she killed), he stays sick and never feels good. He has so many problems. For so many reasons this is best.”

Only three people left notes and two of them were women. The other woman left a note explaining why she was killing her three children, ages 5, 4, and 2. Again, most of her note contained instructions, but then she stated, “I know you wont understand why, but I just can’t go on anymore. I’m so tired of hurting. I know I’m going to hell, but life is a living hell.” There are very few other indicators as to why this woman killed her children. However, as she was a single mother with three very young children and no resources, it is likely life felt overwhelming. Additionally, mothers who purposely set out to kill their children, particularly multiple children, are also frequently dealing with mental health issues (Meyer & Oberman, 2001). This woman killed her children eight days after she had purchased a hand gun.

The third person to leave a note was a 50-year-old man who was struggling with mental and physical health issues. He wrote the note after he killed his 73-year-old stepmother, whom he said hastened his father’s death by neglecting him after he had a stroke. In the note he indicated where police could find her body, then said, “Ice cold woman. If I ever got sick to die, I would kill her. Eye for an eye. So I did this crime. She was evil. So her day to go.” These cases were aberrations both in the relationship the victims had with the perpetrators and the fact that the perpetrators left notes. The last person to leave a note was Ray, discussed previously, who killed his intimate partner.

In another case murder-suicide did not occur, although the perpetrator considered it. Shaun had a long history of unrequited love with the intended victim. In his note he said,

Shaun was found dead in his truck in a shopping mall parking lot. On his right arm he had written “Forgive me” while on his left arm he wrote “Worthless.” His love for their daughter served a protective function.

Unfortunately, having children did not prevent others from killing their partners, sometimes in front of their children. Serena awoke at 2:30 one morning to the shouts of her drunken husband outside of their apartment. The police came and cited him for public intoxication, releasing him to her custody. They began to argue and he shot her in the chest with a shotgun, then put the weapon under his chin and shot himself. At 3:00 a.m. their 11-year-old daughter, who had witnessed the whole episode, called the police to report the deaths of her parents.

One case provides a unique perspective on murder-suicide. Don, 54, and Karen, 52, had been married three years and had occasional disagreements about finances. In the last month Karen noticed that Don had become increasingly depressed and withdrawn. He even said at one point, “I should just blow both our brains out.” Karen did not take this seriously and one morning as they argued Don retrieved a gun, told his wife he was going to follow through with his threat, and forced her to write a “farewell note.” After the note was written, Don left the kitchen with the note and walked into the living room, and Karen fled out the back door. As she ran to a neighbor’s house, she heard a single gunshot. The note lists numerous friends and family then reads, “I love all of you & so does Don. I don’t understand why Don thought this was the only way this could be. I can’t say how I feel in such a short time—but I hope you all know. I love you so very much. I guess this is goodbye. Be happy in your lives & know you have always had a special place in my heart. Love you, Karen. Hugs and kisses.” It is unclear whether Don allowed Karen to leave or shot himself after he knew she had left and he had lost control of the situation. Although this is ostensibly “their” note, Don really provided little input. Perhaps he stepped out of the room to consider the content of the note and it distracted or dissuaded him from killing Karen. Maybe, as in the case of Shaun, the love Karen expressed for others made Don consider the impact of his actions. Alternatively, maybe Don had no intention of killing Karen but received some sort of sadistic pleasure in making her write the note, believing that she was about to die. In any case, Karen escaped unharmed.

Joiner (2014) argues that perpetrators of murder-suicide decide on the suicide first, then commit the murder for “virtuous” reasons which represent distortions of one of four interpersonal virtues: mercy, justice, duty, or heroic glory. The case described previously in which Charlene murdered her mother and then committed suicide would be considered mercy. When justice is the virtue, an individual murders someone who has wronged him or her. The man who killed the stepmother who had neglected his dying father did so because she had wronged both his father and him. These two virtues represent the most common types. However, duty involves acting on responsibilities to others. The mother who killed her three children may have done so out of duty. Some mothers who kill their children do so because not doing so would result in harm to the rest of society; e.g., they believe their children are defective in some way and not killing them would have a negative impact on society. Finally, some commit murder-suicide to obtain glory for themselves. Joiner uses the example of the Columbine High School shooters, whose goal was to kill more people than were killed in the Oklahoma City bombings.

These are interesting conceptualizations, and Joiner examines each of them in great detail in his book. Many people do decide to kill themselves first and then plan the murder. However, some of the more spontaneous murder-suicides described here are difficult to fit into Joiner’s framework. Although murder-suicides generally involve interpersonal problems and domestic violence, they represent a small subset of cases. It is much more likely that interpersonal problems and domestic violence will end in either a murder or a suicide but not both. Similar to other cases described in this chapter, risk factors or warning signs exist.

In all cases, the perpetrator and victim were in some kind of relationship, usually as intimate partners. It was the threat of the end of this relationship that precipitated most of the murder-suicides. In these relationships the perpetrators, generally men, had been controlling and often engaged in verbal or physical abuse. In almost every case, there was easy access to guns. In most cases, even in filicide cases, the perpetrators were young, usually under 40 years old. Although it is impossible to determine the exact prevalence of substance abuse and depression, these were present in at least five of the cases.

In an article in the New Yorker, Rachel Snyder cited some often-quoted statistics stating, “Between 2000 and 2006, thirty-two hundred American soldiers were killed; during that period, domestic homicide in the United States claimed ten thousand six hundred lives” (Snyder, 2013, p. 35). Risk factors for murder-suicide are similar to those present in intimate partner homicide (Campbell et al., 2003). In an effort to reduce intimate partner homicide and murder-suicide, domestic violence high-risk teams have been created to coordinate agencies and assess the risk for lethal violence (Snyder, 2013). Danger assessments allow teams to determine who is at the highest risk for intimate partner homicide and provide more support for potential victims while placing greater restrictions on batterers. Prior to this, the only recourse for women to remain safe was to house them (and generally their children) in shelters, cutting them off from family, friends and often employment. This isolation and lack of ability to work often created both financial and emotional hardship. Under danger assessment systems, it is the batterer that is restrained, not the victim. Police may confiscate guns, increase drive-by observations of the victim’s house and work, deny bail or monitor the batterer through the use of a GPS. Training in and adoption of this model have increased.