Despondent dads driven to kill loved ones [View All]

[Liberal_in_LA]

Despondent dads driven to kill loved ones

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/19/murder.suicide.families/index.html


In research during nearly three decades, Dr. Philip Resnick, director of the division of forensic psychiatry at Case Western, has outlined two motives for familicides: revenge or despondency. In latter cases, a "nonhostile, hopeless father" kills his family to save them from perceived doom, because he feels unable to provide for them.

"They become very depressed as the breadwinner," Resnick said. "With their distorted, depressive perceptions, they feel that rather than allow their children to go hungry, they may feel they're doing a favor to take their family with them as they end their own life. ... They're not depriving them of life, they're ending what they see as an intolerable life."

In recent cases, some men were facing financial turmoil. In April, a New York attorney who was involved in questionable financial dealings asphyxiated and beat his wife and 11- and 19-year-old daughters in a Maryland hotel. Investigators later found that $20 million from his clients was missing.

A man who decides to commit suicide might want to avoid his family facing the stigma, said Richard James Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

"They couldn't leave people behind to be ashamed and humiliated," said Gelles.

On the night of his birthday in 2003, Curt Wheat shot his wife, Marie, as she slept in their bedroom, then shot himself. Neither of the couple's two children was at the Sahuarita, Arizona, house during the shooting.

His then 29-year-old daughter, Cari Wheat was living in San Francisco, California. Wheat believes her father pulled the trigger out of a sense of love for her mother.