Financial Crisis Spurs Rash of Family Annihilator Murder-Suicides

by Tina Kells | January 30, 2009 at 03:21 pm

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Politicians are heavily focused on the dollar figures of the financial crisis, the trillions in bailout and stimulus package funds that will be needed to salvage the economy, but few have made note of the human costs.

When the global economy takes a hit as huge as the current crisis it inevitably trickles down to the home front. Domestic violence and suicide rates have increased globally since the financial crisis hit, and calls to crisis lines are on the rise as well.

Not surprisingly, the economic meltdown has also strained marriages and, according to experts, is contributing to a rise in domestic violence. Retha Fielding, a spokeswoman for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, notes that calls increased 18% between October 2007 and October 2008 and attributes the spike to the poor economy. "It is bringing increased stress and violence into the home. Domestic violence is about control. If you lose your job, that's control you don't have, so you may want to have more control at home."

Since the economy began to slide in October the headlines have been filled with horrific stories of entire families being slaughtered in crisis driven murder suicides. Job losses, foreclosure threats, and an overall sense of despair are taking their toll.

There have been some lone suicides directly related to the financial crisis, and these are very sad, but the cases of mass murder-suicides in families are the most disturbing. Small children are being killed by their parents who, overwhelmed by circumstance, feel they have no choice.

It takes a certain personality type to kill off an entire family and the kind of stress caused by a financial crisis is a textbook trigger. Known as "family annihilators" the type of personality that kills their entire family as a reaction to loss of control in some aspect of their own life is well documented in psychology.

Professor Browne, chair of forensic and child psychology at Liverpool University, says so called “family annihilators” kill not only because they have lost control but out of a deeply disturbed sense of love and longing for family harmony in “the afterlife”.
“It’s all about control,” said Prof Browne.

Family annihilators are not always violent but they are always controlling and are used to getting their way. When they feel they are losing control of their family or their world, as is the case during a time of extreme financial pressure and job loss, they often snap.

Killing their family is often seen as a "last resort" and a "lesser of two evils" and the family annihilator operates with a deep belief that what they are doing is for the best. Often they will express that they had no choice or that their families were better off dead.

Not all family annihilators also commit suicide after killing their family, but many do. When they do take their own life as part of the killing spree they often do so in a much more violent or gruesome way than the way they killed their loved ones.

The financial crisis hit in October 2008 and since then there have been several cases of a distraught head of family killing their family and then themselves.

October 2008

On October 7, 2008, 45-year old Karthik Rajaram was found dead in his California home with a gun in his hands, the apparent victim of a self inflicted gunshot wound. Los Angeles police say Karthik Rajaram is responsible for killing himself and five family members, based on notes left at scene of the murder-suicide in Porter Ranch.

Last October, a man in Los Angeles, beset by financial troubles, shot his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. An eerily similar scene replayed itself this week, when another Los Angeles resident apparently killed his wife and five children — an 8-year-old girl, twin 5-year-old girls, and twin 2-year-old boys — before faxing a letter to a local television station and then killing himself. "This was a financial and job-related issue that led to the slayings," Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/...-moth.htmlsaid. "In these tough economic times, there are other options. In my 32 years, I've never seen anything like this."

December 2008

On December 9th, for example, 59-year-old Thomas Garrett of Midwest City, Oklahoma, murdered his wife. According to Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes, "Garrett told officers he shot his wife because he didn't know how to explain that they were evicted from their home while she was in the hospital." He apparently planned to kill himself too, but was stopped by the police.

Thirty-one-year-old Eryn Allegra had lost her home as well as her job, and had, according to press accounts, been thinking about suicide for weeks. On Christmas day, the Port St. Lucie, Florida, resident reportedly checked into a hotel, gave her 8-year-old son over-the-counter medicine to put him to sleep, and then smothered him. She subsequently slit her own wrists in a failed suicide attempt.

Noting a man's pickup truck parked in his driveway at a time when he was normally at work, neighbors in an "upscale neighborhood" in Manteca, Georgia, entered his home which a bank had recently approved for a short sale. (A short sale often takes place when a buyer in default is trying to avoid foreclosure.) According to the Manteca Bulletin, they found him "lying in the foyer of the home… dead of a gunshot wound." Arriving at the scene soon after, police discovered the body of his wife nearby "and located a firearm near the two bodies."

January 2009

On January 11th, Pinole, California police responding to a domestic disturbance call found 43-year-old Kimberly Petretti sitting on the curb in front of the home. She was being evicted that morning. Inside the house, which "showed no signs of a preparation for the move," they found the woman's mother, 62-year-old Claudia Petretti, dead — shot in the head with an assault rifle. According to Deputy District Attorney Harold Jewett, a two-page letter on the scene indicated a murder-suicide plan linked to the family's financial difficulties. "It was a significant event in their lives that may have precipitated this tragic and desperate act," he said.

Ervin Antonio Lupoe, a recently unemployed X-ray technician, killed his wife, Ana, and their five children then took his own life in a grisly murder-suicide in Los Angeles Tuesday. Lupoe and his wife had both recently lost their jobs and the killings are said to have been part of a suicide pack by the couple.

In a suspected murder-suicide, a family of four has been found dead in the Columbus, Ohio home.
In Whitehall, east Columbus, police responded to a call at around 2pm, and found the bodies of Mark Meeks, Jennifer Dallas-Meeks, Jimmy Meeks and Abbigail Meeks.