TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - A retrospective study of murder-suicide at the Forensic Institute of Ghent University, Belgium: 1935-2010
JO  - Medicine, science, and the law
A1  - De Koning, Eva
A1  - Piette, Michel Ha
SP  - 88
EP  - 98
VL  - 54
IS  - 2
N2  - Murder followed by suicide (M-S) is a rare phenomenon that has been studied in several countries. Previous studies show that offenders of M-S are predominately men who live in an intimate relationship. Amorous jealousy is often the trigger to commit M-S. Shooting is the most common way to kill a partner and/or children. In general, women are likely to become victims. The aim of this study was to identify M-S and detect patterns of M-S in the district of Ghent and the surrounding areas, since no research on this event was conducted in Belgium. Over a period of 75 years, a total of 80 M-S incidents was recorded involving 176 individuals. Eighty-six percent of the offenders were males and 14% were females. Murder-suicides were mostly completed with firearms. The main motive for offenders to execute M-S is amorous jealousy (56%), followed by familial, financial, or social stressors (27%). In addition, three types of M-S were selected (e.g., spousal murder-suicides, filicide-suicides, and familicides-suicides). Our results suggest differences in these types of M-S in which younger couples' intentions were amorous jealousy; as for older couples the prominent motive was mercy killing; most likely women killed their children and only men committed familicides. Finally a study of the evolution during this period was carried out.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0025-8024
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0025802413518018
ID  - ref1
ER  -