Familicide in Italy: An Exploratory Study of Cases Involving Male Perpetrators (1992-2015)

This article adds to the literature on familicide by providing specific insights from the Italian experience. It presents results of an exploratory investigation into male-perpetrated familicides in Italy between 1992 and 2015. Familicide is defined as the killing of the spouse or intimate partner, and at least one child, at the hand of the other spouse/partner. Incidents of familicide were collated from newspaper reports. We identified 90 cases, resulting in 207 deaths. On average, perpetrators were middle aged (M = 46.8; age ranging from 25 to 76), and most (n = 66; 73%) committed, or attempted to commit, suicide. While significant contributory roles were played by health problems and financial worries, the origin of the primary emotional upset for the killers tended to be interpersonal conflicts involving their partners. For those cases with available information (n = 56; 62%), six types of familicide were also identified on the basis of the murderer’s homicidal motivations. Most frequent were three circumstances. 15 cases concerned the “doubly-protective familicide” (which corresponds to the “suicide-by-proxy”), characterized by the preservation of the family in the face of a presumed catastrophic event. Triggers included the killer’s financial distress, health troubles, or anxiety associated with other personal problems. 13 cases referred to “doubly-punitive familicide,” whose distinctive feature, in addition to punishing the partner because of her estrangement, her infidelity, or other disputes, is to directly involve the child(ren) in the punitive homicidal act. The children are viewed as contributory factors to the killer’s stress, or are considered to be in league with the mother. 12 cases exemplified “indirectly-punitive familicide” (also termed “murder-by-proxy”), in which the victimized child(ren) are killed as an extension of the partner. Overall, this typology provides a more nuanced conceptualization of familicide occurrences than those examined in previous research.