An Evaluation of Ohio Familicides Between 1959-1988
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Date
2020-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Research often suggests that simplified categorization of homicides is the best way to represent these cases. However, this oversimplification proves dangerous for the cases itself and the false patterns they attribute information to. In the case of familicide cases from The Ohio Domestic Violence Homicide Database it is revealed that these cases share more commonalities with non-familicidal spouse murders in regard to circumstances. Therefore, why do we define cases by a simplified generic label rather than using the rich detail present in these cases in a simplified way to represent them? An analysis of cases asserted to be familicides reveals a variety of circumstances that put the term familicide under question as the defining term used to represent these killings. Through newspaper accounts, police records, and The Ohio Domestic Violence Homicide Database as sources of information, familicide defined cases were tracked to reveal twenty spouse caused familicide defined cases. Through the careful examination of these cases, it is revealed that there are four definable themes that play heavily into the circumstances of these cases. These themes include shame, depression, marital problems, and possessiveness. The causes of possessive spousal familicides can be further broken down into custody disputes, jealousy, control issues, and rage. This paper aims to display the familicides that occurred between 1959 and 1988 in this random cluster of thirty-six Ohio counties are not easily categorized through the complex information present in these cases that identify additional themes.
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Keywords
Homicide, Familicide, Statistics, History