When parents kill: Forensic psychiatrists examine the motives behind unthinkable murders

People attend a candlelight vigil in Shreveport, Louisiana, for the victims of a mass shooting on Sunday, April 19. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Warning: Graphic content.

Gunfire shattered the silence of the Cedar Grove community in Shreveport, Louisiana, just before dawn Sunday.

Moments later, a mother and her two children scrambled out of a window and onto the roof of an unassuming gray and white home on West 79th Street and frantically dialed 911.

“Units be advised,” a dispatcher relayed to officers, “the female is saying there’s nine subjects that live inside the residence.”

“(She’s) saying he may have shot them all.”

Police arrived at the home to discover a scene that officials were still struggling to describe days later. Eight children were dead.

The suspect, later identified as 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, shot and killed seven of his own kids; the eighth child was their cousin.

Elkins also shot his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, and Christina Snow, the mother of three of his children. His sister-in-law and another child also sustained injuries in the attack.

Elkins later died after exchanging gunfire with police.

Sunday’s massacre in Shreveport marks the deadliest mass shooting in the United States in more than two years. The youngest victim, Jayla Elkins, was just 3, authorities said.

Shayla Elkins, 5; Kayla Pugh, 6; Layla Pugh, 7; Mar’Kaydon Pugh, 10; Sariahh Snow, 11; Khedarrion Snow, 6; and Braylon Snow, 5, were also killed in the shooting, according to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office.

As investigators struggle to piece together a motive for such a senseless tragedy, multiple family members told CNN Elkins had previously struggled with his mental health.

Local officials have called for prayers for the souls of the victims, and the strength of the survivors.

“There are no words … that can explain the weight of eight young lives taken far too soon,” Caddo Parish Sheriff Henry Whitehorn said at a news conference Monday.

“To the families affected our hearts are with you. … Your children mattered their lives mattered and their memory will not be forgotten.”

Child murder cases have long held the public’s fascination, from the Greek myth of Medea killing her children to get back at Jason, to the more recent cases of Andrea Yates, Jennifer Hart and Lori Vallow.

The horror of such cases lies in its utter incomprehensibility: How could a parent do such a thing?

Yet they do. Each year in the United States there are nearly 500 arrests for filicide – which is the legal term for when parents kill their children – according to an analysis of FBI data by Forensic Science International.

Experts caution these numbers are believed to be underreported.

The very idea of filicide is so unconscionable that many people assume anyone who commits this crime was driven by mental illness or had a previous history of violence. But research shows us that is not always the case.

Society has “deeply ingrained views about motherhood (and) fatherhood … this is really hard stuff for people to think about and hear about,” said Susan Hatters-Friedman, a forensic and reproductive psychiatrist with Case Western Reserve University.

“When I’m explaining it to lawyers or to the jury, I want them to understand that there’s been decades of scholarship (around the issue).”

Psychiatrists like Hatters-Friedman have spent years working to develop and refine criminal profiles of parents who commit filicide with the hope of gaining insight into these crimes.

“It’s so far from people’s minds that this is even something that could happen, that it helps us to categorize it, understand it, and think about prevention,” she said.

The profile of parents who kill

A 2014 analysis of 32 years of data on filicide arrests showed most filicide victims from 1976-2007 were between the ages of 1 and 6 years old.

The same study found the majority of offenders and victims were White, with Black offenders and victims being the second most common group. Nearly 90 per cent of the victims were the biological children of the offenders.

Research also shows mothers and fathers kill their children at similar rates. That gender balance, Hatters-Friedman said, makes filicide unique among murders, which are mainly committed by males. But despite the parity, parents’ motives and methods often vary.

According to Hatters-Friedman’s research, fathers who commit filicide are more likely to have a previous history of violence, substance abuse and mental illness. They’re also more likely to kill their spouse and more likely to die by suicide after killing their children, an act known as “family annihilation.”

While studies have found mothers who commit filicide were “notably younger” than their male counterparts. Hatters-Friedman’s research also showed these mothers often struggle with “multiple stressors,” including mental health issues, limited resources, isolation and substance abuse.

Motives for murder

In 1969, Dr. Phillip Resnick, a leading forensic psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve University, published a landmark study in which he proposed five classifications for the motives that drive filicide.

Over the decades, Hatters-Friedman said, psychiatrists around the world have continued to use these classifications to try to understand why some parents kill their children.

She now works alongside Resnick at Case Western, and together they have co-authored studies on filicide and the prevention of child murder. Here’s what their research has found:

The most common motive for child murder, Resnick found, was fatal maltreatment – often in the form of child abuse or neglect.

“In the ‘60s, (Resnick) called it ‘accidental’ because the parent would say, ‘It was an accident; I wasn’t trying to kill them,’” Hatters-Friedman said.

Another motive Resnick identified is the “unwanted child” case. In this instance, a parent comes to view the child as a hinderance to something else they want, Hatters-Friedman said, like a relationship, money or a lifestyle change.

This category also includes “neonaticide,” or when a parent – generally a mother – murders a child within the first 24 hours of life. These cases, Hatters-Friedman said, often involve “hidden pregnancies,” where a mother has been in persistent denial of the pregnancy and generally has not received prenatal care.

Hatters-Friedman’s research has found the women who commit “neonaticide” tend to be relatively young, single and fearful of the repercussions of being pregnant.

“Spousal or partner revenge” is yet another of Resnick’s motives. These cases are less common, but Resnick found they typically occur during bitter divorce or custody battles.

“The person is trying to wound (their former spouse) emotionally by killing the child,” Hatters-Friedman said.

The final two motives Resnick identified are deeply connected to the parent’s mental health, Hatters-Friedman said.

The first is “altruistic filicide,” or when a parent believes they are killing their child out of love. According to Resnick, these cases can occur when a parent who is mentally unwell believes they’re killing their child to relieve suffering that’s either real or imagined.

“That one can be hard for people to get their head around, because how could a loving parent kill their child?” Hatters-Friedman said. “What has happened in their mind is that they perceive that they’re saving their child from a fate worse than death by killing them.”

Altruistic filicide can also be linked to a phenomenon called “extended suicide,” Hatters-Friedman said, where a depressed or suicidal parent believes “they’re going to depart this world, and they wouldn’t want to leave their child in a world they see as so awful.”

The final motive for filicide Resnick identified is “acutely psychotic.” This is when a parent kills their child during a state of psychosis or hallucinating.

Resnick described this category as the “weakest” because it also includes filicide cases where there is no discernible motive.

Filicide on trial: Andrea Yates

Perhaps one of the most famous cases of filicide in the last 25 years has shades of both the altruistic and the acutely psychotic motives for murder: Andrea Yates.

In 2001, Yates – then a 36-year-old mother of five children – called 911 dispatchers and requested police be sent to her home in Houston, Texas.

Officers later testified when they arrived at the home, Yates answered the door and said, “I killed my kids.” After searching the house, officers found all five of the Yates children had been drowned in the family’s bathtub.

Andrea Yates was charged with two counts of capital murder; she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Her defence team hired Resnick to serve as their expert witness in the case.

Years later, Resnick would describe his observations on both Yates and the use of the insanity defence in an article for the Cleveland State Law Review.

In the article, Resnick noted Yates had a history of repeated psychiatric hospitalizations following her pregnancies. She also had previously attempted suicide, and she had previously experienced a major depressive episode with “severe, recurrent, (and) psychotic features.”

Yates – who was intensely religious – believed “Satan was within her and tormented her and the children,” Resnick wrote. “She thought that she was doing what was right for her children by arranging for them to go to heaven while they were still ‘innocent.’”

The Yates case went to trial in 2002 and Resnick testified he believed Yates “suffered from a psychosis, schizoaffective disorder” and was not aware of “the wrongfulness of her homicidal conduct” during the time of the murders.

A psychiatrist hired by the prosecution agreed Yates suffered from mental illness but argued she was aware of the illegality of her actions.

The jury deliberated for less than four hours before finding Yates guilty of capital murder. They ultimately decided to spare her from the death penalty and instead sentenced Yates to life in prison.

Then, in 2005, the Texas First Court of Appeals overturned Yates’ conviction after finding the forensic psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution gave erroneous testimony that may have prejudiced the jury.

Yates was tried again in 2006, and she again entered a plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity.” This time, a jury sided with her defence.

“She needs help,” the jury foreman told reporters after finding her not guilty. “It was very clear to us all that she did have psychosis, before, during and after.”

Resnick would later describe the Yates case as a “tragedy” for not only the children and the family, but for Andrea herself.

“Even if Mrs. Yates is eventually discharged from a psychiatric hospital on conditional release, she will always carry the emotional burden of having killed her five children,” he wrote.

By Chelsea Bailey, CNN