Putting homicide followed by suicide in context: Do macro‐environmental characteristics impact the odds of committing suicide after homicide?*

Abstract

Homicide followed by suicide remains an understudied phenomenon in the criminological literature. This is due, in part, to methodological and statistical limitations—much of the extant research includes small samples and has not kept pace with quantitative advances. Moreover, scholarship on homicide–suicide has been focused almost exclusively on individual risk factors, discounting contextual influences. In this study, we examine whether macro‐environmental characteristics affect the odds of suicide after a homicide. We use data on 24,373 homicide and homicide–suicide cases distributed across 3,019 cities and 48 U.S. states from the National Violent Death Reporting System to examine the direct effects of structural factors on the odds of suicide after a homicide; and whether structural characteristics condition the impact of the victim–offender relationship on the odds of homicide–suicide. Hierarchical logistic regression models indicate that macro‐level concentrated disadvantage decreases the odds of homicide–suicide. Furthermore, concentrated disadvantage attenuates the odds of suicide after the homicide of an intimate partner, child, family member, or friend, relative to the killing of a stranger. The findings reveal that researchers should account for the context in which homicide–suicide occurs; failure to do so may unintentionally discount a key correlate of homicide–suicide and artificially inflate the effects of the micro‐environment.

Contextualizing Homicide-Suicide: Examining How Ecological Gun Availability Affects Homicide-Suicide at Multiple Levels of Analysis

“…Almost as notable was the inability of contextual gun availability to distinguish homicide-suicide from homicide-only and suicide-only at the individual-level. Although some may take this as evidence that the etiology of homicide-suicide does not diverge from its component acts at the macro-level, we note that concentrated disadvantage reduced the odds of suicide following homicide after controlling for incident-level characteristics, consistent with prior work (Fridel & Zimmerman, 2019b). Relatedly, and as noted above, much of the empirical work on homicide-suicide has focused on examining whether homicide-suicide is primarily suicide-driven, primarily homicide-driven, or a different form of violence entirely (Eliason, 2009; Liem & Nieuwbeertaa, 2010; Logan et al, 2008).…”

Examining the Racial Dynamic of the Victim-offender Dyad in Homicide-suicide: Does Intraracial Homicide Encourage Perpetrator Suicide?

“…Accordingly, Stack (1997) found that killing a former spouse, child, spouse, and friend increased the odds of subsequent suicide by approximately 13, 10, 8, and 2 times, respectively, concluding that the etiology of homicide-suicide lies in an “intimate” and “long-term” personal relationship. Similarly, Fridel and Zimmerman (2019) found that the odds of suicide following homicide were highest for offenders who killed their children, followed by offenders who killed a spouse, parent, and friend. This diverges from the victim-offender relationship in homicide-only incidents, in which offenders tend to target friends, acquaintances, and strangers (Daly and Wilson 1988; Decker 1993).…”

“…Homicide-suicide is rooted in a close victim-offender relationship. As few as 2 percent of homicide-suicide perpetrators victimize persons unknown to them (Fridel and Zimmerman 2019), and the overwhelming number of homicide-suicides involve family members and intimate partners. Accordingly, Stack (1997) found that killing a former spouse, child, spouse, and friend increased the odds of subsequent suicide by approximately 13, 10, 8, and 2 times, respectively, concluding that the etiology of homicide-suicide lies in an “intimate” and “long-term” personal relationship.…”

“…Stack (1997) employed logistic regression analysis on the entire population of 16,245 homicides and homicide-suicides in Chicago from 1965 to 1990, finding that White offenders were almost twice as likely as non-White offenders to commit suicide following homicide; multivariate regression controlling for key covariates in the large sample increased the precision of effect estimates. Most recently, Fridel and Zimmerman (2019) estimated multilevel logistic regression models on all 22,960 (single-offender, single-victim) homicides and 1,413 homicide-suicides in the United States from 2003 to 2013, thereby controlling for clustering and generalizing this finding more broadly.…”

“…Perhaps the strongest correlate of homicide-suicide and the most well-established differentiator between homicide and homicide-suicide in the literature is the victim-offender relationship. More than 90 percent of homicide-suicide perpetrators target persons known to them (Fridel and Zimmerman 2019), and the overwhelming majority of these persons are family members and intimate partners (Stack 1997). Conversely, more than 66 percent of homicide-only cases involve friends, acquaintances, and strangers (Daly and Wilson 1988; Decker 1993).…”