Multiple‐victim parricides in South Africa, 1990–2019

Abstract

Previous studies of homicides in South Africa have examined serial murders and mass killings. While some scholars have examined parricides in African countries such as Ghana and Zimbabwe, few have examined the intersection of parricide and multiple victim homicides in the context of South Africa. This paper examines multiple victim parricides in a South African context using newspapers and court records as data. Eighteen cases of multiple-victim parricides were identified and analysed. Our findings indicate that multiple victim parricides in South Africa are shaped by residential patterns as well as social and cultural factors that are unique to South Africa that are embodied in the offence characteristics. The implications on the findings are discussed.

A Retrospective Analysis of Familicide in Latium (Italy): A Criminological Profile of the Victims and Offenders Involved in 29 Cases and a Comparison with the Literature

“…The victims in familicide cases often share close relationships with the offendersthey are spouses, offspring, or other close family members [9], as it favors the victims being perceived as sources of the offender's distress [10]. In our cases, the most common relationship between the victims and perpetrators was that of spouses, accounting for 22.58% of the cases.…”

“…In our cases, the home of the victim, shared with the offender, was the predominant scene of the crime. Different authors have suggested that shared living spaces between victims and offenders represent a feature of familicide [7,13], as high-risk periods for victimization may arise during instances of heightened familial tension, such as during divorce proceedings, custody battles, or following the issuance of protective orders [9], ending in murder.…”