familicide

family +‎ -cide

familicide (countable and uncountable, plural familicides)

1. The murder of an entire family by a family member.

   Because of the familicide that wiped out his entire family, he will be charged with six counts of murder.

   • 2014, Albert Lee Strickland, “Familicide”, in Michael John Brennan, editor, The A–Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 204:

     Familicide is the murder of family members by another family member. In other words, familicide is a multiple-victim homicide in which the killer's spouse or partner and one or more children are killed. Although familicide is relatively rare, it is nevertheless the most common form of mass killing.

2. The perpetrator of a familicide.

   The popular professional wrestler became the most notorious familicide of 2007.

   • 1998, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Newsletter‎, volume 23, number 3, page 10:

     There has also been some recent work focused on diagnostic correlates in aggressive individuals, including a familicide.

   • 2019, Lea Puljcan Juric, Illyria in Shakespeare’s England, →ISBN, page 147:

     While hiding there under the assumed name Calinda, she nearly falls prey to duke Brianto, a stock character modeled on the salacious predatory Turk (a ‘familicide’ of “beastly appetite,” in league with a dishonest Greek ally) […]

   • 2022 March 30, Joan Smith, “Putin the abuser”, in The Critic‎:

     His behaviour in Ukraine increasingly resembles that of a familicide, who would rather kill his wife and children than let them go.

• familicidal

• Familicide: The killing of spouse and children, Margo Wilson, et al., in Aggressive Behavior (psychology journal), Vol. 21:4, pp. 275–291, February 13, 2006:

  A familicide is a multiple-victim homicide incident in which the killer's spouse and one or more children are slain.... Familicides were almost exclusively perpetrated by men, unlike other spouse-killings and other filicides. Half the familicidal men killed themselves as well, a much higher rate of suicide than among other uxoricidal or filicidal men.

• Behind dad's slaying of family, San Francisco Chronicle, June 20, 2007:

  Investigators say Kevin Morrissey, 51, was overwhelmed by money problems when he parked his car in Tilden Park and killed his two children, his wife and then himself Monday evening. Experts on "familicide" — the term used by psychologists and criminologists to describe the killing of one's entire family and oneself — said Morrissey fit the profile.