Murder–suicide
A murder–suicide is an act where an individual intentionally kills one or more people before killing themselves. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms:
Suicide-lawful killing has three conceivable forms:
Many spree killings have ended in suicide, such as in several school shootings. Some cases of religiously motivated suicides may also involve murder. All categorization amounts to forming somewhat arbitrary distinctions where relating to intention in the case of psychosis, where the intention(s) is/are more likely than not to be irrational. Ascertaining the legal intention (mens rea) is inapplicable to cases properly categorized as insanity.
Some use the term murder–suicide to refer to homicide–suicide, which can include manslaughter and is therefore more encompassing.[1]
According to an analysis of the London Times' reports of murder (1887-1990) by Danson and Soothill (1996), there is a much higher proportion of British male murder-suicides, in general, than female. Overwhelmingly the women committing murder-suicide tend to kill their children and then themselves. Men, on the other hand, tend to kill their spouses or partners.[2]