A Stafford County man’s slaying of his children and girlfriend Monday night was the sixth case of a father killing his family in the Washington region in the past 14 months.
Three of the incidents — which criminologists call familicide — involved Montgomery County families.
In March, a Rockville man who was separated from his wife drowned his three young children in the bathtub of a Baltimore hotel and then spent the night there before turning himself in.
In July, a Silver Spring man shot his two grown sons, and in April 2007, a 35-year-old Montgomery County man whose girlfriend had broken up with him hanged their two toddlers and himself on the farm where he had lived.
Two more incidents involved Frederick families.
In November, a 40-year-old Frederick man shot his ex-wife, their three children and then himself when he was picking up the children to spend Thanksgiving with him.
In March 2007, a 28-year-old Frederick man killed his four children and is suspected of killing his wife after learning he was about to lose his job at a door-manufacturing plant, police said. Her body, found in Emmitsburg, was identified last month.
Familicide happens an average of 50 times a year throughout the nation, criminologists said.
About 83 percent of those who killed a spouse were men, as were 75 percent of those who killed a boyfriend or girlfriend, according to a Department of Justice study of crime between 1993 and 2002.
But women were more likely than men to kill their children — the study found women were the culprits in 55 percent of those cases.
“Generally you see two types of scenarios,” said Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
“The first one is where one spouse threatens to leave the other, and they kill the spouse out of revenge.
“Then, because they plan on committing suicide afterward, they kill the children out of this distorted sense of altruism — they feel the children will be better off,” he said.
Another common scenario involves families suffering financial stress, and the cases sometimes involve severe depression, Duwe said.
