Most of you know I don’t watch TV but lately I’ve begun to. I feel like I have to put a disclaimer up when I mention this because I haven’t watched TV for 20 years so I don’t want to misrepresent myself as someone who is aware of trends in programming.
Last night I watched an episode of “Snapped” about a woman who murdered her fiance in 1995 in what many would call a crime of passion. I was thinking about how things have changed. These days people plan to murder others if and when certain conditions are met. They have an exit strategy and harming others is part of it.
We see this in the news everyday. People killing others, then killing themselves. Taking your own life is one thing. Taking others with you – your partner, your children, your workmates or strangers is a whole other issue and it’s appalling.
My husband says he doesn’t understand it at all but I run across the mindset all the time in a wide variety of people. It’s the mother who is going to kill her children if she feels she can’t care for them or protect them. It’s the frustrated artist who can’t make a living doing what he love, who plans to go out and shoot people until a cop shoots him. It’s the woman (locally) who jumped in front of a truck on the highway a couple weeks. What do you make of this?
We’ve got our friends and neighbors making plans to kill people if they decide they to want to die themselves. This is co common, I am sure there are people like this who read this blog. So who are you? What is it that makes a person think they have providence over another person’s life?
As for the astrology, I’d point to Pluto in Capricorn and decay of society. We all see it happening but at some point we’re going to hit bottom, yes?
It’s possible for an individual to hit bottom on their own and come back up. You don’t have to wait for the people around you to adopt a new attitude to adopt one of your own. This can be an independent action (Aries) and the people who opt to head off in a winning direction become leaders.
What are people thinking when they kill themselves and take other innocent people with them?
27 Responses to “Murder-Suicide As An Exit Strategy”
We are animals, seems we forget this. Don’t back wild animals into a corner.
“What is it that makes a person think they have providence over another person’s life?”
How is this any different from the government doing the same?
How is this any different from our soldiers who are taking “providence”.
There is a reason why you are brainwashed in boot camp, without 100% conviction you will fold like a lawn chair if you are not brainwashed.
Society, geared towards the comfort and security of the top 1% has side effects, these normally show up as anger directed towards each other. Most do not understand where to direct that anger.
When your mind can make things cut and dried, you will be amazed at what you can do. The hate, the killing, all that is easy.
The hard thing for me was coming to grip with my own brainwashing, both by the military and society. To walk away from it, going off the deep end is easy, and it’s natural. It’s my animal instinct and it was easy to think I was honorable, even just and that feeds the reptile brain. My reptile brain is cut and dried, hot-cold, love-hate, it is a switch that only knows black and white.
When you speak of your husband,( and I don’t mean to offend) I think of my reptile brain and how easy and comforting it was back when I let mine rule.
Of course I’m not passing judgement on anyone, I just have this animal body with a reptile brain and try to wrestle control of it back from the enviroment I find myself in and own the power to control it. Sometimes with limited success.
No offense taken, tatkins. I’m asking questions because I am interested in the answers and I appreciate you weighing in.
@tatkins… it’s interesting to hear what you have to say because you have walked away & now you can see both sides of the coin. I don’t imagine that to be easy. May the you, you strive to be, become easier to find & keep =)
“How is this any different from the government doing the same?
How is this any different from our soldiers who are taking “providence”.”
~~
I thought about this a little bit and the difference I see is that the people I am describing want to die. They are dissatisfied or disappointed with their life and rather than just take their own life they take others with them.
Say a person gets fired so they no longer want to live. Do they have to kill me too? What if I get fired but want to look for another job rather than kill myself?
A mother can’t cope with hardship so she kills her children? A father can’t provide so he kills his children? I take issue with this. Your kid may be stronger than you are… do you mind? Why do you mind?
I can get with the idea a person has a right to take their own life but what is it with this trend where people insist on going out with an attention-getting blaze of glory?
I wrote this because I am truly upset with people killing their children because they don’t want to live. I would like if my writing this made someone see how repugnant this is.
“No offense taken, tatkins. I’m asking questions because I am interested in the answers and I appreciate you weighing in.”
Thanks Elsa, I didn’t know how you would take that, but I thought honesty was important. As you can see I am no stranger to cognitive dissonance or my reptilian brain.
I have a deep connection with soldiers, but an even deeper distain for the policy that directs them. I remember back in 03, when we went into iraq, my reptile brain was swollen. How could I be here when they are there? The reptile brain is a hell of a drug, and man did I love it.
Ignorance was bliss, and a sanctuary of sanity. I can no longer tell good killing from bad, I see terrible things and I understand how it can happen, it’s easy going off the deep end. The hard part is sitting on the bank and watching others.
I think we all have it, the only question is what we do about it.
I’m not sure (re. the question) but I just got my first TV of my adult life (someone else was upgrading). I keep forgetting to turn it on and watch it.
I asked my husband what he thinks about this and he doesn’t think it should be called “murder-suicide”.
“What should it be called?”
“I don’t know. Heinous murder?” he spat. “It’s got nothing to do with suicide. Suicide is committed by people in despair who feel they can’t go on. These people don’t feel like that…”
“I can get with the idea a person has a right to take their own life but what is it with this trend where people insist on going out with an attention-getting blaze of glory?
I wrote this because I am truly upset with people killing their children because they don’t want to live. I would like if my writing this made someone see how repugnant this is.”
Agreed and agreed… I can’t understand mothers like Andrea Yates or Susan Smith. I can’t get my mind around why those boys shot up the high school at Columbine… Timothy McVeigh and Jared Loughner are aliens to me. If I want to cap myself, that is MY business and I have the right to do so… I’ve dealt with my own father’s suicide, so I feel I can have an opinion on this…
But to take out innocent lives “just because” you don’t want to live is the ultimate act of selfishness and a huge “F-YOU” to everyone else. A last act of bravado? I just don’t get it and I hate that people are doing this more and more…
Gotta say..I agree with the your hubs on that one two. Looked at separately murder and then suicide is a lot different than looking at them together..
This is a really interesting subject. I read an article a while ago about a groom who killed his bride, best man, then himself at his wedding ceremony after announcing to the guests that he had a “surprise” for them. There was a lot of speculation on his motive, and it was mostly assumed that the bride and best man were having an affair which caused him to go off the deep end. If that was indeed the case, I can only imagine he was thinking of revenge against the people that caused him pain. It wasn’t enough to kill himself if the people that ruined his life were still alive.
Damn… well, there’s some psychology for ya. People who commit suicide and hurt NO ONE, and people who have to take others with them. I think the people who do it with no victims are truly depressed, and have lost all hope.. the ones who leave victims i think are filled with anger and thinks the world OWES them something they did not get. My 2 cents.
Morgan- I think you’re onto something there…
Maybe going on thin ice…but I think there is a distinction to be made here.
On the one hand, you have people whose primary motivation is ending their own life–and they involve others via directly killing them too or endanger others via using them as the vehicle by which to end their own life.
On the other hand, you have people whose primary motivation is to lash out, destroy or punish others–and they have decided that the need to punish/inflict is so great that they are willing to die to do it. (they may or may not *wish* to die…but their own death is secondary to the urge to inflict themselves on others).
I think there is likely a (perhaps subtle) key difference in the motivation and reasoning between a suicide who wraps others in their ideation of despair versus someone externally fixated on taking out ‘the enemy’ even at the cost of their own life.
One views death as a release–the other as a sacrifice…
i believe some people allow bad spirits possess them. i call them walk-ins. some people are just out of their minds.
I think sometimes murder-suicide may not be out of anger, but out of sadness and despair. The person committing suicide feels like ending their life is a relief, less painful than living. In that case, the person committing suicide may also feel responsible for others (like their children) and feel like they’re doing these other people a favor (for instance, they feel guilty for leaving a child without a parent and see death as a way out). I’m certainly not condoning it or saying that it is a rational way of thinking. I think it’s appalling. But that may provide some explanation. These people are trying to act like god and not respecting the people around them.
I think they kill themselves after they murder because they don’t want to face society for what they’ve done.
Not sure if they want to kill themselves as much as they crave killing someone else and realize they can’t continue life as usual. Their death is one big F-you.
My ex was like that. Would even point guns and his finger at each of our heads. Told me how he would dispose of my body.
I had to learn to shoot and fortunately I was naturally good at it. Then the next time he started getting squirrely I laid it out, as in you or me, it’s going to be me and the kids. I’ll shoot you without blinking.
He said I was mean…awwww….>:-/
4 years ago I was on the razor-edge or a murder/suidide situation. I was sick and tired of the abuse. I was ready to do anything to get out, including killing him. I don’t know if anyone can imagine being at that kind of choice point: kill or be killed?
Think of the adrenaline that comes from rage. He bit a chunk out of my ear, Mike Tyson style, and I exploded and blacked out in rage. It seemed that I blinked and he was on the floor. Then I took a ceramic soapdish and smashed it on his head until he got up and ran. At that very moment, I was so full of rage that I felt that I could either keep beating him until he was barely hanging on (and go to jail) or I could walk out.
I walked out. I figured he had f*cked up my life enough, why should I ruin my otherwise clean record?
However, I definatly wouldn’t take innocent people, especially children, out with me. I’m glad I didn’t have children with that SOB!
brizo I think you are right re. not wanting to face. I was speaking to my therapist about this today. His words “Can you imagine if they had the information you had? If they woke up and realized what they had done and what they had created?”
Preservation of delusion, at any cost. I feel that in some people.
White Chocolate, I can imagine.
I did the same thing, snapped one day with a polypropylene step stool, of all things. He couldn’t getnear me to stop me. I was laughing like crazy. Hell, I WAS crazy.
This was after he showed up in the kitchen with a gun because I told him to keep out of my spaghetti sauce. My youngest who was two or three ran out and flung herself around my legs and begged him not to shoot me.
He came into the bathroom to continue the fight. I had gone there to decompress after I sent the kids out to play and there was the stool…
He went to the neighbors covered in bruises and she laughed at him and told him he deserved it.
It wasn’t long after that I left him.
h, I agree. Most of their life is spent living a facade which other people readily help them with. (I was definitely an enabler as were his parents)
They have very little experience of living with consequences because everyone has been cleaning up around them for years.
brizo: I wish I had had that stool! Who knows how much damage you could have done!
That’s good ass-kicking! You go, girl!
And isn’t it interesting that when an abusive man finally gets his ass beat, he wants to cry like a litle punk?
Good God! Doesn’t it just make you even MORE ENRAGED when LITTLE CHILDREN have to cry out, “Daddy, please don’t shoot Mommy!” I know you’re GLAD you left that SOB! I am, too, No person, man, woman or child, should have to deal with abuse from the people who “love” them.
In our area,we have had 6 murder-suicides since December 2010. And on March 21, 2011 my dear childhood friend was killed by her cop husband while she was asleep. Since March 21 there have been 5 murder-suicide incidents on the south side. Big article in this mornings paper talking about these cluster events. Let’s get mental health issues out of the closet and deal with things in a practical manner.
Any other astrological factors besides Pluto in Capricorn?
I am sorry for your loss, mimi. 
Other factors are the pressure!!!!!!!! Increasing as April progresses by the way. I am so sorry.
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“What are people thinking when they kill themselves and take other innocent people with them?”
a means to an end. I would say there is a huge emotional upset and a string of events that make the person feel like they are no longer in control of the situation. Obviously this route is 1) taking control of the situation 2)an act of desparation toward a definite end 3) probably clouded by a lot of irrational thinking whether whole or in part to whatever the “devastation” is the person is feeling.
I don’t think it is the right answer by any means. But I do understand it. I was involved in an abusive relationship in my early 20′s. Yes, in desparation I could have shot the guy with little to no guilt at the time just to get it to end. My emotions were through the roof at the time, I was isolated from a support system and my logic..under those circumstances..non-existant. Plus, my own suicide attempt, was a very desparate attempt to find a means to an end under a fury of emotional distress and illogic.
Decay of society..yes, this is also a key factor.
I swear as a society I think we get more numb to violence everyday. Just takes one story about a gunman in a school to cause a rise in this type of thing happening..you see it on TV, read it in the papers, and people under the same emotional distress read about it and think..hmm. These are not rational people we are talking about here. They may be historically rational but not at the time. They can be high functioning individuals who hit a wall in some way. I’m not making excuses, this is just my theory.
When my oldest son was born there was a headline in the paper in the town about a woman who walked out on a country road with her infant son and a bible. She “sacrificed” him right in the middle of the road (stabbed him) saying that she was saving him from the world. She BELIEVED this. I don’t know what drew her to that point but before she was functioning at a high level in her community and the church. That was in 1992 and I can’t find reference to the story, but it was a lot like this one from Dallas in 2009.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/26/otty-sanchez-mother-says-_n_245124.html