Methods of Murder in Maternal Filicide:
An Analysis of Weapon Use and Mode of Death
Ami Möller
Criminology 516: Murder in America
Indiana State University
April 2006
1
ABSTRACT
Maternal filicide, the murder of a child perpetrated by his or her mother, has been studied
in an effort to define the causal factors for such behavior. Less information exists on the
type of weapons used by mothers. This paper presents a content analysis of twenty
maternal filicide cases collected from various newspapers in an effort to determine the
common methods of murder and types of weapons used by the mothers. Findings show
that blunt objects are the most frequently used weapon by these offenders. A
comparison with previous research of the same faction indicates slightly different weapon
use even though demographic results, such as offender age and victim gender, are similar.
2
INTRODUCTION
The United States has an alarmingly high rate of child homicide when compared
to other industrialized nations. A study of this particular type of homicide in Jefferson
County, Alabama found that half of the researched murder cases were perpetrated by a
parent, with more than one third committed by the victim’s mother (Lyman, McGwin,
Malone, Taylor, Brissie, Davis and Rue 2003). Other researchers have found that
mothers commit almost half of all child murders (Friedman, Horwitz and Resnick 2005).
This disturbing type of homicide is known as maternal filicide: the murder of a child by
his or her mother. Often, the crime of filicide is divided into subcategories according to
the victim’s age: infanticide – the murder of a child younger than one year, and
neonaticide –the murder of a child within 24 hours of his or her birth (Palermo 2002).
This paper examines concepts and data concerning all three of these murder types, and
uses the term filicide as an all encompassing label for the murder of a child at any age
under 18 years.
Before examining the specifics of maternal filicide cases, including the use of
weapons, one must first attempt to understand the reasons why some mothers murder
their children. This paper provides a synopsis of the previous research conducted on
mothers that kill their own children, examining the main assumptions of causality
through psychological and sociological explanations and presents the quantitative results
from four different studies that have been conducted on homicidal mothers. The sections
3
to follow will then explain the method of collection used in the present study as well as
the findings which are compared with the previously developed data sets.
Since much of the information that has been gathered on maternal filicide has
centered on the motives behind the act and the demographics of offenders and victims,
this paper attempts to bring the less investigated but equally important topic of weapon
use into the foreground. The use of particular weapons and modes of attack within
maternal filicides have received less attention than the reasons for the murder itself;
however weapon information from this particular group of offenders may prove to be
particularly interesting due to the intricate nature of the crime itself. The relationship
between mother and child, reasons for the murder, and age of the victim all influence the
way in which a child is murdered. This paper attempts to contribute to the knowledge of
maternal filicide and better understand what weapons are used in these types of child
murders.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Theories of Causality
The victim-offender relationship has been a prominent component studied within
the topic of maternal filicide. Much of the previous research conducted on the topic of
filicide has focused on the relationship between the homicidal mothers and their children.
The high level of intimacy within the mother-child relationship increases the risk of
homicide, which would be expected as common knowledge of general crime indicates
that victims usually know their offender and are often biologically related to the
individual. Mothers are almost exclusively the offenders in cases of filicide involving
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newborns, or neonaticide; they also perpetrate a large number of reported infanticides.
Smithey’s study (1998) on early infanticide found that fatal injuries were usually
committed by the victim’s mother and the risk of such an attack decreased with the
child’s age. A mother and child’s relationship can become strained due to a number of
factors including a mother’s internal conflicts as well as particular external social
circumstances. The majority of existing work on the topic of filicide attempts to
determine the most influential factors in certain situations where maternal filicide
occurred. Researchers have concentrated on both psychological and sociological aspects
that can cause mothers to murder their children.
Psychological aspects that have been found to affect the behavior of mothers and
sometimes lead to filicide can range from an emotional imbalance to a severe mental
illness. Postpartum depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and other
hallucinatory and delusional illnesses are just a few problems that have been linked to
women in cases of filicide (Haapasalo and Patäjä 1999). Major sociological factors that
have been studied include financial problems and marital problems, and a history of
physical abuse. Gauthier, Chaudoir and Forsyth (2003) studied maternal infanticide
cases during 1984 and 1996 and found that when women were adversely affected by
economic stress that led to increased financial burdens, the level of fatal violence aimed
towards children increased. Martial problems and other familial issues also lead to an
increased risk of filicide. Studies have shown that “negative socialization experiences”
(Smithey 2001:67) such as physical and sexual abuse and abusive or unsupportive
husbands positively correlate with higher levels of filicide (1997; 2001). Forty-three
5
percent of the women studied by McKee and Shea (1998) of maternal filicide offenders
considered their marriage abusive.
The two prominent typologies for maternal filicide offenders stem from studies
conducted by Resnick during the late 1960s and d’Orban in the late 1970s. Resnick
developed a classification system that divided filicide cases by the apparent motive that
drove the offender to kill. The altruistic filicide group included murders committed in
order to protect a child from real or imagined threats or suffering. This type of murder
was also associated with attempted suicide by the mother. Acutely psychotic filicides
included situations in which the mother was suffering from a serious psychological
disorder causing hallucinations or paranoid confusion, and therefore seems to lack a
rational motive for the crime. Unwanted child filicides were usually cases of neonaticide
and often included women that concealed their pregnancy due to shame or denial of fact.
The fourth group was called accidental filicides and consisted of murders that occurred
when the mother had no intention to kill, but abused the child with such severity or
frequency that these violent acts led to murder. Spouse revenge filicide is the final
category and includes cases in which a child was killed as an act of revenge for an action
performed by the father and/or husband. This type of filicide followed the idea of
“maternal hatred of a child” (Simpson and Stanton 2000:136) and is sometimes known as
the Medea Complex, named after the mother in a Greek tragedy that kills her children in
retaliation against her unfaithful husband (Lambie 2001; Palermo 2002).
d’Orban’s (1979; Stanton and Simpson 2002) typology of mothers that kill their
children consists of six groups, the first being battered mothers. These were women who
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lost their temper and control, leading to impulsive acts of violence and murder. Mentally
ill mothers suffered from a psychotic disorder and often, they tried to commit suicide due
to depression after murdering their children. Neonaticides or the murder of a child within
the first 24 hours of his or her life is d’Orban’s third type of maternal filicide. Retaliating
mothers killed a child because of pent up aggression held towards their spouses. The
fifth type of filicide was the unwanted children group, which included mothers that did
not desire to have a child so they selfishly killed the victim. The final type of maternal
filicide was the mercy killings, in which the murder of a child was thought to end his or
her suffering.
Previous Data on Weapon Use
Four prior studies of maternal filicide included a statistical analysis of the parties
involved in such incidents, as well as the types of weapons used by the offenders.
McKee and Shea (1998) conducted research on twenty women charged with the death of
their children, a total of 26 victims in the sample. The mothers ranged from 18 to 66
years old with a mean of 29.3 years. The murdered children were all among the ages of
one day and 12 years, setting the average age at 2.7 years. Almost 54% of the victims
were male and the rest (46.2%) were female. McKee and Shea’s research led to the
conclusion that many mothers killed their children through hitting or suffocating the
victim, as evidenced by the 70% that did so in this particular study. Twenty-five percent
of these mothers battered their children with the use of personal weapons, while another
25% suffocated the victim, and the remaining 20% beat their children with blunt objects.
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There were no cases that included the use of a gun or knife to murder a child. They also
found that after being arrested 65% of the mothers confessed to their criminal actions.
Another study, conducted by Lewis, Baranoski, Buchanan and Benedek (1998)
focused on sixty cases of maternal filicide in which the offender’s age was between 17
and 52, creating a mean age of 29.05. There were 76 victims in this study with ages
between one day and 26 years old – one of the widest age ranges for victims of maternal
filicide studied. The average age was 4.21 years old. In contrast to the other research,
Lewis et al. found that over half the victims (55%) were female while 45% were male.
The results showed that the most frequent mode of murder used was smothering or
strangling the victim to death. A quarter of all sixty cases included the use of a gun or
knife. The victims of such attacks were older than victims killed through other means.
It was determined that psychotic women, like those in Resnick’s and d’Orban’s second
categories, were more apt to use a gun or knife than mothers that did not suffer from a
mental illness.
Haapaslo and Petäjä (1999) studied forty eight cases of neonaticide and nonneonaticide, consisting of 56 victims. The offenders were all between 17 and 42 years
old, making the mean age 26 for the neonaticide group and 30 for the non-neonaticide
group. Victim gender was reported in all but seven cases and showed that males (31)
were more likely to be killed than females (18). The age range of the victims in their
study was one day to 10 years, with most being killed before reaching the age of one.
Haapaslo and Petäjä supported this finding through the idea that younger children were
more likely to spend a higher amount of time at home with their mothers than older
8
children, making them more susceptible to attack. The most common mode of death
among the non-neonaticide group in this study was drowning, followed by strangulation
and suffocation. Mothers that committed neonaticide intentionally neglected their child,
not completing the proper postnatal care required and in turn causing the child’s death.
A recent study conducted by Rougé-Maillart, Jousset, Gaudin, Bouju and Penneau
(2005) included information gathered from seventeen cases of maternal filicide, in which
19 children were killed. The age range of the mothers was 19 to 40 years old, with a
mean of 29.5 years. The mean age of the victims was 3.5 years, as the ages ranged from
3 months to 15 years. Eleven victims were male and only 8 were female. Except for one
case, all the homicidal acts in Rouge-Maillart et al.’s study were perpetrated in the
mother and child’s home. Most of the children in this study died from head trauma,
usually as a result of a beating committed with the use of personal weapons. A few
offenders used blunt objects such as a monkey wrench or a stone to kill their victim.
Other frequent modes of murder were suffocation, strangulation and drowning.
DATA AND METHOD
The present data set was collected from eight news sources: The New York Times,
The Washington Post, San Antonio Express, The Houston Chronicle, Chicago Tribune,
San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, and CNN News. The articles were obtained through
internet search engines such as LexisNexis, CNN.com, and the specific newspapers’
archives. Search terms included “child homicide”, “filicide”, and “mother kills child”.
Each article described a maternal filicide case between the years 1995 and 2006 and were
9
compiled in order to compare specific quantitative variables with the aforementioned
previously assembled collections of similar data. Details taken from these twenty cases
of mothers that have been implicated or convicted of murdering their children include
offender age, victim gender and age, location of attack, whether or not a confession was
obtained and the type of weapon or mode of murder used to kill the victims. The data
collected from these articles is used to gain knowledge of the types of weapons mothers
use when murdering their children.
FINDINGS
There were thirty-two victims within the twenty cases since seven cases had
multiple victims, four of which included siblings of varying ages and three that included
twins or triplets. The age of mothers ranged from nineteen to forty-three, with a mean of
30.4 years (18 out of the 20 cases reported offender age). The victims’ ages were
between one day and eleven years old with a mean age of 4.1 years. There were almost
twice as many male victims (21) than female victims (11) and over 90% of the murders
occurred in the home. Out of the twenty cases, 12 reported whether or not the offender
confessed to the murder. Of these twelve cases 66.7% of mothers admitted to committing
murder, and 33.3% did not confess.
The most frequent mode of murder found among the cases involved the use of a
blunt object such as a hammer, rock or other heavy instrument. Suffocation was the
second highest reason for death with two separate cases involving the use of a plastic bag
to inhibit the victim’s breathing, both of which were newborns. Poisonings and the use
10
of personal weapons (i.e. hands and/or feet) were more frequent than the use of guns or
knives in the current data of maternal filicide. The content analysis showed that the use of
guns or knives was rare, accounting for only three cases. However, both cases in which
the mother used a gun to kill her child(ren) also included acts of suicide perpetrated after
the death of the victim(s).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The present data set confirmed previous studies indicating the average age of
offenders to be approximately 30 years old. The average age of victims however was
older than the prior research, with the exception of the Lewis et al. (1998) study which
used a larger range of victim ages. As seen in Table 1, much of the previous research on
maternal filicide, including three of the studies used for comparison in this paper,
indicates the gender of a victim was usually male. This was also found to be true in the
present data set. The content analysis reinforced the likelihood of confessions from
murderous mothers that was discovered in McKee and Shea’s (1998) research, as both
studies show approximately 65 to 66% of offenders confessing to their homicidal actions.
The current research also found that most mothers killed their children while at home,
which was previously noted in the study by Rougé-Maillart et al. (2005).
The current analysis of cases of maternal filicide found in various newspapers
indicated the use of blunt force trauma and suffocation with an object to be common
methods used to kill children as opposed to the conventional weapons regularly found in
many other crimes (i.e. a handgun). This is contradictory to the findings of previous
11
work that found the act of drowning and the use of personal weapons to be the most
commonly used methods among mothers that killed their children. However, deaths by
suffocation or strangulation were significantly important in three of the prior studies as
well as in the research collected through the newspaper content analysis, which also
showed that these forms of murder were used more on younger children (under the age of
one) than older children.
Findings showed that younger victims were more at risk of physical attack than
the use of conventional weapons. These victims were often killed literally “at the hands”
of their mother, through the use of personal weapons or suffocation. This is possibly due
to the fact that these children were smaller and than older children, with less resilience to
injuries from a beating, and therefore have an increased vulnerability to these methods of
murder. Availability of weapons also seemed to play a role in the killing of a child.
Since virtually all the homicides occurred in the family’s home, mothers used items that
were commonly found in the house. This explains the high number of cases of death by
trauma from blunt objects; since most of these objects were regular household items that
were then used in a manner that transformed them into weapons. One such case included
the use of a hammer to kill a seven-year old boy. Another mother used a 10 pound
weight to bludgeon her children to death. A particularly interesting case involved a
mother that used a television remote and the hose from a vacuum in addition to her hands
to beat the victim until she died. The cases in while victims were suffocated also indicate
the high degree that availability plays in the role of choice of weapon in maternal filicide
cases. Two mothers used plastic bags to suffocate their children, both of which were
12
newborns. Another victim was suffocated with a pillow, an everyday item found in
almost all households. The current study however did not reinforce the findings of Lewis
et al. (1998) regarding the risk of attack with a weapon – such as a gun or knife, to
increase with the age of a victim. Nearly all the victims killed with a gun were under the
age of three; and the child murdered by the mother wielding a knife was just ten months
old.
The content analysis of these maternal filicide cases spanned a number of years
and lead to the conclusion that although there are different ways in which children are
murdered, mothers tend to use particular methods such as personal weapons, blunt force
trauma, and suffocation. However, the small sample size of this study is a limitation that
needs to be addressed. Slight differences such as victim and offender age averages
between the current data and previous research could be attributed to the difference in
number of cases used. Another limitation of the data set is the fact that it does not
contain enough information to devise a comprehensive psychological explanation for the
choice of weapon made by each mother. It is recommended that future maternal filicide
studies include comprehensive analysis of qualitative research such as interviews and
case studies of convicted offenders that used a weapon to kill their children in an effort to
obtain information about why the mothers chose the weapons they did. The development
of scientifically verified reasons for choosing a particular type of weapon would
compliment the existing classifications and typologies of murderous mothers, as well as
add to the current understanding of maternal filicides in general.
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Table 1. Comparison of Present data (2006) to data from McKee and Shea (1998), Lewis
et al. (1998), Haapasalo and Patäjä (1999) and Rougé-Maillart et al. (2005)
# of Cases (N)
# of Victims
Age:
Victim(m)
Offender(m)
Victim Gender:
Male
Female
Most
Frequent
Weapon/MOD
Möller
McKee and Shea
Lewis et al.
Haapasalo and
Patäjä
Rougé-Maillart
et al.
20
32
20
26
60
76
48
56
17
19
4.1
30.4
2.7
29.3
4.21
29.05
na
26;30*
3.5
29.5
21
11
Blunt
Object
14
12
Suffocated/
Personal
Weapons
34
42
Smothered or
Strangled
31
18
Drowned;
Neglect of
Postnatal Care*
11
8
Personal
Weapons/
Suffocated
* neonaticide cases; non-neonaticide cases
(na = not available)
(MOD = Mode of Death)
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Appendix. Maternal Filicides: 1995-2006
Case Year State
#
Victim
Age*
Victim Offender
Act
Weapon/Mode Confession
Gender
Age
Location
of Death
1
2
3
1995
2006
2003
NY
MI
TX
na
na
na
Blunt object
Hammer
Rock
na
N
Y
2006
NC
Female
Male
Male
Male
Female
29
34
39
4
6Y
7Y
8Y
6Y
2Y
33
Personal
Y
5
6
7
2003
1995
2005
TX
WA
NY
Female
Male
Males
30
23
21
Drowned
Fall
Smothered
Y
na
N
8
9
1997
1998
NY
NY
home
home
Poison
Burned
Y
na
1998
MN
24
home
Strangled
Y
11
1998
PA
Female
Male
F
3
Males
and
3
Females
**
Males
na
31
10
19
home
Poison/Gun
na
12
13
14
2005
2004
2004
NY
NY
TX
3Y
1Y
3M
(twins)
5Y
5Y
6Y
11Y
9Y
9Y
7Y
6Y
5Y
2Y
(triplets)
1Y
1D
2Y
holiday
home
home
bridge
home
Male
Female
Female
25
35
26
home
home
na
Y
N
na
15
16
2004
1996
TX
NY
home
home
2004
2001
2005
2005
CA
NY
NJ
IN
Female
Male
Female
Male
Male
Male
Male
Male
37
30
17
18
19
20
10M
6Y
2Y
3M
1D
6Y
9Y
2Y
Personal
Suffocated
Personal/Blunt
object
Knife
gun
42
27
43
na
home
na
home
home
Poison
Suffocated
Suffocated
10Lb. weight
na
Y
na
Y
N
na
Data was collected from The New York Times, The Washington Post, San Antonio Express, The Houston
Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, and CNN News.
* Victim Age is recorded in years (Y) unless under the age of 1, then months (M) or day (D) is used.
** Information on this case did not provide the gender in specific correspondence to the age of each victim.
(na = not available)
15
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