Moms who kill children are rare, but complex (Tampa, Florida)

As I have often suggested here, killer moms typically dominate the headlines--especially if they're perceived as attractive, middle-class, or white. Female criminals are often titillating and shocking to the general public in that way. But cut to the bottom line, as highlighted in this article: in most cases, intentional first-degree murder is generally committed by FATHERS AND STEP FATHERS, not moms.

Despite that fact--or perhaps because of that fact--you have probably heard of every killer mom listed below. When these names are repeated again and again in a media echo chamber, it leads the public to believe that moms are more dangerous to children that fathers (a belief encouraged by the fathers rights movement to encourage father custody). Just not true. Killer dads seldom get mentioned outside the local press unless they wipe out the whole family in a bloody massacre. And even then, these dads seldom linger in the news for long. That's why the public can seldom rattle off killer dads by name. By contrast, all you have to do is say the names of Susan, Andrea, and Darlie, and most literate people know what you're talking about.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/jan/30/MENEWSO17-moms-who-kill-children-are-rare-but-comp/

Moms who kill children are rare, but complex

BY DONNA KOEHN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 30, 2011

TAMPA - They form an ignominious roster of women accused of committing a crime as horrific and taboo as it gets.

•Susan Smith, convicted of two counts of murder for rolling her Mazda Protégé into a South Carolina lake with her two toddlers inside, buckled into their car seats.

•Andrea Yates, confined to a state mental hospital for methodically drowning her five children in her bathtub in a Houston suburb.

•Darlie Routier, on death row in Texas for killing her sons, ages 5 and 7, then shocking television viewers by decorating their graves with Silly String a few days after their burial.

•And, on Friday, Julie Schenecker, a Tampa Palms stay-at-home mom who police say shot her two teenagers in the head with a .38-caliber revolver for being "mouthy."

Filicide — the killing of a child older than age 1 by a parent — is rare. In most cases, it involves a father or stepfather lashing out in a fit of rage or frustration.

Rarer still is a mother who intentionally kills her children, and most of those slayings involve infants or toddlers.

The deaths of the Schenecker children — Beau, 13, and Calyx, 16 — already has garnered national attention for its aberration and brutality.

"Public reaction can be harsher for a mother," says lawyer Lyann Goudie, who defended Kristina Gaime, a Land O' Lakes nurse who killed her 6-year-old son and attempted to kill herself and her 8-year-old son by asphyxiation in the family minivan in 1999.

"People wonder how you can kill someone you carried in your body for nine months," Goudie says.

Experts, too, attempt to understand the dynamics of maternal filicide based on few cases. Kathleen Heide, a professor of criminology at the University of South Florida who counsels victims of family violence, says mothers who kill older children typically suffer from severe mental illness.

"Killing their children and then committing suicide is common," she says. "This is a sign of overwhelming despair. They usually have a major depression with psychosis."

Police say Schenecker, 50, left a detailed note indicating she intended to take her own life after killing her children.

Schenecker shook uncontrollably and had a wide-eyed, haunted look as she was led to jail Friday. She was taken to Tampa General Hospital's intensive care unit hours later, suffering from an unspecified condition she had before being booked.

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No outsiders can know exactly what went on behind closed doors at the home on Royal Park Court in the upscale, gated subdivision.

Schenecker's husband, Parker, a colonel in U.S. Army intelligence, was in Qatar at the time of the slayings.

But Heide says mothers who kill older children usually are married, and frequently are the primary caregivers of the family. They often have a number of stressors that can include financial problems, ongoing abusive adult relationships, conflict with family members and limited social support.

"Often in tony neighborhoods, people put up a front," Heide says. "She may have felt particularly alone."

Heide says Schenecker's demeanor and the fact she apparently remained in the home all night with her dead children suggests she could be in a dissociative state, unable to deal with the reality of what has happened.

"She may tell police she did it, but she also may feel as if she watched herself do it, as if she were in a movie," she says. "There's often a sense of unreality."

Geoffrey McKee, a forensic psychologist and author of the book "Why Mothers Kill," says he knows of few cases in which a mother has killed her teenage children.

"The primary dynamic in those situations is conflict over the children's independence," says McKee, clinical professor in the neuropsychiatry department at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. "It might involve issues of curfew or getting the car keys."


* * * * *
McKee, who has spent more than 30 years studying and interviewing homicidal mothers, including Susan Smith, has developed five categories of mothers who kill.

Psychotic/depressed mothers often feel hopeless and are the most likely to commit suicide after killing their children. They sometimes believe they are saving their children from a life of misery or think their children are possessed or defective. Mothers contemplate or carry out plans to kill themselves in 41 percent to 56 percent of all cases of maternal filicides.

Another type of woman who kills her children is the detached mother, who fails to develop a sense of closeness with her infant, McKee says. They are girls who give birth at home or a school restroom and try to hide the infant's body, or exhausted mothers frustrated by colicky babies and suffering from postpartum depression.

Abusive/neglectful mothers act out in rage or fail to meet their babies' needs, but they rarely deliberately kill their children. Shaken baby syndrome is one example.

Retaliatory mothers seek to punish a husband or other family member.

Psychopathic mothers may be narcissistic, motivated by money, addicted to drugs or have Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which they purposely harm their children for attention.

"Psychotic/depressed mothers are significantly more likely to use a gun to kill their children," McKee says. "As the age of the victim increases, the level of violence also increases."

dkoehn@tampatrib.com