About the Killer Dads and Custody List
This is NOT a comprehensive list of all U.S. fathers who have killed their children in situations involving domestic violence and/or child abuse. This list is limited to articles we have found where there is an identifiable child custody, visitation, and/or child support angle in the children's deaths. Even then, we can’t claim that this is a comprehensive list of child custody, visitation, and or child-support- related murders. Quite often, newspaper articles just don’t provide enough information to make a judgment call.
There is no time limit to the actual dates of death on this list, though most are comparatively recent— usually (but not always) with an article on the deaths appearing in the last five years or so. (Often it takes years for charges to get filed in these cases, or for cases to go to trial.) Note that there are several cases going back to the 1990s.
In the past, many have asked which cases specifically involve a family court which ignored the concerns of a protective mother or involved notable police, court, and/or CPS incompetence/corruption, I have marked some of the more egregious cases of that type with an asterisk. Of course, the criterion is somewhat subjective, and is also based on having enough media coverage to discern whether these factors were present. Once again, that doesn’t mean that other cases on this list didn’t involve those factors. Only that I have insufficient information at this time.
Additional information can be found on all these cases by searching the Internet or the Dastardly Dads site.
By June 2014, it became apparent that this list was becoming too long and unwieldy, even after being broken into two data sets. So the list is now broken down by state.
2013 deaths are highlighted in yellow.
2014 deaths are highlighted in green.
2015 deaths are highlighted in blue.