Filicide – is a horrifying crime that, sadly, happens more often than we’d like to think; a crime that often shocks and horrifies the public when a parent kills their child.
In fact, there is no greater tragedy or act of unimaginable desperation and despair.
Furthermore, in the United States, filicide – the murder of a child by a parent – occurs an average of 500 times per year.
And while the motivations for such a heinous act are often complex and nuanced, the outcome is always heartbreaking.
The loss of innocence and trust for the child. For the parent, it descends into a hellish abyss of guilt, regret, or nothing.
In this blog post, I’ll explore the motivations behind filicide.
A Brief Introduction Who Commits Filicide?
While this heinous act can be motivated by many factors, ranging from greed to mental illness, one thing is always clear: The child was innocent, and their death was preventable.
That said, in the United States, filicide is the leading cause of death for children 1-5 years old.
To this end, an estimated 1,500 children are killed by their parents yearly.
While it’s a crime that cuts across all demographics, some common risk factors may contribute to a parent becoming capable of murder.
Why do parents kill their children?
While it’s impossible to know exactly why a parent would kill their child, there are some possible explanations.
Filicide is not an uncommon calamity; a study supported by the National Institute of Health found that about 15% of homicide arrests over 32 years were filicidal.
However, research studies have identified five motivations of adults who murder children.
- The parent kills the child because they may perceive it to be in the child’s best interest. It may be reality-based (e.g., the child suffers from a terminal illness.
- The parent kills the child based on ideas, not based on reality. For example, the parent believes the devil has possessed the child.
- Unwanted child: The parent kills the child they consider a hindrance.
- Accidental: The child’s death is an unintentional outcome of parental physical abuse.
- Spousal revenge: The parent kills the child to get revenge on the spouse or partner.
Here is a look at Ohio cases and other states of note involving parents accused of their children’s deaths:
Ureka Black, Lanaya Cardwell, and Jake Guidry were accused of 3 unrelated killings of kids in 4 days
Over four days in September, three children in Louisiana were killed by their parents in unrelated incidents.
Lanaya Cardwell is charged with punching and killing her 2-year-old daughter, and Cardwell’s boyfriend, Phillip Garder, is accused of dumping the toddler’s body in a remote area.
Ureka Black, 32, is accused of throwing her 10-month-old and 5-year-old sons off a bridge, killing the younger one.
And Jake Guidry, 26, admitted to killing his 11-month-old baby by hitting the child “too hard.” Police also charged the baby’s mother, Kageionna Butler, 21, with murder.
Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, faces two counts of first-degree foreign murder in the August deaths of his 2-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter with a spearfishing gun.
He told authorities the children were possessed with “serpent D.N.A.” and were “going to grow into monsters.”
Coleman had driven the children from Santa Barbara, Calif., to Mexico, where he is accused of killing them in Rosarito Beach and then dumping their bodies.
Coleman, a follower of QAnon conspiracy theories, told authorities that “he knew it was wrong, but it was the only course of action that would save the world.” Coleman pleaded not guilty,
Brian Terrell
In 1994, 5-year-old Adam Terrell was drowned by his father, Brian Terrell, in the bathtub at a Madison, Butler County residence.
A detective testified at Terrell’s preliminary hearing that Terrell said it took about two minutes for his son to quit struggling.
Afterward, he walked to the kitchen area, got a beer, and smoked a cigarette. Then returned to the bathroom to look at his son,
When asked what he would have done if Adam had still been alive, Terrell replied, “I would’ve finished him off,”
Rather than going to trial , Terrell hanged himself in the Butler County Jail.
Theresa Hawkins-Stephens
Theresa Hawkins-Stephens killed her 5-year-old son, Alexander Stephens, and beat his 6-year-old brother, Damyan. she was sentenced to 18 years to life in September 2016.
The judge noted in the pre-sentence investigation that Hawkins-Stephens continued to minimize her part in the murder, stating she hit Alexander with a switch but not enough to hurt him.
The judge said he did not believe her.
Timothy Ray Jones, Jr
In South Carolina, a 32-year-old, Timothy Ray Jones, Jr., in August 2014…murdered his five children ages 1-8.
During his days on the run, he traveled around the Southeast with the bodies of his five children under blankets in his Cadillac Escalade S.U.V.
He eventually dumped their bodies in a remote forest in Alabama; by chance he was arrested at a routine traffic stop in Mississippi.
Published: Nov. 8, 2021 at 12:52 PM EST|Updated: Nov. 9, 2021 at 9:32 AM EST
COLUMBIA, S.C. (W.I.S.) – Timothy Ray Jones Jr. will challenge his death sentence verdict Tuesday.
Jones, Jr. was found guilty offive counts of murder in 2019 after originally pleading not guilty because of insanity.
Jones’s children- Mera, 8. Elias, 7, Nahtahn, 6, Gabriel, 2, and Abigail, 1, were killed “by means stranulation and/or other violent means or instruments” in 2014. The bodies of his children were found in garbage bags in Alabama.
Justin Ross Harris
In Georgia, a 33-year-old father is charged with intentionally leaving his toddler son to die in a hot S.U.V., strapped in his car seat for seven hours.
CRIMINAL WARRANT
MAGISTRATE COURT OF COBB COUNTY Warrant No. 14-W-5669
G.E.O.R.G.I.A., COBB COUNTY Police Case No. 14051843a
Personally came P M Stoddard who makes oath before a Magistrate of this Court that Justin Ross Harris (hereinafter called the accused) AKA: did, on 6/18/2014 at 04:23 p.m. at 2955 Akers Mill Rd, Atlanta in the County of Cobb, Georgia, commit the offense of CRUELTY TO CHILD 2ND DEGREE(F) violating O.C.G.A., Section 16-5-70(c), for that said accused did with criminal negligence causes a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain, to wit: said accused did place his 22-month-old male son into a rear-facing car seat of his 2011 Hyundai Tucson after eating at 2485 Cumberland Pkwy S.E.
Justin Ross Harris, 35, is charged with murder in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. His defense attorneys say Harris accidentally left the boy in his S.U.V. outside his workplace after forgetting to drop him off at daycare.
Prosecutors say he killed the child on purpose.
Leanna Taylor, who divorced Harris in March after eight years of marriage, took the witness stand in his defense Monday. She walked the jury through a series of family photos and video clips cute enough to make some jurors laugh out loud. She said Harris would not have left their son to die intentionally.
“For him to enter the car … when the child had been dead and rigor mortis had set in, and the testimony is the stench in the car was overwhelming at that point in time, that he – in spite of that – got in the car and drove it for some distance before he took any action to check on the welfare of his child, I find there is probable cause for the two charges contained in the warrant,” Cox told a packed courtroom.
Conclusion
These parents were accused of crimes that society considers among the most heinous. All high-profile incidents occurred over the years, raising the terrible question: What kind of parents intentionally kill their offspring?
Licenses for all! Without a doubt, when it comes down to whether or not licenses should be required by people who want children- there’s no question about why they’re necessary.
And I know that will never come true in my lifetime, but still… thought-provoking nonetheless!
Thanks for👁Reading