Fatal Maternity (part 6): Spousal Revenge Filicide
When a relationship hits the breaking point, threatening the mother's custody or infuriating her to the point she kills her kid(s) as an act of revenge against their father.
When the Greek enchantress Medea married the leader of the Argonauts, Jason, she devoted her gift of prophecy and magic to help him obtain the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes of Colchis, her father. She offered her husband her magic abilities, her advice, her love, loyalty, and eventually, she gave him two sons. They went on the run together, slicing her brother to pieces and throwing his corpse into the sea to delay being captured.
She gave to Jason her life, her love, and even betrayed her own blood with theft and murder, in order to please him. So, when he abandoned her for a younger woman, none other than the daughter of King Creon of Corinth, Medea felt the red-hot rage of a woman scorned and went on a murderous spree. She killed her and Jason’s two sons, King Creon, and his daughter, leaving Jason with nothing. She left and later married Aegeus, only to be sent away after trying to poison his son.
In this Greek myth, we have the roots of what is now called the “Medea Complex.” The American Psychology Association (APA) defines this as: “A mother’s wish to kill her children as a means of revenge against the father.”
It is also the fifth and final motive in Phillip J. Resnick’s classifications of filicide. Cruel, intentional, degrading, and scathing is the type of women often behind these murders. The children might be in the middle of tumultuous custody battles, bitter break ups, angry divorces, and conflict that boils over to scald them with adult problems they never should have been dragged into. The mothers view their children as possessions to the point of dehumanizing them, so theorizes a 2016 study by Glenn Carruthers, called “Making sense of spousal revenge filicide.” He says:
“The ‘spousal revenge’ killer views their child’s welfare as less important than causing harm to another person, in particular, the child’s other parent.”
A Woman Scorned
In other words, the mother’s rage and hatred is so overwhelming, she no longer sees her children as human, but something of emotional value to her partner that she can use to inflict unfathomable grief and devastation. Her own children become weapons of revenge. In order to do this, Carruthers surmises, she must dehumanize her kids. He calls this a deficit in their “person perception”.
“By ‘person perception’ I mean the perception of another as a subject with a mind of their own including beliefs, desires, reasons, and feelings. Person perception is underlain by the capacities for theory of mind, empathy, and agent tracking,” he adds.
With parenting and relationships comes a sense of identity and social standing for many. For some, it becomes the biggest aspect of their identity. A pedestal upon which they feel in control of their life, powerful, and noticed. We saw in previous motives how mothers often see their children as extensions of their personality. This is a similar idea which Carruthers explores.
When one feels in control and powerful, having that ripped away when their partner leaves is gutting, whether the partner has an affair or leaves them for someone else, or for other reasons (such as addiction, abuse, or simply wanting out of the relationship). Those children become the only thing the mother has control over, the only thing to which she might still tie her identity. Whether she’s a good mother by societal standards doesn’t seem to matter to her. What matters is that she has possession of the kids at all costs.
This is when a filicidal mother becomes like her male counterparts in saying, “If I can’t have you, no one will.” But instead of it being her partner, the possessions in question are her children.
Carruthers explains how in the mother’s mind, her spouse and kids are part of an “in group”: people she classifies as those she can trust and with whom she aligns her personal identity and social status. By betraying or leaving her, the spouse becomes part of an “out group”: people she classifies as enemies or those she has disposed of and dehumanized.
But, Carruthers questions, how do the children, innocent of any wrong doing, become part of the out group too? Is is possible for hatred and revenge to override the maternal urge to nurture and care for her children, to put their welfare before her wants or needs? She must remove herself from the emotional attachment of being a mother and detach completely from the same children to which she gave life, to which she sees as an extension of herself. It’s confounding that she could simply cut that off when scorned. And yet, even as a relatively rare form of filicide, it happens.
Subtypes
A study called “Revenge filicide: An international perspective through 62 cases” by Wade C. Myers and others broke down this motive into four subtypes:
“Rejection” made up about 39 percent of the 62 cases in nine countries studied. In these murders, the rejected partner took out the anguish of being left or abandoned on the children, killing them as a way of getting back at the partner. Domestic violence could have played a part, as well as prior threats against the lives of the partner or children. Sometimes, it came out of nowhere.
“Custody/visitation” revolves around the severe fear of never seeing her children again. This is typically where we see the bitter court disputes over who the child will live with. I wrote about a case that happened in May 2022 in which a 28-year-old mother murdered her six-year-old son within weeks of getting custody returned. After red flags of mental illness and housing instability, she’d lost custody in 2021 for eleven months in which her son lived with her ex’s family members. The father and son had a close and positive relationship, according to family members. It’s possible that when she got custody back, she decided she wouldn’t risk the chance of losing him again, feeling insulted and scorned at how great of a relationship the father had with the son, using the boy to deeply hurt her former partner. This type made up 32 percent of cases.
“Infidelity/jealousy” is rife with possessiveness and rage at a partner who they believed was unfaithful or couldn’t stand to watch their partner move on. In the anguish of seeing their partner with someone else, they murdered the children in retaliation, all because the partner had the audacity to move on or cheat. Again, a problem the kids shouldn’t have had any part of to start. This accounted for 18 per cent of cases.
“Intense argument/conflict” involves contention over money, feeling trapped, resentments that build up over a partner not pulling their weight, and so on. The resentment towards the partner could spill over to the kids when the mother’s life becomes overwhelming and she feels out of control and powerless. This was the rarity, only surfacing in six percent of cases.
Stats and Insights
Asphyxiation remained the leading method of killing for mothers in this classification, found in 35 per cent of the cases. This included strangling, smothering, drowning, or carbon monoxide poisoning. Cutting instruments were the second follow up everywhere except the US, which had firearms as the second most used MO in spousal revenge filicides.
In a home or any place with easy access to a gun (looking at you, United States), it becomes a convenient method for an angry woman hell-bent on carrying out the most horrifying and heartbreaking revenge. In places with strict gun laws and more difficult access, we see the trend of asphyxiation remain steady in filicide cases.
Also of interesting note when the study compares the US with other international cases: in the US, the “rejection” subtype was the most common motive at 49 percent, whereas in other countries, it was “custody/visitation” in 42 percent of the cases.
Cultural differences, perhaps? Differing views on relationships? I know even here in Canada, it’s popular for women online to share memes about “toxic traits” or being “psycho” as if it’s funny or cute. (News flash: it isn’t cute or funny, ladies, it’s a bad reflection on you as a person. Stop.) This societal acceptance of toxicity in women in the western world could attribute to some women getting away with abusive, jealous, or possessive behavior until it escalates too far. (I’ve never been to Europe, so I can’t comment on what their attitudes are like.)
This study went on to find that 53 percent of these cases occurred when parents were legally still married but having serious issues, split up, estranged or in the process of getting a divorce. Basically, these relationships were at their breaking point. Quoted within the study were communications between the parents, some of which were rather disturbing.
“I've lost everybody I've loved. Now it's time for you to do the same.”
“Time to take away the pain. You got what you wanted, no wife and no kids.”
“Did you really think I was going to die and allow you to bring up [our son] and play happy families…?”
It speaks of a dark premeditation by these partners. In half of the cases, one child was killed. Multiple children were murdered in the other half. A history of domestic violence plagued 35 percent of the cases.
These offenders were older than the ones we’ve typically seen. Their average age in this study was 36.5, with 33 percent being male and 47 percent being female. Just over half had a high school education, and 34 percent had a college education.
To top it off, 56 percent were employed at the time of the murder. These were not stay-at-home-mothers overwhelmed with postpartum depression or psychosis who tragically lost their minds. These were women who knew what they were doing. A mental disorder was present in 56 percent of the cases. Broken down further, 34 percent had a personality disorder of some type, and of those, anti-social personality disorder made up 33 percent. But that isn’t psychosis or grounds for any insanity defense that would make an infanticide law applicable.
And to be clear: there is no stigmatizing personality disorders here. Most people with personality disorders are NOT criminals or murderers. They are still human. Personality disorders are treatable, unlike what many myths say. They are typically rooted in severe childhood trauma. And like any mental disorder/illness, it can escalate without proper treatment. Even that doesn’t mean one with such a diagnosis will go on to hurt or kill anyone. Personality disorders exist on a spectrum of their own. End rant.
The Myers study found that 63 percent of the offenders engaged in suicidal behavior after the murder, and 32 percent died as a result. Men and women attempted suicide at similar rates.
Living offenders usually end up with a life sentence upon conviction. In most cases, they were of sound mind at the time of the murder and knew what they were doing.
These mothers take their rage at another adult out on her kids, ending their lives for some perceived sleight. Children should never have to pay the price for their parents’ feelings, but we have seen all throughout this series that they do. And these mothers are a different breed: they go from nurturing, doting wife and mother to sadistic monster in what seems to be an instant. The moment that inner circle is broken, she spirals into violence and vengeance.
And her kids are the only ones around she can take it out on.
Final Thoughts
Of all the motives we’ve looked at so far, this and the fatal maltreatment ones had to be the most disturbing for me, personally. It’s easy to extend sympathy to a mother with untreated postpartum depression or psychosis who couldn’t control her actions at the time, who perhaps didn’t know her options for treatment and remained too scared or ashamed to ask. But a mother who logically knows what she is doing, who calculates and carries out the cold-hearted murder of her child to lash out at a partner is chilling. And a mother who abuses her child to death is some sort of monster there isn’t even a word for.
We have concluded the motive classifications part of this series. If you’ve made it this far with me, thank you for indulging my weird criminal psychology obsession. At this point, the entire filicide series could be a book on its own (and I’m not against that idea).
Coming up next are the final two installments of this series. Next, we’ll explore the controversy of infanticide laws and children who survived a filicidal mother. Is the infanticide law a belittling insult to women’s logic and emotional being as some feminists claim? Or is it a protection for those with severe depression and psychosis, a mental health lifeline when they’d otherwise be left to rot in prison instead of getting treatment?
In the final post, we’ll look at how these mothers become rehabilitated and reintegrated into society. Can a mother who killed her child or children get a second chance at life? Should she be given such? How long does the mental illness stigma stay with a woman and how does it impact her life in recovery and beyond?
This has been a truly fascinating series to write and research.
Relevant Cases
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Sources
American Psychological Association (APA) Dictionary of Psychology