Examining the Racial Dynamic of the Victim-offender Dyad in Homicide-suicide: Does Intraracial Homicide Encourage Perpetrator Suicide?

• Author: Gregory M. Zimmerman,Emma E. Fridel,Madison Gerdes
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0022427820979620
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Examining the Racial

Dynamic of the

Victim-offender Dyad

in Homicide-suicide:

Does Intraracial

Homicide Encourage

Perpetrator Suicide?

Gregory M. Zimmerman

1

, Emma E. Fridel

2

,

and Madison Gerdes

1

Abstract

Objectives: Compared to homicide-only, homicide-suicide is understudied in

the criminological literature. This study investigates the victim-offender

relationship—one of the most well-established correlates of homicide-

suicide—from a new angle. In addition to examining the familiarity/

closeness of the victim-offender relationship, this study investigates

whether the racial composition (interracial versus intraracial) of the

victim-offender dyad impacts the likelihood of committing suicide following

homicide. Method: This study uses data on 26,858 homicide and homicide-

suicide cases distributed across 3,178 places and 45 U.S. states from the

1

School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

2

College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Gregory M. Zimmerman, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University,

431 Churchill Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Email: g.zimmerman@neu.edu

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2021, Vol. 58(4) 420-466

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022427820979620

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

National Violent Death Reporting System appended to information from

the American Community Survey. Hierarchical logistic regression models

examine the independent and joint contribution of: (1) the familiarity/close-

ness of the victim-offender relationship; and (2) the racial composition of

the victim-offender dyad on homicide-suicide. Results: Killing familiar and

same-race victims independently increase the odds of suicide following

homicide; additionally, the odds of suicide following homicide are highest

for offenders with both familiar an d same-race victims. Conclusions : The

findings suggest that homicide-suicide research should account for different

aspects of the victim-offender relationship. Additionally, the importance of

race/ethnicity extends to even the rarest of crimes.

Keywords

homicide, homicide-suicide, victim-offender relationship, race and ethnicity

Introduction

Homicide-suicide is a rare form of interpersonal violence. Generally

defined as homicide followed within 24 hours by suicide of the perpetrator

(Liem 2010), homicide-suicide has an estimated rate of .20–.30 per 100,000

U.S. persons, or 4.0 percent of all annual homicides (Large, Smith, and

Nielssen 2009; Logan et al. 2008). Despite its rarity, homicide-suicide has

harmful social-psychological effects and wide-reaching political impact. It

overwhelmingly involves family members, intimate partners, and friends

(Allen 1983; Palmer and Humphrey 1980; Salari and Sillito 2016; Selkin

1976; Stack 1997), leading to: secondary victimization; mental and emo-

tional trauma; and the disruption of kinship, friendship, and neighborhood

networks (Liem 2010). In addition, homicide-suicide is widely broadcast by

the media, arousing social concern and moral panic (McPhedran et al. 2018)

and triggering contagion of violence (Stack 1989; Towers et al. 2015). The

public attention afforded homicide-suicide also has significant policy impli-

cations. For example, stronger domestic violence legislation, health care

options that aid and monitor depression in caregivers, and gun control have

been endorsed to combat caregiver homicide-suicide (VPC 2020). More-

over, the ramifications of and responses to homicide-suicide are amplified

when victims are children and as victim counts rise (Roma et al. 2012).

Moving forward, responses to homicide-suicide should be grounded in

theory and rigorous empiricism, rather than in public fear and

Zimmerman et al. 421

sensationalism. Unfortunately, much of the research on homicide-suicide is:

atheoretical; qualitative; descriptive; limited to small samples; and con-

ducted almost exclusively at the individual level, without regard for con-

textual effects (Eliason 2009; Flynn et al. 2009; Liem, Postulart, and

Nieuwbeerta 2009; Panczak et al. 2013; Reckdenwald and Simone 2017).

While descriptive statistics from small samples that do not account for the

broader social context can reveal important patterns, they are not sufficient

for revealing effects net of control variables or generalizing findings from a

sample to a larger population. For example, Palmer and Humphrey (1980)

provided a descriptive comparison of 90 cas es of homicide-suicide and

homicide-only in North Carolina from 1972 to 1977, finding that White

males were more likely to engage in homicide-suicide than homicide-only.

Stack (1997) employed logistic regression analysis on the entire population

of 16,245 homicides and homicide-suicides in Chicago from 1965 to 1990,

finding that White offenders were almost twice as likely as non-White

offenders to commit suicide following homicide; multivariate regression

controlling for key covariates in the large sample increased the precision of

effect estimates. Most recently, Fridel and Zimmerman (2019) estimated

multilevel logistic regression models on all 22,960 (single-offender, single-

victim) homicides and 1,413 homicide-suicides in the United States from

2003 to 2013, thereby controlling for clustering and generalizing this find-

ing more broadly.

Beyond race, the existing quantitative literature on homicide-suicide has

demonstrated several notable patterns. In particular, homicide-suicide tends

to be committed by married, adult, males in suburban and rural locales; this

stands in stark contrast to homicide-only, which is more apt to be committed

by young, single offenders in urban areas (Banks et al. 2008; Holland et al.

2018; McPhedran et al. 2018; Panczak et al. 2013). Mental health and a

history of interpersonal conflict also play key roles in homicide -suicide

(Kalesan et al. 2018; Liem and Roberts 2009). Perhaps the strongest corre-

late of homicide-suicide and the most well-established differentiator

between homicide and homicide-suicide in the literature is the victim-

offender relationship. More than 90 percent of homicide-suicide perpetra-

tors target persons known to them (Fridel and Zimmerman 2019), and the

overwhelming majority of these persons are family members and intimate

partners (Stack 1997). Conversely, more than 66 percent of homicide-only

cases involve friends, acquaintances, and strangers (Daly and Wilson 1988;

Decker 1993).

Despite the robustness of this finding, research on homicide-suicide has

neglected other potentially critical aspects of the victim-offender

422 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 58(4)