The Right to Life

River Gale. Piper Ann. Ava. Pierce, Chase, and Jameson. These are some of the names of the 18 American children who died via murder-suicide in January 2021, children whose lives were cut short by people who were supposed to love them the most.

This doesn’t just happen in the U.S.A. In Russia, 36-year-old Oksana Patchin jumped off a balcony with her 5-year-old daughter in her arms, killing both of them. In Australia, Katie Perinovic stabbed her three children (ages 7. 5, and 3) before killing herself. And in India, 28-year-old Girag Rana slashed the throats of his 2- and 4-year-old and his wife before hanging himself.

Is this becoming an epidemic? I don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticed an increase in reported murder-suicides over the past year. And it’s time for it to stop. But before we stop it, we’ve got to understand how it starts.

The Face of Murder-Suicide

In spite of the horrific cases that have plagued the media lately, murder-suicide is rare. While there’s no official tracking system for this type of crime, our best guess, based on the research, is an estimate of somewhere between 1000 and 1500 U.S. murder-suicides every year. This is far less than the 48,000 yearly suicides or the 18,830 murders.

In preparation for this story, I researched various news sources for January 2021 and found 109…