174 Impacts of COVID-19 on Intimate Partner Homicide-Suicide and Familicide-Suicide

Faculty Mentor: Sonia Salari (Family & Consumer Studies, University of Utah)

Intimate partner homicide-suicides (IPHS) are the most extreme instance of domestic violence, marked by the killing or attempted killing of an intimate partner, then of oneself. The gravity of IPHS is magnified when the perpetrator and victim of such crimes are parents or guardians. Children living in the home at the time of a homicide-suicide are recorded as secondary victims due to the life-altering trauma induced by losing parents or guardians via IPHS. When children are killed, the instance then becomes a familicide-suicide. The terms IPHS and familicide-suicide will both be used in respect to the perpetrators intent to kill a partner or the family. This paper will focus on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. increased firearm purchase, loss of employment, increased time in the home, global distress) on rates of IPHS and familicide- suicide. This dataset only includes intimate partnerships who have children and will be an extension of Sillito and Salari’s (2011) paper regarding “Child outcomes and risk factors in U.S. homicide–suicide cases 1999–2004”. Based on recent studies exploring the rise in domestic violence between intimate partners within the COVID-19 era, our study anticipates a rise in IPHS in the United States for intimate partners, and their children as secondary victims. We are collecting nationwide murder suicide surveillance data via news media, available police records, state fatality reports, obituaries, internet search engines, and gun-violence data between the years 2018-2023. We plan to explore the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on IPHS frequency, by comparing numbers of victims in an attempted IPHS before the pandemic with IPHS victims during the pandemic. Perpetrators and victims between age 18-44 (excluding children as primary victims) will be the subject of this study because they are the most likely age bracket to have children living in the home. Our data will examine the rise in firearms purchased between the years 2020-2023 as it relates to elevated murder-suicide in the United States. Firearm purchases are correlated with murder via firearms. To prevent IPHS and familicide-suicide, it is essential to explore current events’ impact on lethal domestic violence.

(Thesis is in finalizing stages to be submitted to the Honors College by April 2024, remainder of paper will be available by then)