Mothers Who Murder their Children - Maternal Filicide

Murderers - image by PetroleumJelliffe 
Mothers who have the potential to murder their children occur in literature. Shakespeare penned a fine example - Lady Macbeth. At the end of act one of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, angry at her husband’s inability to commit to her murderous scheme to kill Duncan, declares she would choose to kill an infant to achieve the throne

Mac I.vii.55 - 58 
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;
I would, while it was smiling in my face

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums

And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.


In real life, cases of maternal filicide are on the increase. 
According to the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph, on March 7, 2011, US born Theresa Riggi,  47, who stabbed her children to death in Edinburgh, UK, pleaded guilty to the charge of culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility. She made her plea, the Scottish equivalent of manslaughter, at Edinburgh’s High Court. Riggi, described as “an extremely pleasant and just a lovely, lovely woman,” in Frank Urquart’s article, “Theresa Riggi: “The mother who doted on, her 'perfect children' and the bitter fight for custody," in The Scotsman, August 6, 2010, was originally charged with the murder of her three children.


Mother kills her children and attempts suicide
Sky News reported that, in August 2010, Theresa Riggi, originally from Texas, stabbed to death her three children: her sons, eight-year-old twins, Gianluca and Augustino, and her five-year-old daughter, Cecilia.
Investigations at the time showed that all three children sustained defensive injuries to their hands. 
After murdering her children in an apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland, Theresa Riggi, who according to Urquart’s report, “Absolutely doted on those kids,” blew up her apartment, jumped off the balcony, and broke her pelvis.
Another infamous case of a mother murdering her child is that of American, Casey Anthony who was found "not guilty" of murdering her daughter Caylee.



Few statistics available to build murdering mothers' profile

Susan Hatters Friedman, M.D., Sarah McCue Horwitz, Ph.D., and Phillip J. Resnick, M.D. review years of research in their article, “Child Murder by Mothers: A Critical Analysis of the Current State of Knowledge and a Research Agenda,” 2005, published by American Psychiatric Association. They state, maternal filicide, defined as ‘child homicide by mothers,’ “occurs more frequently in the United States than in other developed nations.” They also claim, that in the latter part of the 20th century in the United States, of the 61% of children murdered, aged less than 5 years, “30% were killed by their mothers and 31% by their fathers.” 
After an extensive review of literature pertaining to mothers who murder, the researchers found that little is known about the predictors of ‘maternal filicide.’
The researchers pointed out that although there are too many variables involved in trying to profile mothers who are at risk of murdering their children, specific factors may be that these mothers have undergone psychiatric treatment, made suicide attempts and suffered from depression or psychosis. 
They also state that psychiatric diagnoses after the homicide may not necessarily reflect the women’s psychiatric state before the filicide.
Another article, published by, The World Psychiatric Association, October 2007, by two of the aforementioned authors, Susan Hatters Friedman, M.D., and Phillip J. Resnick, M.D., “Child Murder by Mothers: Patterns and Prevention,” also agrees with their aforementioned review. Hatters Friedman and Resnick reiterate their previous claims and add that although maternal filicide is worldwide, little research exists to explain child murder by mothers and “further research is needed to improve identification of children and mothers at risk.”

Mothers that kill their children then commit suicide

In their 2005 article, Hatters Friedman, McCue Horwitz, and Resnick explain that one of the reasons for lack of significant defining factors is that an important area of research concerns mothers who kill their children and afterwards themselves, an act known as 'filicide-suicide.' The researchers claim that filicide-suicide mothers make up 16%–29% of filicidal mothers.
Women who attempt filicide-suicide could provide insight into the psychological factors that compel mothers to murder their children. Theresa Riggi, a potential filicide-suicide mother, is alive. As Sky Newsstates, her suicide attempt failed when a neighbour, alerted by the blast, broke Riggi’s fall.

Murdering mother - Riggi - A possible case study

In the case of Theresa Riggi, there has to be a more complex set of factors involved in her attempt at maternal filicide-suicide than the alleged narcissist tendencies and disagreements about education methods with an estranged husband that are mentioned in the above media reports. Since Riggi survived her suicide attempt, researchers now have the opportunity to gather risk factors of mothers who are driven to murder their offspring by starting with a well-researched study of Theresa Riggi while she serves her sentence for the manslaughter of her three young children.

Adaptation of an article first published, Mar 7, 2011, by  Lesley Lanir on Suite101.com
Copyright Lesley Lanir. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

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