Criminal justice professor talks about 'senseless' murders

James Alan Fox

Nikolay Soltys was arraigned on Tuesday on seven counts of homicide. Police say Soltys fatally stabbed his wife, son, and four other relatives. The wife was pregnant and the seventh charge is for the child.

In another tragic case in Sioux City, Iowa, 31-year-old Leticia Aguilar and her five children were murdered. Police say the family and another man were killed by the mother's boyfriend.

In Houston, Texas, Andrea Yates is accused of drowning her five children in the bathtub.

All of these stories have something in common: They all are families killed, and another relative, or someone close to them standing accused.

CNN anchor Lou Waters talked about the subject to James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. Fox has written a book called "The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murders."

WATERS: Are these the senseless murders that you are speaking of?

FOX: To most people they seem senseless. We would like to believe that someone just snaps and goes berserk and shoots randomly. However, these are well-planned executions, usually by estranged family man, husband, who wipes out the entire family. Either, because he is trying to commit suicide and take his loved ones with him; or because he is angry at his spouse and kills the children to get back at her as well.

WATERS: You also speak of suicide by proxy. Explain that and how does that relate to these murders that we have so much trouble understanding.

FOX: Well, oftentimes it's a gunman who is depressed, who wants to end his own life because life is miserable. But out of love, he kills his family members, his wife and his children, to reunite the family in the afterlife, and to save them the misery of living on this earth.

Mark Barton, for example, who went on the rampage in a day-trading center in Atlanta a couple of years ago killed his wife and his children out of love, because he loved them so much that he couldn't stand leaving them.

WATERS: We don't have any way of preventing this, do we? I mean, Mark Barton was a successful stockbroker, apparently, until the day that his stocks went south. But in addition, we don't really know who's prone to this kind of violence, do we?

FOX: Well, it's still a rare phenomenon even though it might happen eight times a year in this country. And it's so rare that it's impossible to predict. It's a needle in the haystack problem. But one thing's for sure is that we need to make family counseling and marital counseling a lot more accessible than it is now, through insurance coverage, for example.

That might do a lot good in trying to eliminate or at least reduce these kinds of bloodbaths.

WATERS: You say that it's rare, maybe eight cases a year, but I venture to say media are all over those kinds of cases. We have heard all of the reports this year and there have been several, the last of which this Nikolay Soltys case received -- got to enormous proportions, so are we -- are we factoring in media into possible copycat killings in these kinds of matters?

FOX: Well, there have been instances over the past of copycat effects, where -- where someone who is depressed, frustrated, angry, sees someone else in the news who goes on a rampage and he thinks this might be the right way to go for him too. But most of these cases, these eight cases a year, are not inspired by media coverage. They're inspired by a long history of frustration and failure and anger. And someone who just doesn't want to live anymore but takes his family with him.

WATERS: Can you explain, or have you thought about the Andrea Yates' story, the woman who allegedly drowned her children in the bathtub. How does that fit into your scenario here?

FOX: Well, it does not fit well. Most of the family massacres are killed by men, husbands, fathers who want to get even with the spouse. Very rarely is it by a mother. This particular case will play out in the courts, of course, in terms of the extent to which postpartum depression may play a role. Most of the time mothers are nurturers not murderers.