Homicide

This report demonstrates how carbon dioxide (CO2) may be a potent weapon in murder-suicide, where the death scene offers virtually no clues as to the lethal modality and the autopsy findings are nonspecific. Four bodies were discovered in an apartment in midsummer 2012 in Berlin, Germany. The bodies were those of a father (a 69-year-old business consultant), his wife (aged 26-years), and two sons (aged 3 and 6 years, respectively). The police found the wife and two sons lying in their beds and the husband in a supine position on the floor with a plastic bag over his head tied loosely around his neck with a rope. A 500 g single-use CO2 cylinder was standing on the floor. The container was almost empty and according to the label had been sold as a CO2-fertilizer for aquarium plants. Two synthetic inhalation face masks and tubing were also found, which tested positive for the DNA of all four deceased family members. It is hypothesized that the husband placed an inhalation mask over the mouths and noses of his wife and children while they were sleeping. Inhalation of pure CO2 ensured their rapid unconsciousness due to hypercapnia and severe anoxia. The rapid increase in CO2 concentration would render a victim helpless, with no time to wake and defend themselves, or others. The proximate cause of death in all cases was attributed to CO2 intoxication, based on the scene findings, the reconstructed sequence of events, the autopsy, and results of toxicological studies.

This article, co-authored by an academic and a forensic practitioner, describes some of the gaps in current knowledge of the utility of forensic science support to homicide investigations. It also reflects on the experience of a recent pilot study of the use of forensic science in homicide investigations in an English police force to argue for new kinds of research capable of grasping the ways in which issues of temporality, agency and contingency are imbricated with one another in the typical trajectories of homicide inquiries, at least as far as the contribution of forensic science is concerned.

The Costa Rican talk of crime is fundamentally based on the assumption that crime rates have increased significantly in recent years and that there is today a vast and alarming amount of crime. On the basis of this assumption, fear of crime, the call for the “iron fist,” and drastic law enforcement actions are continually increasing. While crime statistics are the logical basis for the hypothesis on the far-reaching extent of delinquency, they are used in a problematic way in the talk of crime. In this paper I discuss Costa Rican crime statistics, their development, and their utilization in the talk of crime against the background of criminological theory. The theses of the paper are that a) the informative value of crime statistics regarding Costa Rican reality is far more questionable than the common utilization of them implies and b) when they are used as argumentation, these crime statistics do not provide evidence of the oft-proclaimed rising crime wave.

"BACKGROUND:
Homicide-suicides are rare but catastrophic events. This study examined the epidemiology of homicide-suicide in Switzerland.

METHODS:
The study identified homicide-suicide events 1991-2008 in persons from the same household in the Swiss National Cohort, which links census and mortality records. The analysis examined the association of the risk of dying in a homicide-suicide event with socio-demographic variables, measured at the individual-level, household composition variables and area-level variables. Proportional hazards regression models were calculated for male perpetrators and female victims. Results are presented as age-adjusted hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI).

RESULTS:
The study identified 158 deaths from homicide-suicide events, including 85 murder victims (62 women, 4 men, 19 children and adolescents) and 68 male and 5 female perpetrators. The incidence was 3 events per million households and year. Firearms were the most prominent method for both homicides and suicides. The risk of perpetrating homicide-suicide was higher in divorced than in married men (HR 3.64; 95%CI 1.56-8.49), in foreigners without permanent residency compared to Swiss citizens (HR 3.95; 1.52-10.2), higher in men without religious affiliations than in Catholics (HR 2.23; 1.14-4.36) and higher in crowded households (HR 4.85; 1.72-13.6 comparing ≥2 with <1 persons/room). There was no association with education, occupation or nationality, the number of children, the language region or degree of urbanicity. Associations were similar for female victims.

CONCLUSIONS:
This national longitudinal study shows that living conditions associated with psychological stress and lower levels of social support are associated with homicide-suicide events in Switzerland."

This study evaluates the assumption that deprivation among African Americans and racial inequality lead to black interracial homicide due to racial conflict and antagonism. Using refined race-adjusted Supplemental Homicide Report data, Uniform Crime Report data and census data, we test an alternative hypothesis that draws on the macrostructural opportunity theory to assess and more accurately specify the relationship between structural characteristics and black interracial homicide. We find that first, the relationship between economic factors and black interracial homicide can be explained in large part by high rates of financially motivated crime such as robbery, and second, that economic factors are associated with financially motivated but not expressive black interracial killings. Analyses of black intraracial killings are performed for comparison purposes. Collectively, the findings suggest that conflict-based explanations rooted in racial antagonism and frustration aggression may be premature.