Parricide

Parricide (Latin: parricida, killer of parents or another close relative) is defined as:

• the act of murdering one's father (patricide), mother (matricide) or other close relative, but usually not children (infanticide).
• the act of murdering a person (such as the ruler of one's country) who stands in a relationship resembling that of a father
• a person who commits such an act

Various definitions exist for the term patricide, with the biggest discrepancy being whether or not the killing has to be defined as a murder (usually killing with malice aforethought) to qualify as a patricide.

Patricide is most often committed by a son against his father, and is associated with delusional thinking.

A review of parricide cases that include factors other than delusional thinking such as a history of sexual abuse or fraud committed by the son against the family has been published in the forensic literature. The Perri, Lichtenwald and MacKenzie article provides suggestions for parents, social workers; counselors and psychologists who are attempting to mediate in a family whose dynamics are similar to murder cases in which fraud against the family predated the patricide.

In pre-revolutionary France, cases of unintentional killings were still treated as patricides, with the accidental offenders facing the same harsh penalties intended for deliberate perpetrators of the crime.

Ancient Rome had a unique punishment for patricide. The felon was severely scourged then sewn into a stout leather bag with a dog, a snake, a rooster, and a monkey, and the bag was thrown into the river Tiber. Tacitus called it the "patricide's doom". Plutarch records that the old laws of Romulus had no penalty for patricide because it was considered a crime too evil ever to be committed.

Historical cases

• Tullia (daughter of Servius Tullius), along with her husband, arranged the murder and overthrow of her father, securing the throne for her husband.
• Lucius Hostius reportedly was the first patricide in Rome, sometime after the Second Punic War.
• Mary Blandy (1720–1752) poisoned her father, Francis Blandy, with arsenic in England in 1751.
• The Criminal Code of Japan once determined that patricide brought capital punishment or life imprisonment. However, the law was abolished because of the trial of the Tochigi patricide case in which a woman killed her father in 1968 after she was sexually abused by him and bore their children.

Gallery

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  Tullia drives over the corpse of her Father

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  Patricide, capital punishment in Jersey

See also

• Suicide, the killing of one's self

Familial killing terms:

• Avunculicide, the killing of one's uncle
• Filicide, the killing of one's child
• Fratricide, the killing of one's brother
• Mariticide, the killing of one's spouse
• Nepoticide, the killing of one's nephew
• Prolicide, is the killing of one's offspring
• Sororicide, the killing of one's sister
• Uxoricide, the killing of one's wife

Non-familial killing terms from the same root:

• Deicide is the killing of a god
• Genocide is the killing of a large group of people, usually a specific and entire ethnic, racial, religious or national group
• Homicide is the killing of any human
• Regicide is the killing of a monarch (king or ruler)
• Tyrannicide is the killing of a tyrant

External links

• Dictionary.com entry for parricide
• Pendulum Foundation: Parricide Facts