Monday, August 11, 2008

Murder-Suicide in Apple Valley

This article is about another sad case of murder-suicide.

The article states:
"It appears (Susan) Ellis (42) who had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, was first shot in the Dodge Ram Pickup and (her husband) (Terry Royston) Archibald (57) shot himself outside of the vehicle"

The article continues by stating:
"Investigators are not confirming that Ellis's terminal disease was the motivation for the shooting."

Link to the article:
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/apple_7934___article.html/valley_murder.html

A research study titled: "A statewide case-control study of spousal homicide-suicide in older persons" published in the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 13:211-217, March 2005 by Malphurs & Cohen found:

"the husbands in such cases are usually domineering and controlling. ... Also, the greater the age difference between perpetrator and spouse, the greater the risk. Usually the need to control is not apparent to outsiders, who tend to take a relatively benign view of such cases."

Link to the study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15728752?dopt=AbstractPlus

http://ajgponline.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/211

In other words, we should not assume that because a wife is terminally ill that the husband killed her for "compassionate" reasons.

A link to a similar article:
http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/0302/0302ft7.html

1 comment:

Unknown said...

could you post a link for the comments regarding the age difference between partners and suicide...it was the sec ond link in the article...it didn't work