Experts say slayings fit 'family annihilation' pattern
(Published Thursday, June 14, 2007 11:11:26 AM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Associated Press
MADISON-Infant twins blown away. Their mother and her sister shot down at the same time, along with a friend who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The sheer audacity of the mass killing that left six dead in Delavan has people asking "How could this happen?"
But experts said the killings follow a pattern played out often enough in the United States that social scientists have coined a name for it: family annihilation.
"The pattern is so strong," said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University in Boston and author of the book "Extreme Killing."
"It's almost always a husband-father who methodically executes the members of his family. He plans the attack far in advance. He's suffered a prolonged period of frustration and depression. He experiences what he sees as the catastrophic loss of his children. He blames everybody but himself for his problems."
Delavan police discovered the bodies of Amborosio Analco, his ex-girlfriend Nicole McAffee, their twin infant boys, McAffee's sister and a friend Saturday night in a duplex about two blocks from the police station. They'd been shot.
They also found the 2-year-old daughter of McAffee and Analco in a van outside. She'd been shot in the chest but remained in good condition Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin Hospital.
At a press conference Wednesday, authorities said that Analco was the sole gunman in the murder-suicide.
The Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., estimates about 1,200 Americans die each year in murder-suicides. Its study on the first six months of 2005 found that nearly all the killers were males who used guns, and three-fourths of the cases involved a romantic partner.
The most recent report by the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence found 28 people were killed in the state in 2004 as the result of domestic violence. Five perpetrators committed suicide.
Levin estimated that each year there are about 16 to 20 "family annihilations," which he defined as four or more victims, usually relatives.
It begins with depression and a sense of owning or possessing a partner, feelings more common in men, Levin said. Those feelings eventually produce threats.
Court records show Analco had no domestic violence convictions in Wisconsin, but Victor Huerta said his sister-in-law told him Analco had threatened to kill everyone in the apartment if McAffee cheated on him. Analco had found a letter to McAffee from another man, he said.
Experts said that kind of jealous anger can build into a selfish rage-often as a relationship ends-that can engulf anyone around.
"It's like gasoline. When you spill gasoline and ignite it, a lot of things get burned," UW-Madison psychiatry professor Burr Eichelman said.
Family annihilators tend to be socially isolated husbands and fathers, Levin said.
Analco, who moved to the United States from Mexico, may have found himself in that situation in Delavan, he said.
They also want revenge against the women they think ruined their lives, Levin said. Court records show Analco was making $8.80 an hour in March and had been ordered to pay McAffee about $442 a month in child support.
They see killing the children as a way to devastate their partner before killing her, too. Killing friends and extended family is more unusual, Levin said.
McAffee's sister and friend may have been killed to inflict more pain on her, or they could have just been in the way, Levin said.
If indeed Analco was the shooter, "the easy answer is he killed everyone who was available," Levin said. "But I think there's more to it here. He killed everyone associated with (McAffee). He got even with her by destroying everything she loved."
