Why Do Parents Kill Their Children?

Filicide — a parent killing their own child — is gruesome, disturbing, and unreadable. But it is a fact. In the US, several hundred children are murdered by their parents each year. In India, reliable numbers on filicide are not available, but from the few records that exist, the numbers could run into the thousands.

Stories abound in this realm.

A mother in Naperville, Illinois, set fire to herself and her two children in their home in 2007. She had been seen shopping for toys for her children that morning; that afternoon, she took her own life along with her children's.

In 2011, a mother in Mumbai had breakfast with her two children, then took them to the terrace of a 19-storey building and threw them off one by one — before throwing herself from the building.

In 2013, a mother in Wisconsin, wanting to "save" her children from the pain of a divorce, put four of her six children in her SUV and left it running in a closed garage. The children died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

In the UK, Emma Wilson battered her 11-month-old son Callum to death in 2011 — then posed for 'before and after' selfies with the battered baby. She was jailed for life. (Closer)

John Battaglia, a father from Texas, shot his two daughters, aged six and nine. After killing them, he went to a tattoo parlor and got his daughters' portraits inked on his skin.

John List, an accountant from New Jersey, was broke and his house foreclosed. He murdered his three children, his wife, and his mother — then moved to Colorado and remarried.

Ronald Clark O'Bryan, the "candyman," handed out poisoned candy on Halloween in 1974. His son Timothy died of a fatal dose of cyanide — and O'Bryan had recently increased the life insurance coverage on the boy.

Stories of filicide are many. Some make national news, some draw international attention, while many others — especially in developing economies — go unrecorded.

Over the years, the data suggest that killings by fathers outnumber cases of maternal filicide.

Some reasons behind this heinous crime:

• Custody battles
• Untreated mental illness
• Financial troubles
• Troubled marriage
• Illegitimate child

As a society, when we see behavior that looks odd — when we see a person who may be a danger to someone else or to themselves — we should act, react, and be proactive.