Patricide and overkill: a review of the literature and case report of a murder with Capgras delusion
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REVIEW
Patricide and overkill: a review of the literature and case report of a murder with Capgras delusion Silvia Trotta 1
&
Gabriele Mandarelli 2
&
Davide Ferorelli 1
&
Biagio Solarino 1
Accepted: 9 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Despite being an infrequent crime, parental homicide has been associated with schizophrenia spectrum disorders in adult perpetrators and a history of child abuse and family violence in adolescent perpetrators. Among severe psychiatric disorders there is initial evidence that delusional misidentification might also play a role in parricide. Parricides are often committed with undue violence and may result in overkill. The authors present the case of an adult male affected by schizoaffective disorder and Capgras syndrome who committed patricide. Forensic pathologists classify such cases as overkill by multiple fatal means comprising stabbing, blunt trauma and choking. Accurate crime scene investigations coupled with psychiatric examinations of perpetrator allow reconstruction of the murder stages. This overkill case is discussed in the context of a broad review of the literature. Keywords Patricide . Capgras syndrome . Overkill . Autopsy . Homicidal asphyxia
Introduction Parricide is a word of Latin origin referring to the killing of a close relative. In Roman times this kind of homicide was punished more severely than any other kind of homicide, with the so-called poena cullei (“penalty of the sack”), a form of punishment consisting of sewing up the murderer in a leather sack together with an assortment of live animals including a dog, snake, monkey, and a chicken or rooster, and then throwing the sack into water [1]. Nowadays, the term parricide is generally used to identify offspring-perpetrated homicides, which can involve juveniles or adults as perpetrators, and biological, adoptive or step parents as victims [2, 3]. Depending on which parent is the victim, different definitions are used: patricide refers to killing one’s father, matricide to
* Silvia Trotta [email protected] 1
Institute of Legal Medicine, Department of Interdisciplinary Medicine (DIM), Policlinico di Bari Hospital, University of Bari, Piazza G. Cesare 11, 70124 Bari, Italy
2
Section of Criminology and Forensic Psychiatry, Department of Interdisciplinary Medicine (DIM), University of Bari, Piazza G. Cesare 11, 70124 Bari, Italy
killing one’s mother, and double parricide is defined as killing both parents [2, 4]. Parental homicide is an infrequent event accounting for only 2–5% of all homicides, depending on the country examined [5, 6]. Given the rarity of such crimes, most of the literature on parricide is outdated and consists of anecdotal case reports and small-cohort studies [7–10]. The limited existing evidence about the prevalence of parricide comes from small studies that yielded inconclusive results, patricide being considered the most frequent [5, 9], whereas double parricide is extremely rare [9]. Indeed, there is a general consensus that parricide is to be regarded as a c
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