Family Annihilators: 10 Men Who Took The Lives Of Their Spouses And Children

Family annihilators are people who kill multiple members of their own families, such as their spouses, children, siblings, or parents, often in response to financial, professional, or relationship stressors. According to a study of family annihilators, the majority of these killers are men in their 30s. In addition, people who committed familicide often did so on the weekend when they had the most access to their family members. Family annihilators usually kill their victims in a house, and they are most likely to murder their families by stabbing them to death or poisoning them with carbon monoxide.

In many instances, family annihilators end their killing sprees by taking their own lives, while some become fugitives from the law, sometimes living under new identities for years before they're captured by police. Still, some family annihilators are immediately arrested by law enforcement, executed, or given long prison terms for their atrocious crimes. Others, however, have never been apprehended for their killings, meaning some men who have murdered their entire families are free and possibly living with new wives and children who are completely unaware of their violent pasts.

In June 2007, 40-year-old professional wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his 43-year-old wife, Nancy, to death and suffocated his 7-year-old son, Daniel, before hanging himself from a weight machine in the basement of the family's Fayetteville, Georgia, home. The family's dead bodies were discovered by law enforcement on June 25, 2007, when no one had been able to get in touch with Chris or Nancy for a number of days. Investigators found Bibles next to the bodies of the victims, and a search of Chris Benoit's computer led them to believe he may have tried to resuscitate his son after killing him.

A lot of people of have speculated about why the professional wrestler murdered his wife and child before ending his own life. Following his death, scans of Benoit's brain revealed severe damage caused by concussions suffered during his long wrestling career, leading his father to attribute the familicide to these extensive injuries.

However, toxicology tests revealed steroids in Benoit's system at the time of his death, causing some people to believe he may have murdered his family in a fit of "roid rage."  However, Benoit's exact motives for killing his wife of seven years, his young son, and then himself have never been revealed, causing many to still ponder what caused this successful wrestler to commit such grisly acts.

On November 9, 1971, 46-year-old accountant John List killed his two teenage sons, his teenage daughter, his wife, and his mother in their Westfield, New Jersey, mansion, using a revolver and a semi-automatic handgun to coldly end their lives. After murdering his entire family, List left the house to start a new life with a different identity. Because the middle-aged accountant had planned the killings well in advance, canceling services to the home and telling employers and schools the family was going on an extended vacation, the dead bodies of his mother, wife, and three children weren’t discovered for almost an entire month.

List had left behind a letter in which he claimed he had killed his family because of financial problems and a sense that his children were becoming immoral and less religious. For nearly two decades, the mass murderer evaded police, until the case was featured on a 1989 episode of America’s Most Wanted. The segment about the killings included an age-progressed bust of List that had been created by a forensic sculptor, and one of the fugitive’s acquaintances recognized him and called in a tip that led to his arrest.

In April 1990, List was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder, and he was given five consecutive life sentences for the killings. While in prison custody, List died on March 21, 2008, at the age of 82.

Following a standoff with police, officials entered the Fresno, California, home of 57-year-old Marcus Wesson on March 12, 2004, only to discover the dead bodies of two women and seven young children in a bedroom that also contained several antique coffins. Because Wesson had subjected his female family members to rape and molestation, the exact nature of his incestuous relationship to his victims is unclear, meaning some of the girls were both his daughters and his granddaughters.

Wesson’s victims ranged in age from one to 25, and investigators believe he shot the women and girls to death because his family was in danger of being split up by members of social services who wanted to remove the children from an unsafe and unhealthy environment.

Wesson was arrested and charged with nine counts of murder, and during his 2005 trial, his defense attorneys claimed his daughter, who was found dead at the scene, was the person responsible for the killings. However, the jury was not convinced, and they convicted Wesson of nine counts of murder and 14 counts of sexual assault and sentenced him to death for his shocking crimes.

On January 19, 1900, 28-year-old Major League Baseball player Marty Bergen killed his wife, 3-year-old son, and 6-year-old daughter with an axe in the family’s North Brookfield, Massachusetts, home before slitting his own throat with a razor, nearly decapitating himself.

Prior to the murders, Bergen, who played for the Boston Beaneaters from 1896 to 1899, had been experiencing hallucinations and paranoia for more than a year, indicating he had probably been suffering from a serious mental health issue for some time without effective treatment. Despite the tragic ending to Bergen’s life and the lives of his wife and two children, he is still remembered as one of the greatest catchers in Major League Baseball history.

According to law enforcement, on April 10, 2001, 39-year-old Navy veteran Robert William Fisher shot his wife in the head, cut her throat, and then slashed the throats of his 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter. After murdering his wife and children, Fisher set the family’s Scottsdale, Arizona, home on fire, fleeing the house before a natural gas line caused a massive explosion. Once firefighters extinguished the blaze, they found the bodies of Fisher’s family inside the home and quickly discerned the woman and two children had been murdered.

Shortly after the killings, police named Fisher as a suspect in the murders, believing he had committed familicide because he thought his wife was planning to leave him, and he didn’t want to subject his children to the stress of divorce. Fisher, an experienced hunter and outdoorsman, has never been found, and the authorities suspect he may have committed suicide or started a new life with a different identity.

In 2015, the FBI released multiple age-progressed photos showing what the fugitive may look like today, and they are offering a $100,000 reward for tips leading to the arrest of this wanted man.

Over the course of one week in December 1987, 47-year-old Ronald Gene Simmons, a retired serviceman who had served in both the Navy and the Air Force, murdered 14 members of his family, including his wife, children, grandchildren, daughter-in-law, and son-in-law, as well as a stranger and an acquaintance. Simmons’s victims ranged in age from one to 46, and he killed them either by shooting them or strangling them to death.

His killing spree started on December 22, 1987, when he murdered his wife and six children in his Arkansas home, and it continued on December 26, 1987, when he took the lives of seven additional family members when they arrived at his house for a post-Christmas celebration. Two days later on December 28, 1987, he murdered a young woman he’d been obsessed with, and then he went on a rampage in Russellville, Arkansas, killing one man and wounding several others.

Simmons was arrested, tried, and convicted of 16 counts of murder, and he was executed by lethal injection on June 25, 1990, at the age of 49. Simmons never explained why he killed his entire family, although investigators discovered he’d sexually abused one of his daughters, and she’d even given birth to her father’s child.

On the evening of March 23, 2008 – Easter Sunday – 42-year-old Steven Sueppel murdered his wife and their four adopted children, who ranged in age from three to 10, by beating them to death with a baseball bat. The next morning, Sueppel called the police and asked law enforcement to come to his Iowa City, Iowa, home. Then, the middle-aged former banker left his house and minutes later ended his life by crashing his vehicle into a concrete barrier.

After killing his entire family and himself, investigators discovered Sueppel had been indicted a month earlier on charges that he’d embezzled more than half a million dollars from his former employer, an Iowa bank where he’d worked as controller and vice president. While Sueppel had pleaded not guilty to charges of embezzlement and money laundering, he’d told investigators he’d stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bank over the course of several years.

The Sueppels were devout Catholics, and all six members of the family were given a joint Catholic funeral, including Steven, which caused a great deal of controversy in the religious community because he’d murdered his wife, children, and himself.

On August 26, 2008, 49-year-old British businessman Christopher Foster murdered his wife and teenage daughter, shooting them and the family’s many dogs and horses to death, before pouring 200 gallons of oil all over his mansion in Shropshire, England. After setting the home on fire, he climbed into bed next to his dead wife, and he eventually died from smoke inhalation. Security cameras posted around the property captured the tragedy, allowing law enforcement to learn exactly how Foster killed his wife, daughter, and himself. An investigation after the familicide also revealed why Foster, who lived in an opulent home worth well over a million dollars, committed murder, suicide, and arson.

While Foster had made millions by developing materials for the oil industry, he spent his fortune recklessly, purchasing material items like expensive sports cars simply to keep up appearances. When his business began to fail, creditors started threatening to repossess his assets, including his costly family home. Officials believe that instead of admitting his financial problems to his wife and daughter and accepting the mess he was in, Foster thought his only option was to destroy his family and the lavish home that he was on the verge of losing anyway.

On March 30, 1975, Easter Sunday, 41-year-old James Urban Ruppert killed his mother, brother, sister-in-law, five nephews, and three nieces in his mother’s home in Hamilton, Ohio, with a rifle and two handguns. After murdering 11 of his family members, who ranged in age from three to 65, Ruppert called the police to report the killings, and he was promptly arrested for the crimes. Ruppert never revealed why he committed familicide, but people close to the killer and his family said he had a contentious relationship with his mother and brother.

At his first trial, Ruppert pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but he was convicted of the killings and sentenced to life in prison. However, a mistrial was declared because the courts determined he hadn’t received a fair trial in Hamilton, the town in which the killings had occurred. He was granted a new trial in Findlay, Ohio, and in July 1975 yet another jury found Ruppert guilty and gave him 11 consecutive life sentences. However, he appealed this conviction and was granted yet another trial.

In July 1982, he was convicted of killing his brother and mother, but he was found not guilty of the other murders, and he was given two consecutive life sentences. His 2015 request for parole was denied, and he is currently incarcerated in a Lima, Ohio prison.

Over the course of five days in December 2001, the bodies of 27-year-old Christian Longo’s wife, son, and two daughters, were found in the water near the family’s home in Newport, Oregon. Longo’s wife and children, who ranged in age from two to four, had all been murdered prior to being dumped in the water, their corpses weighted down to delay their discovery. After killing his entire family by strangling them to death, Longo fled to Mexico where he lived as a fugitive, telling people he was Michael Finkel, a writer for The New York Times.

While investigating the murders, officials learned Longo was a con artist who had gotten himself and his family into serious financial trouble by forging checks and using other people’s credit cards, even stealing a minivan from a car dealership by using a fake driver’s license. Just prior to the killings, the Longos had moved into a pricey condo that the family’s patriarch couldn’t afford on his modest income from his job at Starbucks. In January 2002, Longo was arrested in Mexico, and he was extradited to the United States and tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Oregon.