Wiktionary
n. A murder in which the killer also commits suicide.
Wikipedia
A murder–suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more other persons immediately before or at the same time as killing oneself. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms, often linked to the first form:
- Murder linked with suicide of a mentally unstable person with a homicidal ideation;
- Murder which entails suicide, such as driving a car with one or more passenger(s) over a precipice or suicide bombing;
- Suicide after murder to escape state punishment(s);
- Suicide after murder as a form of self-punishment due to guilt;
- Suicide after (or before) murder by proxy;
- Suicide after or during murder inflicted by others;
- Murder to receive a death sentence willfully;
- Joint suicide in the form of killing the other with consent, and then killing oneself;
- Murder before suicide with the intent of preventing future pain and suffering of others including family members and oneself as their thought, such as a parent killing their children before ending their own life;
Suicide-lawful killing has three conceivable forms:
- To murder one's assailant through proportionate self-defense killing oneself in the process;
- Lawful killing to prevent an individual from causing harm to others, in so doing killing oneself;
- Lawful killing indirectly resulting in or contributing to suicide.
Many spree killings have ended in suicide, such as in many school shootings. Some cases of religiously-motivated suicides may also involve murder. All categorization amounts to forming somewhat arbitrary distinctions where relating to intention in the case of psychosis, where the intention(s) is/are more likely than not to be irrational. Ascertaining the legal intention ( mens rea) is inapplicable to cases properly categorized as insanity.
Usage examples of "murder-suicide".
Newspaper accounts of the Carding accident, lawsuit, and murder-suicide didn't differ substantially from what my client had told me.
Kettering produced the New York Post report of the Salaverry-Efferen alleged murder-suicide, a copy made by the American-Amazonas Bank manager before they left.
I cannot ever recall hearing of that many murder-suicides in a single year in Kingsford, and this is a far larger city than little Haldene!
Either there was a sudden rash of murder-suicides going on in this city, or there was something very wrong with the deductions of the city constables.
Lovers’ murder-suicides were another technique of which he was rather fond, because police saw so many they were effectively routine.
Lovers' murder-suicides were another technique of which he was rather fond, because police saw so many they were effectively routine.