The Tragic Tale of a Father and Son: an Unusual Patricide

Parricide is a category of homicide in which the victims are the parents, and the killers, their children. The authors report a case of a 45-year-old man who killed his 73-year-old widowed father in an extremely violent manner: he struck the father in the head with a wooden wash board, stabbed him with a pair of scissors and several times with a screwdriver. Afterwards, he kicked the victim in the face and jumped up and down on his body, thereby crushing the father’s chest with his weight. The case reported here may be classified as an “unusual patricide” when one considers the age of the aggressor, the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, that the victim was the father, and that the murder was committed in an extremely violent manner.