How homicide impacts surviving family members

(Video of a Correctional facility in CT)

By Kyla Smulski 

Skyhawk View News Staff 

In the late 1990s, Erin Miller's great aunt and uncle became frantic after realizing that their 10-year-old daughter Stephanie had gone missing from their home on the coast of Maine. After searching for hours with the help of neighbors and officials, every parent's worst nightmare came true when their daughter was found murdered. 

Stephanie’s body was discovered in the closet of the teenage boy, next door, after his mother noticed blood on his bedroom floor, Miller said. The boy had lured Stephanie into his house after school and killed her. 

“He said he wanted to know what it would be like to kill someone, knowing that was his motivation only made it more traumatic. It has been years since this happened and I can clearly still see the lasting impacts on my family,” she said. 

Miller said her great aunt and uncle were never the same, suffering from depression and severe anxiety for the rest of their lives. 

“My great aunt's mental health was severely stunted. She kind of stopped maturing at the age she was. She couldn’t care for her children anymore,” she said. 

Miller, who is a student at Stonehill College, was told this tragic family story by her mother when she entered high school. She grew up knowing her great aunt and uncle, but they never talked about what happened to their daughter. 

The tragedy took the young girl's life, but as with most violent deaths, it also left behind what researchers call “co-victims”, friends and relatives such as Stephanie’s mother, father, siblings, neighbors, and classmates. 

The study “Losing a Loved one to Homicide '' published in 2009 by Alyssa A. Rheingold points out that there are thousands more co-victims than direct victims of crimes, and the impact of the tragedies on them is frequently overlooked. 

Family members who have lost a loved one to homicide suffer not only from the event itself, but also from the way they are handled by police and other professionals afterwards. Oftentimes they are not provided with the support, privacy, and care that is required for such a traumatic and life changing event, according to the study. 

“In contrast to other crime victims, homicide survivors often face greater intrusion of the media and criminal justice systems, strained relationships with friends or family members that are suspected perpetrators, and preoccupation with revenge. These stressors may contribute to the risk for mental health problems among homicide survivors,” wrote Rheingold. 

Without this help family members can fall into depression, substance abuse, and more according to the study. 

Co-victims of murders involving serial killers have similar issues, but also ones unique to the situation.  According to “Cause and Manner of Death” published by Snohomish County Government, homicide and murder would be what Miller's family experienced. If someone was accidentally shot with a gun while hunting for example, it would fall under a homicide and not murder. 

“Homicide and murder are not the same.  All murders are homicides, not all homicides are murder,” Snohomish County Government wrote. 

Serial killings are different from both of those situations, said Professor M. Danielle Carkin Lacorazza, who is a criminology professor at Stonehill College and studies serial killers. 

Lacorazza said that serial killers are defined as someone who has killed three or more people, they lack empathy due to a deficiency of gray matter in the brain.

“Serial killings are different from homicide, they don’t reach the FBI definition of serial killers with just one murder,” she said. 

 Co-victims of serial killings share the same problems with co-victims of homicide, but they also have to deal with a level of notoriety that can launch them and their grief into the spotlight. This is usually due to the heightened amount of attention serial killings get as compared to a homicide. 

Miller said that after their daughter's murder, her great aunt fell into depression and struggled to take care of her other children, and her Uncle “shut down” mentally. 

“He is not quite there. You can’t have more than a surface-level conversation with him,” she said. 

Rheingold said mental health battles are the reality for thousands of new co-victims every year. 

“Homicide survivors were almost twice as likely to experience PTSD, depression, and drug abuse/dependence,” Rheingold wrote. 

She said that co-victims are often left to work through their trauma by themselves, but programs need to be established to address their issues. 

“These results imply that, in addition to the attention given to direct victims of crime, further resources should be directed towards the significant mental health needs of those indirectly affected by violent crimes such as homicide,” wrote Rheingold

The Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center, takes a step in the direction of providing better resources to co-victims. This center offers training about how to perform an intervention with the co-victims after being notified about the homicide, as well as short, and long term interventions. It also focuses on “surviving the legal system”, teaching the co-victims what will happen in the trial and what they will need to do. 

The first part of the process is to have the person who is taking the training interview homicide co-victims. This step is important to implement so that the people who are taking the training have a better idea of what the co-victims went through. 

“They tell their stories of grief, trauma, and ultimately – resilience,”  wrote The Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center.

The Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center also makes a point to focus on how to deliver a compassionate death notification to co-victims. As well as looking at the emotional and psychological responses to homicide. 

Miller said that if her great aunt and uncle had been given more resources and support, they might have been able to find a way to move forward with their lives. 

“If they had more support, who knows where they would be now. I have no doubts that they would be in a much better place mentally,” said Miller.