A look at 'family annihilation' cases in Indiana since 2020 killings in Bloomington

There have been at least four other "family annihilation" cases in Indiana since Jeffrey Mumper fatally shot his wife, son and daughter as they slept in their Bloomington home Sept. 6, 2020, then killed himself.

The Indiana examples are among 227 cases an IndyStar investigation found across the U.S. since 2020 in which a person killed family members from at least two groups including spouses, children, parents or siblings. The research revealed the killers were almost always male and, in more than half the cases, like Jeffrey Mumper, the perpetrator ultimately killed themselves.

Here is a look at some of those other cases:

Cases in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Lafayette

The killing of five people in Indianapolis on Jan. 24, 2021, was the city’s worst mass killing in more than a decade. But the explosion of violence started with the kind of family dispute that plays out in nearly every home with a teenager, according to police and the prosecutor. Raymond Ronald Lee Childs III, then 17, now faces six murder charges in the fatal shootings of his mother, father, two siblings, a pregnant teen and her unborn child. Another brother was shot and left for dead, but survived.

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Court documents allege the shootings spun out of an argument over Childs, who is being tried as an adult and has pleaded not guilty, staying out too late. The surviving brother told police their father's last words were: "I'm sorry Raymond; I love you."

Four months later, a Fort Wayne man staying with his former girlfriend slashed her to death with a knife, along with her 5-year-old son, 3-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. The woman's body was found in her home June 3, 2021, kneeling next to the bed where her children died.

In July 2021, a 27-year-old man in Lafayette shot and killed his girlfriend and their 3-year-old daughter. Before she died, the little girl told police: "My daddy killed me." The killer pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 120 years in prison.

And in November 2021, another Fort Wayne man shot and killed his parents, 15-year-old sister and himself.

Other high-profile family annihilation cases over the years

Other examples in the U.S. date back to the country’s founding. Local communities sometimes documented these tragedies in “familicide pamphlets.” Motives varied and weapons became more lethal, but the results remained the same.

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One of the first reported cases was from 1782, when Connecticut merchant William Beadle axed his wife and two children to death before killing himself, reportedly because he had suffered financial troubles and wanted to spare the family from poverty.

In 1835, John Cowan hacked his wife and two children to death in Cincinnati acting on suspicions that his spouse was having an affair.

In 1971, John List, a Sunday school teacher in New Jersey, shot and killed his wife, mother and three children, because he believed the family was straying from their Christian faith and wanted to ensure they went to heaven.

In 2018, Chris Watts, an oil field worker in Colorado, strangled his pregnant wife and smothered his two toddler daughters to death. Watts was having an affair with a coworker and reportedly believed he needed to kill his family to be with her.

In 2021, Alex Murdaugh shot his wife and son in their home in Islandton, South Carolina. During his televised murder trial, which captivated the nation, the prosecution argued the personal injury lawyer killed his family to divert attention from his financial crimes and opioid addiction.

Murdaugh, a prosecutor told the jury, was a "family annihilator."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Family annihilation cases in Indiana and US history