Killers Behind Closed Doors

Explore cases about how husbands have killed their entire family and dive into the psychology behind their decisions.

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Why Kill?

Why do people kill? How can people be okay with committing murder? According to howstuffworks, psychopaths and sociopaths feel little emotion and may do dangerous and thrilling things to get an emotional response. People that kill are psychopaths or sociopaths because they are able to commit those crimes and be completely normal afterwards. For instance, the articles states, “many serial killers and mass murderers fall into this designation-they kill because they lack the inhibitions and empathy the rest of us possess.” which explains why psychopaths kill.  There are also other factors that attribute to becoming a serial killer like: child abuse, traumatic experiences, and parental brutality. According to an academic journal article, Are Serial Killers Born Or Made? By Burcak Unal, “...not all tormented and abused kids become serial killers and not all serial killers were victims of abuse… there does appear to be a relationship between profound traumatic issues and later criminal conduct.” while explaining that bad childhoods have an effect on serial killers, most of the time. Dr. Berit Brogaard wrote an article about if serial killers have a genetic disposition or not, she did brain scans on several serial killers for her article. Her studies show, “brain scans of serial killers have revealed poor neutral connectivity in regions of the brain that control emotional outbursts and violent feelings” which explains that all serial killers have something missing in their brain that makes them do dangerous and violent things. The academic article also states, “...the connection between childhood abuse, psychological trauma, family issues, and serial killing has been evident…” and  “ a mix of genetics and life experiences may cause a person to become a serial killer.” after giving evidence about the specifics on genetics in serial killers and also on past events can cause serial killers. 

While these are broad terms and examples on why sociopaths kill, it does give us an insight on what could have caused Chris Watts, Chris Benoit, and Robert Fisher to kill their families. There is evidence that severe brain damage and steroids was most likely the leading cause for Benoit killing his family. It is believed that Chris Watts killed his family because he wanted to pursue a relationship with a girl and not have it be affected by his family, which is called a lust murder. Since Robert Fisher is still missing to this day, there is no real evidence explaining why Fisher murdered his wife and kids, but friends of him and his wife said that they were having marital problems because he had an affair about two years before the murders and Fisher was against divorce. There are no good reasons why those men killed their wives and kids, their family members deserved better.

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The firefighter that knew how to hide from fire

I know this is hard to imagine, but what do you think you would do after you killed someone? Fess up? Try to prove you are innocent like Chris Watts did? Commit suicide like Chris Benoit? Or run? Robert Fisher decided to run after killing his family and has been missing for about twenty years and was even on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List. According to azcentral, on April 10, 2001, Robert Fisher slit his twelve year old daughter, Brittany and his ten year old son, Bobby, throats. He also shot his wife, Mary, in the head then lit their house on fire and fled to try and cover his crimes. Fisher was a retired firefighter and knew how to set a house fire. The last photograph of Robert Fisher was taken that same night at an ATM at 10:45 p.m, police think he was getting money and leaving town after he committed murder. Ten days after the murders and fire, Fisher’s vehicle was found abandoned in the forest east of Payson and the family dog was found nearby. Robert has not been seen since April 10, 2001, and would be sixty years old if he is still alive today.

Over a year after the crimes, the FBI put Fisher on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on June 29, 2002. The two credentials to be on the list are, “the person must be dangerous or have a record of serious crimes, and the FBI must believe nationwide publicity will help find the suspect.” Robert remained on that list for twenty years until the FBI decided to replace him with another suspect, Yulan Adonay Archaga Carias. Detective John Heinzelman, the lead detective from Scottsdale, said, “...still receives two to three tips a week, or about one hundred leads a year.” and “were still looking for him, no different than before” when asked about the case. There have been thousands of false tips over the past two decades all over the United States and there have been two tips that were high-profile sightings, but have since been proven false. One of the high-profile sightings was in Canada in 2004 and the other was in Denver in 2014. There are three theories about what happened to Robert Fisher: he is living somewhere under a fake identity, he killed himself and his body has never been found, or he was on the run and died.

Here is the last picture of Robert FIsher 

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What is familicide?

Competing discourses and cultural intelligibility: Familicide, gender, and the mental illness/distress frame in news by Denise Buiten and Georgia Coe, was published on April 20, 2021. The academic article explores what familicide is because it is not a commonly researched topic and looks into how the perpetrator’s mental health/distress is a cause of violence. They specifically look at family violence and its relation to mental health/distress, as opposed to the common assumptions of gender, race, and socioeconomic status. The article looks at a familicide case that happened in Sydney Australia and gathered data and information to support their thesis, look beyond gender when understanding a familicide case and look at other identifiers like mental health issues. The author uses, “mental illness/distress frame”, to emphasize the broad psychocentric framing of the killer’s actions was driven by mental distress. There were five online news publications that would reach a wide range of people and generations, to be a part of the study. The news stations selected were: ABC News, The Guardian Australia, The Daily Telegraph, and The Australian,  to help with the research process.  

A resource in the academic journal article that I found interesting was, Making sense of spousal revenge filicide, which researched partners that kill their children to harm their ex-partner/ child’s other parent. This usually happens when a parent is jealous of the other parent or of one of the parents is experiencing intense rage at their partner. The article also used resources from cases in Australia to try and determine why parents kill their children as revenge to their spouse. The author, Glenn Carruthers, tried to understand spousal revenge killings and came up with the idea that, “ At a time of considerable life stress, the killer’s partner is perceived to do something, such as initiate a divorce, which strips the killer of social power over their partner… this generates feelings of anger and a desire for revenge…” and also suggested that the parent that causes the crime has a mental issue/disorder like bipolar disorder. This reasoning makes sense to me because sometimes people, especially people with untreated mental issues, snap at the smallest thing because they are unable to handle the emotions. This article was used by the academic journal to help people try and understand the killer's thoughts on why they want to kill their kid(s) and or spouse. 

The academic journal article was interesting to read because it did not rely on gender as a cause for familicide. My entire Tumblr thread is about men killing their wives and families, so I enjoyed reading articles that did not use that as the main cause. I think that the articles were useful to each other because they both wanted to understand the reasoning behind why the killers committed their crimes. Both articles had important information about familicide and used Australian cases to back up their ideas. While my personal research has proved that men commit familicide more than women, I still enjoyed learning about the different Australian cases and information about different types of family murder/ familicide.

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What caused Chris Benoit to kill? Brain Damage? Steroids?

Wrestler Chris Benoit: Family Murder and Suicide, an ABC News production documentary featuring Chris Benoit and why he killed his family. Benoit was a famous WWE wrestler and had an amazing twenty-two year long career. He was an attentive and loving husband and father to his wife and son. Mike Benoit said during an interview in the documentary, “I wish you would have known my son when he was the Chris Benoit that we knew and loved… He loved to be at home playing with his children, that's where he wanted to be” Benoit’s father expressed how much his son loved and cared for his family and put it before his WWE career for several years, but throughout his career things seemed to change. Everyone was incredibly shocked about the news of what Benoit did to his family because he seemed to be a nice loving guy. Neighbors and friends did not expect that he would ever do that to his family. Benoit had suffered from a multitude of concussions and even started to use steroids which his father thinks caused his emotional downfall. For example, Mike Benoit stated, “You can look at his life and see him going down hill” which shows me how his brain damage get worse over the course of his career which caused the change of  his entire demeanor. 

Dr. Julian Bailes, a researcher, studied Chris Benoit’s brain with the permission of Mike Benoit. Dr Bailes found that Benoit had suffered from extreme brain damage and that he had a lot of dead brain cells and dead neurons, after doing a brain scan. In an interview, Mike Benoit announces, “ When I asked him at one point how many he had he said to me, dad, I don't count them anymore I've had so many” while talking about how many concussions his son had because Dr. Bailes believes that multiple severe concussions had caused Benoit's brain damage. While toxicology reports proved that Benoit had steroids in his system during the murders, Dr Bailes does not think steroids had anything to do with the events that took place. Several people assume that “roid rage”,an outburst of heightened aggression attributed to the use of anabolic steroids, but the murders happened over the course of twenty-four hours, so it was not sudden snap of emotions. I also do not think that it was roid rage because he murdered his wife, son, then himself in the course of a weekend, not all at once. Investigators of the case stated that Benoit was looking into the Prophet Elijah, a prophet who believed that he could raise a boy from the dead starting with placing the child on their bed, and Benoit's son was found on his own bed dead. This to me shows the full effect of his brain damage because he seemed to believe that he was able to raise his son from the dead after killing him. 

I truly believe that Chris Benoit committed murder because of his severe brain damage and not roid rage. There are scans of his brain that show the countless dead brain cells and neurons which were caused by concussions, not steroids. I think that Chris Benoit was not always an angry, violent, psychopath, because you can see the change of his behavior throughout the years of his career. The documentary used researchers and Mike Benoit to prove the belief that brain damage was the core reason of Benoit’s behavior. Also, the interview used Mike Benoit to make people realize that Chris Benoit was not always a horrible person and tried to make the audience feel almost guilty for Benoit and what happened to him during his career. For instance, “I think if Chris Benoit had been anything other than a professional wrestler we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation… he would still be alive” stated Mike Benoit, while talking about how wrestling made his son into an entirely unrecognizable person to him.  They backed Mikes’ information up with Dr. Bailes’s evidence of how chronic brain damage can change an entire person.

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Library Scavenger Hunt

The library scavenger hunt activities helped me to find several different resources about my topic, men killing their entire family, and helped me to dig deeper into the cases. The list of thirty words helped me to think about what the killers I am researching about, Chris Watts, Chris Benoit, and Robert Fisher, were thinking and also the characteristics that they all share(d). For example, all of them were serial killers, psychopaths, and all had anger issues which drove them to murder their wife and kids. All of the cases were world shocking, a term I used for the key words, because of how brutal the murders were. Chris Watts and Robert Fisher shocked the world because of the way they handled themselves after the murders and Chris Benoit surprised everyone because he was a world famous WWE wrestler. I also found a library book about the Chris Watts case, The Perfect Father: the true story of Chris Watts, his all-American family, and a shocking murder, which is about Chris Watts and how his “mask” came off and how he showed his true, rangelful, self. The book goes into great detail about how the sequence of events occurred and how everyone reacted. It also gives a lot of background information about how he grew up, where he grew up, and who he looked up to. For example, the book quotes Shannan’s best friend, Nickole, stating, “I am worried about Shanann.. Her car is here but she’s not home. Do you know where she’s at?” Chris responded uncensored, “he said Shannan had taken their girls to a friend's house for a play date, although he did not know which one.” which are the first signs where Watts started to act abnormal about his family missing. These quotes from the book show how other people were scared, like her friend Nickole, Shanann’s mother, Sandi Ruzek, and several other friends. The book even has quotes from Watts’ past professor, Joe Duty, who stated, “ It’s hard to find a more perfect kid, he was in the top ten percent of students I ever had” which shows how well liked Chris Watts was before his dark side fully came through. 

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The New York Times on Chris Watts Court Trial

The New York Times, an extremely credible source, has several articles about the Chris Watts cases and even court video footage of Watts’ conviction. The New York Times is known to lean to the left with their political articles, but there is no biased information in their articles about Chris Watts and what he did to his family. The article, Chris Watts Gets Life in Prison for Killing Daughters and Pregnant Wife, was written the day that Chris Watts was sentenced to prison, November 19, 2018, so the author released all of the information right after the trial.  The author, Sandra E. Garcia, is a reputable author that writes about a wide span of different topics. I have found that The New York Times has a wide variety of articles about the Watts case, while other databases such as, The Wall Street Journal, has little to no information about the recent case. 

The article by Sandra E, Garcia does a great job of explaining what Chris Watts did to his family and what occurred during the court sessions. For example, Judge Marcelo A. Kopcow said, “This is perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime I have handled out of the thousands of cases that I have seen.” before sentencing Chris Watts to forty-eight years for the unlawful termination of Shannon Watts pregnancy and thirty six years for the disposal of the victim’s bodies. The author also used other New York Times resources such as, Chris Watts from Colorado Pleads Guilty for Murdering his pregnant wife and 2 Daughters,  which explains in more detail about the trial and what Watts did before confessing. According to this New York Times article by Sarah Mervosh, Chris Watts blamed his wife for murdering his two kids, so he used that as an excuse for killing his pregnant wife. This detail adds to the horror of this case because Watts blamed his innocent, dead wife, knowing that she could not tell her side of the story. It is insane to me that Watt’s could easily put the blame of the murders of his children on his wife, after brutally committing murder to his entire family. 

 In the first article, Garcia also included information about how Watts handled the bodies after the murders and Chris Watts’ reaction to the attorney describing the horrific things that he did to his wife and daughters. Michael J. Rourke, the Weld County district attorney, said, “ The man seated to my right smothered his daughters… Bella fought for her life” and as Rourke described these events, Chris Watts cried. This article also includes information about what Shannan’s family said at the sentencing hearing, the Rzucek family, Shannan’s parents, described Watts as a, “heartless monster and said they believed he should spend the rest of his life behind bars.” I think that the article contained important information about the details of what Chris Watts did and had key quotes from the attorney, judge, and family members. 

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Who is Chris Benoit?

According to Esquire, Benoit was a hard worker when it came to wrestling. He started training at twelve years old to be a wrestler and his career took off when he turned eighteen. Chris built up his reputation by competing in several matches, including the World Championship Wrestling in 1992. Over the course of his fifteen year long career, Benoit became one of the most famous wrestlers on TV because he appeared in WCW and WWF (World Wrestling Federation) and due to his incredible technique. Benoit was taking steroids and testosterone along with other WWE wrestlers which is extremely illegal for WWE use. 

In 2000, Chris married his second wife, Nancy, and in the beginning of their marriage Nancy filed for a divorce and got a restraining order against him due to his violent behavior. Though she said he was violent, filed a restraining order, and filed for a divorce, Nancy dropped the divorce suit and the restraining order. Who knows went on behind those closed doors for the next seven years of their marriage, but on June 24th, 2007, Benoit murdered his wife and seven year old son, then committed suicide. People noticed that Chris was missing because he did not go to the ECW Championship where he was predicted to win, so the WWE requested a welfare check. When the authorities entered his home, they found Nancy dead wrapped in a towel and their son dead next to her with Bibles placed beside them, they both died of asphyxiation. Benoit was found hanged on a lat pulldown machine with the Bible lying next to him, ten empty beer cans, and an empty bottle of wine. Kirkland, the author of the article, stated, “authorities determined that the murders and suicide were committed over the course of three days.” 

Benoit’s actions seem to be caused by severe head injuries that he endured through the years of his career. There is also evidence from his wife, Nancy, of him being violent. Since there is only one recorded report, no one knows if he was consistently violent towards her and even his son. The American Psychological Association states, “ … researchers have been able to confirm that steroid-induced aggression… “roid rage”-- is a real phenomenon that can occur in individuals who take large doses of steroids for extended periods of time.” which also explains his violent acts towards his wife early in theri marriage. The steroids can also explain why he killed his family because he had an extreme amount of steroids in his system.

Autopsy reports show that Benoit drugged his son with Xanax before murdering him and Nancy had alprazolam and hydrocodone in her system. Chris had incredibly high levels of Xanax, hydrocodone, and testosterone. The autopsy results also showed that Benoit’s brain had suffered severe damage over the years from being a professional wrestler. A report from West Virginia University declared, “Benoit’s brain was so severely damaged it resemble the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.” experts believe the state of his brain damage caused him to commit the double murder-suicide. According to Mayo Clinic, “Alzheimer’s causes a decline in the ability to make reasonable decisions and judgements in everyday situations” which explains why Benoit made a rash decision to kill his family then later that weekend, himself. 

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How could a husband kill their entire family?

I am going to explore three cases: Chris Watts, Robert Fisher, and Chris Benoit, who are husbands that killed their entire family. This is called familicide, the murder of an entire family by a family member. My goal is to discover the reason why each of these husbands murdered their families because I can not fathom how someone, especially a loved one, could kill their family members. I will research each husband and see if they have/had any mental disorders or psychological issues that contributed to them murdering their family members. Also, I am going to dive into how each of the husbands responded differently after killing their families. For example: Chris Watts tried to convince the police he did not know where his family was, Chris Benoit committed suicide, and Robert Fisher fled and is wanted by the F.B.I.. Each case will be its own blog and I will use several resources such as: Netflix, FBI Website, Crime Junkie Podcast, and several other websites to learn about each of the cases. 

The blogs will contain information about the murder cases, if there was any indication of abuse or harm in their past/childhoods, if there was any motive leading up to the killings, how each of the husbands acted after they killed their family, and if they had any psychological issues that caused them to kill. Additionally, I will look into the differences on what the husbands did after they committed murder and the psychology behind why they acted those ways. This topic is important for others to know about because after learning about the psychology between killers and why they kill then maybe you can save yourself from being murdered by your husband or anyone in the future. It is also helpful to learn about each of the killers pasts because there could be indications on why they grew up to be murderers. This will help you to want to raise your children in a completely different way than how the husbands were brought up.

Key words:

Familicide- the murder of an entire family by a family member

Serial killer- a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic behavior pattern

(Source: Emily Madriga, Thought Catalog)

(Source: Kimazur Getty Images)

(Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation)