Essential Help for Families of Murderers And Their Victims

When a murder occurs all kinds of people are impacted. The victim's life has come to a tragic end. Hopefully the correct person was arrested and being tried for the murder.

What are the survivors supposed to do though?

Is there help for families of murderers and their victims?

Yes. There is, but you'll have to pursue it. We'll start by talking about the help for murder victims' families, then talk about help for the murderers family members.

Help for murder victims families

When a family member is killed by a serial killer, murderer, or even in a drunk driving accident, it's going to be hard to cope with their death. It's ok to hurt, be angry, and wonder why. You've suffered a tragic loss.

It's not easy to get through this on your own. Different groups want all kinds of things from you. These are some of the common aspects you'll deal with.

• Police: Law enforcement will want to question you to get family history and rule you out as a murder suspect.

• Media: The media will likely approach you if your family member's death made the news

• Medical Examiner: You may need to identify the body.

• Courts: You may need to provide victim impact statements or testify in court.

• Funeral Directors: You have to plan the funeral of your loved one.

• Neighbors: Your neighbors will probably want to take more of a role in your life to either support you in the loss of a loved one or fish for information.

• Murderer's Family: The murderer's family may want to reach out to you to apologize, plead for their child, or beg for forgiveness.

Needless to say, it's a lot to cope with. You just want to learn how to cope with the terrible act and have to deal with all this other stuff. Fortunately, there are lots of organizations that help the victims' families after their death.

Son of Sam Laws

Son of Sam Laws are put in place to prevent serial killers and other violent criminals from profiting from their crime. These laws effectively make it where if a killer gets paid more than a certain amount for information, the money is put into restitution for the victim's families.

Son of Sam Laws originated in New York after the Son of Sam, but have expanded to the federal government and other states.

The state or federal courts often strike them down as too broad and then they have to revise them to be within acceptable limitations within the 1st Amendment.

State Resources

Some states have resources for victims families. Just search help for murder victims families and local resources should come up. I know Nevada has a Victims of Crime program that provides financial assistance and other guidance to victims and their families.

If you want help finding information for another state, city, or country, please just ask in the comments and I will be happy to add it to this blog. We seek to be a valuable resource for victims families, people interested in criminology, and true crime fans.

U.S. Department of Justice: Office For Victims Of Crime

The federal government offers assistance and resources for victims and their families through the U.S. Department of Justice Office For Victims Of Crime. They have lots of guidance to help you understand what to do after the death of a family member.

FBI Victim Services

The FBI Victim Services division is responsible for helping families of people killed after a terrorist attack. They may not be able to help in all scenarios but if your loved one died through an act of terrorism, contact them.

Non-Profit Organizations

There are a number of non-profit organizations that support families after a death through a violent act. Some of them include:

• Winston's Wish: Focuses on helping children and people under 25 in the United Kingdom when their parents are killed. Learn more about Winston's Wish.

• Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia (AVP): Provides help navigating the legal system, free therapy, youth services, and advocacy in the Philadelphia area. Learn more about AVP.

• Every Town Support Fund: Victims of gun violence and their families can be reimbursed for medical and dental, counselling, lost wages funerals and burials through the Every Town Support Fund.

Other Options

While you don't have to seek government support or a nonprofits help, coping with grief can be hard. Make sure to keep in touch with your family and friends, or go to grief counselling or a support group.

While each person's circumstances are different, interacting with other people who have comped with their parents or children being killed can help give you hope that one day you might escape the hell you are currently in.

Help For Families Of Murderers

I'm sorry you're going through this. I can't possibly imagine all the things you are questioning right now if you are coping with discovering that a family member committed murder.

• Police: Law enforcement will want to question you to get family history. They'll probably ask about mental health, poor behavior, drug dependency and other question that may lead you to question everything you know about your mother, brother, father, or friend. They may also ask if you knew about their whereabouts.

• Media: The media will likely approach you to ask questions about how you didn't see this coming. Try to keep your cool. Flipping out on them won't help.

• Courts: You may need to be a character witness or testify in court. Some families choose to end their support of someone who commits murder, but others may get involved with the hope of reducing the sentence from the death penalty to decades in prison. That's up to you what you choose to do.

• Neighbors: Your neighbors will probably want to take more of a role in your life to fish for information.

• Victim's Family: The victim's family may want to reach out to you angry at you and wondering why your supporting somebody who killed their child.

You're the only person who can decide how you want to approach what happened, but you'll probably want to blame yourself.

it's not your fault.

You did the best you knew how and your child or loved one made a decision that affected a lot of people. You have to decide what the best path forward is given your relationship with the your loved one.

Unfortunately, there is not as much help given to the parents, sons, and daughters of prisoners as it is to the families of the dead. Society tends to blame you for failing to realize the nightmare that your loved one was about to cause, but they shouldn't.

The future will get better. Attention will fade, this moment will pass. You didn't commit the homicide and you can't blame yourself for failing to hear the truth in your relative's warning signs. You'll spot indicators that they may have planned to kill people and those are only obvious after the fact.

In larger cities you might be able to find support groups or services that will offer similar services as they offer murder victims families, but Las Vegas doesn't have any.

The best I can do is suggest reaching out to therapists that have experience treating PTSD or start your own support group unless...

Your relative was wrongly convicted.

There are numerous organizations that help the families of murderers appeal convictions including:

• The Innocence Project: The Innocence Project has helped free hundreds of wrongfully convicted people and helped change laws since 1992

• The Vera Institute of Justice: The Vera Institute is over 60 years old and works to improve the criminal justice system by reducing bail and piloting new initiatives for reform.

• ACLU: The ACLU helps defend people and petitions for better standards for prisoners.

There may be other resources but these are some of the biggest. They each focus on different goals and may or may not be able to help in your specific case.

Next, we'll discuss some frequently asked questions.

Common Questions About Family And Murder

What are the symptoms of homicide trauma?

As the parent, child, spouse, or friend of a victim or murderer you should be aware of the emotional, physical, and behavioral symptoms of homicide trauma. We'll look at each below.

Emotional

You'll likely feel grief, anxiety, shame, and blame yourself. All of these are perfectly normal responses, but try not to feed them more energy than necessary. Allow yourself to go through them at your own pace.

• Grief: You'l likely go through stages of grief including disbelief, denial, anger, fear, despair, self-pity, guilt, and shame after learning of a crime causing death.

• Anxiety: It's normal to think there's a monster around every corner after someone was killed. Feeling worried, hypervigilant, or having intrusive thoughts about the murder are all part of the coping process. Talk to a trained professional if it starts consuming your life.

• Self-blame: Feeling responsible for the murder or like you could have prevented it is completely normal, but we all know that logically you can't save someone from themselves. Forgiving ourselves may be another story. It can take decades of therapy to end negative self-talk, but it is possible.

• Shame: You might feel ashamed of how you feel, but when someone is killed that's a lot to process because no one wants that for their children.

Physical

Some of the physical symptoms of homicide trauma include:

• Sleep disturbances: Insomnia, nightmares, and waking up more frequently are commonly experienced after someone is killed.

• Physical pain: Headaches, nausea, and muscle tension are all common physical side effects of learning about a person who died or killed someone.

• Impaired decision-making: Stress impairs decision making. When you find yourself having difficulty setting priorities and making decisions.

Behavioral

Some of the behavioral symptoms of homicide trauma include:

• Avoidance: You may find yourself avoiding people, places, and things that remind you of the death, person, or crime.

• Safety Obsession: You may start trying to do everything you can to protect your children and others.

• Revenge: When you start thinking about revenge, there might be a problem. Unfortunately, therapists, and psychologists have to report when you say you are thinking about hurting someone. Having a desire for revenge against the perpetrator 

• Isolating: You might start to withdraw from society, friends, and family. You might feel like your don't belong. Both of those are completely normal.

It's important to seek help if the obsession with the death prevents you from going to your job and carrying on with the basic aspects of life for longer than you can afford to stop living.

What percentage of murders are committed by family members?

12.3% to 24.8% of murders are committed by family members. That means that no less than 1 in 8 (and as high as 1 in 4) murders are by a family member. Each year the percentage of murders committed by family members varies. You can find all kinds of statistics about crime on the FBI Crime Data Explorer.

What are the psychological effects of homicide?

Unless you are a psychopath, the psychological effects of committing may include guilt, shame, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse issues, and relationship problems. The impacts of killing may be increased when they violate your core beliefs. 

These issues will normally be more prevalent when the murder feels unjustified. For instance military personnel may experience these effects more if they kill a child than someone who is shooting at them.

It should be noted, that the alcohol and drug dependency will often come from trying to silence guilt, shame, flashbacks, and anger. Meanwhile the relationship issues may be because the people are scared of the person who has killed or may be side effects from the psychological damage done to the killer.

Therapy and medication can help people who have killed assuming that the death was sanctioned or was found not to be a criminal act. When you admit to killing someone and have not already faced a criminal sentence for it, you risk prison time or the death penalty.

What to say to a parent whose child was murdered?

Compassionate Friends suggests the following tips when you talk to a parent whose child was murdered:

• Listen, without trying to fix everything (sorry men, this part is hard).

• Just be there for support. You don't have to say anything.

• Don't judge their anger. They have to go through it to heal.

• Use the name of their son or daughter to let them know you remember.

• Help with tasks you can see they need support to accomplish without asking.

• Remember the child's life and make it a point to reach out on birthday and anniversary of death.

• Talk to the siblings and grandparents using this same advice.

Closing

Whether your family member is a victim of homicide or a convicted killer, you're going to deal with some challenging situations that most people never experience in their lives. Fortunately, there are many organizations that support families of a person whose death was caused by a violent crime.

When a family member commits a violent crime there are not as many organizations supporting the family members. That's unfortunate because it is not their fault that the the person decided to do something that killed another human being. The relatives can end up prisoners to their relative's heinous act.

Should the parents and siblings of a murderer be eligible for therapy to cope with the scenario too?