DALLAS (AP) – Six people were fatally found in a Dallas suburban home early Monday after police said two brothers had signed an agreement to kill four family members and themselves.
Officers in Allen went to the home for a welfare checkup around 1 a.m. after receiving a call from a friend of one of the brothers who feared he was suicidal, police general said. Jon Felty.
“It appears that the two brothers have entered into an agreement, that they will complete suicide,” Felty said.
According to Felty, one of the two brothers wrote a long post on social media in which he and his brother have a plan to kill their family members and then themselves. He also wrote that all his decisions are based on weighing pros and cons, including the decision to kill his family.
Police found the six family members dead in the house. According to Felty, the two brothers, a sister, their father and mother and a grandmother included the deceased. Felty said those who died ranged between 19 and mid-70s. He said the killing probably took place over the weekend.
Felty said they have not yet released the names of the victims. He said the deaths were being investigated as a homicide-suicide, but he could not yet say who shot at whom.
The brother who wrote the post on social media says that he has been cutting more frequently lately and that his treatment for depression – which includes counseling and medication – has not helped him as much as before, Felty said.
In the report, he also spent ‘a lot of time’ writing his disappointment about how the television series ‘The Office’ ended, Felty said. “He thought it must have ended very differently and he was upset …”
The brother who wrote the post on social media also said in it that he finds it too easy for his brother to obtain a firearm, Felty said.
A mass murder where two brothers and sisters are the perpetrators is rare, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University.
“In these situations, mass murder is mostly an offender,” he said.
The Associated Press / USA Today / Northeastern University Mass Killing Database recorded 452 incidents of mass murder – killing four or more people – from 2006 to Sunday, he said. He said that almost half of them – 217 – were mass murders where someone killed their relatives.
He said 207 of the 217 massacres in the family involved a single offender.
The only other massacre in the family recorded in the database involving siblings was a 2015 homicide in Oklahoma. Two brothers – Robert and Michael Bever – were sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of the deaths of their parents and three siblings. At the time of the murder, Robert was 18 and Michael 16.
Fox generally said in murders involving two offenders, “usually one is the leader and the other the follower.”
“The leader feels good about someone seeing them, looking up to him and being willing to do what he is told,” Fox said. ‘And then the follower generally likes that the more dominant person praises them for their loyalty and power. It can therefore be mutual – it can be an agreement, but it is usually the one person who lays down the ground rules and the other person who agrees with it. ‘
By Jamie Stengle