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The opening chapter introduces a sociohistorical approach to the study of familicide, which takes shape against the backdrop of the ethnographic research and social policy work of the author. The author discusses the systematic methodology used to gather information on 211 cases of familicide. One of the core arguments of the book is that familicide constitutes one of the many consequences of the emotional conditions of modern life. The author defines modern life and maps the historical emergence of familicide. He discusses the research into familicide, family killing, and homicide, stressing the importance of focusing on emotions as a way of making sense of familicide. In particular, he develops the idea of an emotional continuum as a means of understanding the range of perpetrators' emotional styles.

Chapter 3 argues familicide appears confined to modern times; the period from 1755 in the United States. The chapter covers three historical periods: medieval, early modern and modern. The author notes the horror and allure of familicide emerge over the same period wherein we witness decreases in public violence such as branding, execution, and torture; increases in mannerly behavior and the suppression of strong emotions, and growing state monopolies over the use of legitimate violence. Therefore, the appearance and persistence of familicide in modern times is seemingly counter-intuitive. The author introduces the idea that familicide emerges as modern societies increasingly value successful companionate marriage, as love slowly becomes the basis for marriage, as men are increasingly seen as sole providers, and as families become more isolated from communities. Failure to meet these gender prescriptions generates intense shame that informs the decision to commit familicide.

Chapter 5 explores the emotional styles of 14 civil reputable familicidal hearts (7 male, 7 female). These perpetrators appear conformist, proper, respectable, almost emotionally constipated or tightly constrained. Unlike livid coercive hearts, they tend to maintain their intimate relationships, find common ground with spouses and partners, and make various accommodations, including playing their specific part in a gendered division of labor. As the author points out, when honorable and respectable men and women commit familicide, their acts raise the disturbing possibility that other like-situated persons have similar potential. The author explores the way civil reputable hearts appeared to fit into the social order, examines their latent discontent including their oftentimes suppressed rage and emotional suffering, and, finally discusses their planning and preparation to kill.

This book offers an analysis of three cases in which perpetrators confessed on social media to committing homicides: the murders of Jennifer Alfonso and Charles Taylor, and the Janzen familicide. The confessions included text-based content justifying the killings and, in two cases, images of the victims' dead bodies. The book also explores the role of networked media in violent crime from a criminological perspective and shows how networked media are being used in relation to homicide. In particular, it considers the phenomenon called ‘happy slapping’, which is essentially a crime enacted for the camera — a concept that has recently been termed ‘performance crime’ — and ‘Facebook murder’. This introductory chapter explains how the author was drawn to topic of media in homicide, discusses the foundations of her research, and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

This chapter outlines the ontological, epistemological and methodological considerations of the empirical research reported in this book and proposes a new approach towards analysing media in crime, termed Ethnographic Media Practice Analysis for Criminology (EMPAC). It also explains the rationale for the selection of the three cases to which EMPAC has been applied: the murder of Jennifer Alfonso, the Janzen familicide, and the murder of Charles Taylor. After establishing the view of the social world that this study proceeds from, the chapter discusses the approach to understanding that social world — or epistemology. The objective is to identify what tools and techniques would be most appropriate for making sense of the social media confessions of homicide perpetrators.

This chapter analyses the Janzen familicide that took place on April 28, 2015 in British Columbia, Canada. The perpetrator of the crime was Randy Janzen, who made a confession in his Facebook page that he shot his nineteen-year-old daughter, Emily, in the head because she suffered from migraines. He also admitted to fatally shooting his wife, Laurel, and his sister, Shelly, that same day. Randy eventually committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. His Facebook confession appeared to be the focal point of the stories in international mainstream media and was the factor that first drew the author's attention to the case. The chapter first considers the individual, familial, local and structural context of the Janzen family before discussing the Janzens' social media lives and practices. It also compares Randy's use of networked media with that of Derek Medina.