Why would a man kill his family? Anger, say psychologists

Anger, as opposed to depression, tends to be what separates the person who commits murder-suicide from someone who takes only his own life, according to a psychologist from Roosevelt University.

In the case of 46-year-old Kevin Finnerty, who police say set the fire that killed himself, his wife and one of their three children, "Taking everybody's life would seem to be an angry act," said James Choca, chair of the psychology department at Roosevelt University.

The reason the children may have been included in Finnerty's retribution is that the targets of extreme anger tend to expand and become more generalized, Choca said. A person's anger toward one person can sometimes expand to include an entire organization, he explained.

The key to stopping these tragedies, he said, is to recognize signs of pain in others and try to get them the help they need before it's too late.

In the university setting in which he works, Choca said there is a strong effort to make students aware of what types of problems other students may be experiencing.

As a result, he is far from cynical about the ability to prevent these tragedies.

"Most of the time, you do see the signs," he said. "I have to think we're preventing things like this from happening all the time by the people we're seeing in hospitals and psychiatric wards."

Investigators, meanwhile, often continue looking into the "why" of murder-suicides, long after they drop from the headlines.

In May 2008, the bodies of 60-year-old Michael Fontana, his 47-year-old wife, Becky, and their 7-year-old son, Joe, were found shot to death in their Roselle home.

The case was essentially "solved" by the next day, when the Cook County medical examiner autopsy determined that Michael had killed his family and himself.

But for months after the funerals, Roselle police continued their investigation, Administrative Sgt. John Lawson said.

"If you have a case where the suspect is dead, we work just as thoroughly as if they were alive," Lawson said. "There has to be closure on the case as well as for the family."

And so, police patiently awaited the results of tests from the crime lab, checking computer databases and phone records.

It took about two to four months before all the evidence was in and the fact that Michael Fontana had acted alone was beyond all doubt, Lawson said.

Though this was exactly what the public and family had come to expect, any conclusion to the contrary would have been shared immediately, he added.

DeKalb Police Lt. Gary Spangler said even when the suspect is dead - as in the case of the 2008 NIU campus shootings, where the killer took his own life - law enforcement will continue look for a motive, even if there is obviously no hope of prosecuting a case.

"You have to paint enough of a picture to satisfy the family," Spangler said. "You want to be able to say he did this because of this, he was upset because of this."