Summary

The start of this section tells the story of Patrick O'Hanlon. While suffering from severe depression, O'Hanlon murdered his wife and their daughter. Familicide is a crime commonly perpetrated by white middle- and upper-middle-class men. O'Hanlon agreed to talk to Snyder and "fit David Adams's definition of narcissism in every way" (160). Like many abusive men, O'Hanlon's father was violent, but O'Hanlon does not characterize his father as abusive, blaming his mother's behavior instead. Research on familicides characterize the perpetrators of these crimes in two ways: 1) the livid coercive who has a long history of domestic violence; 2) the civil reputable who has no obvious history of violence and who kills "out of a warped sense of altruism" (163). O'Hanlon fits the second category. Civil Reputables are often the primary financial earner in the family, they are...