Matricide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Matricide is the act of killing one's mother. As for any type of unlawful killing, motives can vary a great deal.

Sometimes, as with Patricide, it may be because the killer has been subjected to physical, psychological or sexual abuse by his/her mother.

Real life cases

• In AD 59, the Roman Emperor Nero is said to have ordered the murder of his mother Agrippina the younger, supposedly because she was conspiring against him.

• The Parker-Hulme murder case of 1954. This case was chronicled in the film Heavenly Creatures/

• Serial killer Edmund Kemper beat his mother to death in 1973, along with one of his mother's friends before turning himself in to the police. He had previously committed half-a-dozen sex-murders. Kemper had been psychologically abused by his domineering mother in his youth.

• Luke Woodham, Mississippi resident who killed his mother in June of 1997, and currently serving a life sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

See also

• homicide
• Patricide
• Fratricide
• Filicide
• Infanticide