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Murder-Suicide of Family in Enoch, Utah


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No words, really:

Quote

A Mormon family – including five children – were found shot dead inside of their rural Utah home by the family patriarch on Tuesday. The children's father then turned the gun on himself. 

The bodies of Michael, 42, and Tausha Haight, 40, their five children and Tausha's mother, Gail, 78, were found on Wednesday in the town of Enoch with gunshot wounds.

The children were only identified as three daughters, aged 17, 12, and 7, and two sons, aged 7 and 4 years old. Police had been called to their home to perform a welfare check by other family members. 

It was later revealed that massacre occurred shortly after Tausha filed for divorce from her husband, reports KSL. Until last week, Michael had been working as an insurance agent for Allstate. 

A statement from Enoch City Manager Rob Dotson identified Michael Haight as the only suspect in the crime. Dotson said: 'While this intense investigation is ongoing, investigators currently believe there are no suspects outstanding. Evidence suggests that the suspect took his own life after killing seven others in the home. The suspect is 42-year-old Michael Haight.'
...

James Park, who represented Tausha Haight in the divorce case, said she had not expressed any fear that her husband would physically hurt her but he declined to elaborate, citing the investigation into the killings. 

Park said he only met with her twice, mostly recently on Tuesday, and said she 'was an incredibly nice lady.' 

In a press conference, Dotson said that authorities entered the home around 4:00pm on January 4th. 

The alarm was first raised when Tausha did not show up to an appointment, Dotson said. 

At the same press conference, the town's mayor Geoffrey Chestnut said through tears that he was a neighbor of the Haight family and that their children played in his yard. 

Officials said that the family was known to law enforcement and that they had been to the home previously for unspecified reasons. None of those visits occurred recently.  

Neighbors of the family told KSL that they were active in the town's Mormon community and described them as 'very welcoming.' 
...

Archives from the local newspaper show that Haight's first birthday was commemorated with an announcement in the local newspaper in 1981 alongside a baby picture of him laughing.

He was in Boy Scouts as a young boy and earned the 'Faith in God' award as a fourth grader. Two years later in 1992, another newspaper article showed that he had won a 'Gospel in Action' award from his church.

His picture appeared again in the newspaper in 1998 when he was finalist for an academic award in high school for business and marketing. After high school, he served a church mission in Brazil and then married Tuasha at a church temple in St. George, in 2003. She was from Overton, Nevada, located just two hours south of Cedar City, where he grew up.

This phenomenon - "family annihilation" or "familicide" - is described as follows (emphases added) :

Quote

A familicide is a type of murder or murder-suicide in which one kills multiple close family members in quick succession, most often children, spouses, siblings, or parents.[1][2] In half the cases, the killer lastly kills themselves in a murder-suicide.[3][4][5] If only the parents are killed, the case may also be referred to as a parricide. Where all members of a family are killed, the crime may be referred to as family annihilation.
...

Between 1900 and 2000, there were 909 victims of mass murder in the US (defined as four victims within a 24-hour period). Of those, more than half occurred within an immediate family. Although the familicide cases are relatively rare, they are the most common form of mass killings. However, statistical data are difficult to establish due to reporting discrepancies.[11]

Familicide differs from other forms of mass murder in that the murderer kills family members or loved ones rather than anonymous people. This has a different psychodynamic and psychiatric significance, but the distinction is not always made.[12]
...

The Director of the Birmingham City University Centre of Applied Criminology, David Wilson, co-wrote a study with two others,[15] "A taxonomy of male British family annihilators, 1980–2013", examining British familicides in the period.[16] Newspaper articles were used as references. The study concluded that most of the perpetrators were male. Men who murder their entire families usually do so because they believe their spouse performed a wrongdoing and that the spouse needs to be punished, they feel that the family members caused a disappointment, they feel that their own financial failings ruined the point of having a family, and because they wish to save their family from a perceived threat.[17] Far fewer women commit familicide, and those who do usually have different reasons, including perceived or imagined loss of custody of children. Male family annihilators are typically driven by loss of control, including financial crises, separation or divorce, and may demonstrate evidence for domestic violence, while for women perpetrators, battery, abuse or mental illness is more common, the act itself more likely premeditated and more likely to include victims under the age of one.[18]

A literature review done in 2018 noted contextual and offense characteristics of familicide. Among the 63 articles reviewed 74–85% noted relationship problems or separation. This article also found evidence of financial problems, intoxication, and use of firearms. This literature review unveiled that 71% of these offenses were motivated in regard to conflict between parents and 29% associated to the perpetrators' situation in life. Lastly this article reported two studies, one of which found that many of the motives involved feelings of abandonment, psychosis, and narcissistic rage. The other study found that 60% of these perpetrators were suicidal and 40% homicidal.[19]
...

The internal logic for family annihilation can stem from a number of sources.[citation needed]

David Wilson of Birmingham City University has divided these cases into four groups: anomic, disappointed, self-righteous, and paranoid.[citation needed]

In this typology, the anomic killer sees his family purely as a status symbol; when his economic status collapses, he sees them as surplus to requirements. The disappointed killer seeks to punish the family for not living up to his ideals of family life. The self-righteous killer destroys the family to exact revenge upon the mother, in an act that he blames on her. Finally, the paranoid killer kills their family in what they imagine to be an attempt to protect them from something even worse.[20]

The Wikipedia article includes a depressingly long list of instances of this phenomenon

Back in September we discussed another instance of this, in Maryland: Murder-Suicide of "Mormon" Family in Maryland.  And, of course, there were the Powell murders.

My condolences to the family and friends of the Haight family.  What a terrible, terrible thing.

-Smac

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14 minutes ago, JAHS said:

I know this sounds heartless, but if such people are determined to commit suicide anyway, why can't they just kill themselves first instead of the rest of this beautiful family? 🤨

image.png.f6ec481c142bf1c924035689ff7f3118.png?

There isn't really rational thought going on here.  There is tremendous stress, mental illness, wickedness, warped reasoning, or some combination of these.

Thanks,

-Smac 

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3 minutes ago, mrmarklin said:

The wife had filed for divorce. Now we know why. 🤥

I would say that's only a small piece.  An awful lot of people get divorced without going to that extreme.

Edit: maybe you mean instead now we know why she filed?

Edited by Rain
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https://apnews.com/article/utah-education-salt-lake-city-03b4048bf195b027b84c3337c676ce7a
 

Quote

Family mass killings have become a disturbingly common tragedy across the country. In 2022 there were 17 of them, according to a database compiled by USA Today, The Associated Press and Northeastern University. Ten were murder-suicides, and 14 were shootings. The database defines a mass killing as four or more people slain, not including the assailant.

 

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1 hour ago, rodheadlee said:

Satan and his minions are running wild. The Spirit of the Lord is withdrawing from the land. Even the Birds are angry. We feed hummingbirds and songbirds everyday and they are all fighting each other.

Vicious hummingbirds…doesn’t seem possible.  Added:  apparently hummingbirds are very territorial 

Edited by Calm
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4 hours ago, JAHS said:

I know this sounds heartless, but if such people are determined to commit suicide anyway, why can't they just kill themselves first instead of the rest of this beautiful family? 🤨

image.png.f6ec481c142bf1c924035689ff7f3118.png?

And let them live happy lives without him there? That doesn’t seem fair.

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1 hour ago, rodheadlee said:

Satan and his minions are running wild. The Spirit of the Lord is withdrawing from the land. Even the Birds are angry. We feed hummingbirds and songbirds everyday and they are all fighting each other.

I read some sheep entrails this morning and got the same reading. The omens are consistent.

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5 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

Satan and his minions are running wild. The Spirit of the Lord is withdrawing from the land. Even the Birds are angry. We feed hummingbirds and songbirds everyday and they are all fighting each other.

Interesting. My wife has taken down our bird feeders because of all the fighting. 

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Family systems are among the most complicated on earth. Family violence of one type or another is much more common than we might imagine. I believe it is epigenetic - inter-generational. BYU used to have a highly regarded PhD program in family therapy, mostly from a systems perspective. It may still exist, I have no idea.

.

Edited by Navidad
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10 hours ago, smac97 said:

No words, really:

This phenomenon - "family annihilation" or "familicide" - is described as follows (emphases added) :

The Wikipedia article includes a depressingly long list of instances of this phenomenon

Back in September we discussed another instance of this, in Maryland: Murder-Suicide of "Mormon" Family in Maryland.  And, of course, there were the Powell murders.

My condolences to the family and friends of the Haight family.  What a terrible, terrible thing.

-Smac

And this husband, just horrible. Why can't these men just move on? https://kutv.com/amp/news/local/idaho-man-killed-3-sleeping-children-then-himself-police-say?fbclid=IwAR3DoKvl1W-BjGuE4YjZsWXMHna9C6F66xhAH9t6Kj_bwm4Xx_EwK11zawU

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52 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

And the family in California this week where the dad drove them all over an ocean cliff. They miraculously all survived so at least he can be prosecuted.

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6 hours ago, The Nehor said:

And let them live happy lives without him there? That doesn’t seem fair.

No not fair. But after tragedies people normally manage to eventually find some happiness in life as they adjust to their new situation. 

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10 minutes ago, JAHS said:

No not fair. But after tragedies people normally manage to eventually find some happiness in life as they adjust to their new situation. 

I think his point was that it wouldn't be perceived as fair by the gun-man.   As smacs article explains, the killer often does this in revenge.  It is not a typical suicide that is meant to end their own suffering, it is meant to inflict punishment/revenge on others before ending their own suffering.  They want to make the spouse pay for their perceived wrongs.  Killing himself and letting her go on and live a happy life with her children, isn't perceived as just in their twisted minds. 

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2 hours ago, bluebell said:

And the family in California this week where the dad drove them all over an ocean cliff. They miraculously all survived so at least he can be prosecuted.

I sort of remember that the dad abused some of them and didn't want to be held accountable? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/tesla-crash-pasadena-california-dharmesh-patel-b2256002.html

Edited by Tacenda
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9 hours ago, Calm said:

Vicious hummingbirds…doesn’t seem possible.  Added:  apparently hummingbirds are very territorial 

Hummingbirds can be extremely territorial.  Because of their high metabolism hummingbirds need to eat about every 20 minutes.  When one finds a productive flower patch or feeder a hummingbird will consider it it's territory and defend it against other hummingbirds.  Some hummingbird species can be more aggressive than others, and there is individual variation within species. 

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22 minutes ago, bluebell said:

That’s not in the article you posted. Is that information provided somewhere else?

I remember, sort of, it being mentioned on the news. And then I c/p'd this from the article I posted:

Dharmesh Patel, a doctor from Pasadena, has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and child abuse after his electric vehicle plunged

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5 hours ago, Navidad said:

Interesting. My wife has taken down our bird feeders because of all the fighting. 

Spacing them out could also alleviate some of that.  Feeding is a stressful time for birds.  Not only are they in competition with one another for a limited amount of food that is concentrated, in the case of bird feeders, in one point, but they are extremely vulnerable to predators while feeding as well. 

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14 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I remember, sort of, it being mentioned on the news. And then I c/p'd this from the article I posted:

Dharmesh Patel, a doctor from Pasadena, has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and child abuse after his electric vehicle plunged

Ah, I see where you are getting that from now.  As I understand it, he was charged with that because he drove his car over a cliff with his kids in it.  They are considering that act as child abuse.

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