When a murder ends in suicide, investigators lose one of the most important pieces of the puzzle—the person who could explain why.

In this episode, I take you inside several recent murder-suicide cases from across the United States, including tragedies involving entire families, intimate partners, and parents and children. From Michigan to Oklahoma, Delaware, and Florida, these heartbreaking cases remind us that every scene tells a story, but it’s the evidence that reveals what truly happened.

As a forensic death investigator, I explain how investigators reconstruct these complex scenes by examining body position, injuries, blood evidence, trajectories, fire damage, digital evidence, timelines, and countless other details. When there is no suspect to interview, no trial, and often no suicide note, the investigation must rely on science, careful documentation, and the facts left behind.

We’ll also discuss why protective orders don’t always prevent violence, why investigators avoid speculation during active cases, and why it’s important to distinguish between homicide and suicide when understanding these tragedies. Throughout the episode, I share the questions investigators ask, the evidence they search for, and why the answers aren’t always immediately clear.

These cases are difficult to hear, but they also highlight the dedication of investigators, first responders, and forensic professionals who work tirelessly to uncover the truth for victims and their families.

Join me as we explore the investigative process behind one of the most challenging types of death investigations, and the questions that often remain when murder ends in suicide.

*  Listener discretion is advised.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

00:06

Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Mattson.

00:10

Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.

00:24

Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Pushing Up Lilies. We are home this week and back from North Dakota. We had a great trip. Travel’s exhausting.

00:42

I don’t know if y’all feel the same way about it that I do. I’m always so excited to get there, but I’m also equally excited to get home.

00:50

Of course, I recorded the podcast from there and did homework from there, and so life didn’t really stop.

00:59

I’m really looking forward to three days from now when this semester’s over, and I can actually relax for about seven weeks before my next semester starts.

01:11

That gives me a little bit to look forward to. Maybe I can take a little trip to Fredericksburg or something to wine country during that time. That’d be kinda relaxing. I would love that.

01:22

Now, this week I planned on having Kelsey on from last week’s episode, and that is not happening just because our schedules are hard to coincide right now.

01:37

Working on having her within the next couple of weeks, but while I was gone, we had this wave of murder-suicides, and so I kinda wanted to talk a little bit about that this week instead of having Kelsey on and give her some time to get her bearings.

01:57

I know that case is relatively new, having just happened in June.

02:01

I don’t want to overwhelm her and bother her too much, so I did reach out to her, and we’ll try to get together in the next couple of weeks.

02:09

I’ve also been scheduling myself as guest host on a lot of other podcasts.

02:16

That has resulted in me hiring an executive assistant to actually help me set up all of my guest appearances and travel and that kind of stuff ’cause it gets hectic, and I don’t wanna forget something, and I always wanna be able to reach out to people, and that just keeps me on my toes a little bit more so that I can respond a little bit quicker.

02:39

Anyway, we’re gonna talk again about this recent wave of murder-suicides, and the truth is it happens every day, and not a lot of people know that.

02:51

I know that because I worked as a death investigator, but even in the small county that I worked in, there were a lot of them, and when I worked in Harris County, there were even more.

03:02

In Dallas County, there were even more.

03:05

So of course, the larger the area, the more frequently this happens, and because there’s been a wave recently, we’re hearing about it a lot in the news, but then also the recent case of the family and then also the influencers, those cases tend to make the news because family of eight and two TikTok influencers.

03:31

As social media has grown, so do the instances where we’re hearing of these more frequently. But I know we’ve all been following the news lately.

03:41

It’s very disturbing, and in a matter of weeks, we’ve seen families, husbands, wives, parents, children, and former partners become victims in cases that are described as murder-suicides.

03:55

It’s happened in Michigan, Oklahoma, Delaware, Florida, and other communities all across the country.

04:03

They’re all different people and different circumstances and different relationships, but they have the same basic ending, and that is someone decides another human being is gonna die, and then after committing the homicide, the person responsible dies by suicide.

04:22

And so tonight I wanna kinda talk you through these recent cases, but I wanna approach the episode a little bit differently because I’ve spent years investigating death, and I’ve walked into homes where someone dies unexpectedly and, of course, examined the bodies and talked to families during the worst moments of their lives.

04:45

One thing you learn quickly in death investigation is that the scene does not arrive with an explanation, so you basically have to build it.

04:54

You look at the body, you look at the environment, you look at the evidence, and of course, we talk to law enforcement, family members, we go over medications and medical history, and we look at injuries, and we document everything present in the crime scene, and we just pay attention to not only what’s there, but also what’s missing.

05:17

And so eventually the investigation starts answering the questions that everybody wants answered. Who died? How did they die? When did they die?

05:29

When did this incident occur, and what circumstances actually led to it? When another person caused the death, who’s responsible?

05:41

Murder-suicide can create another complication because the person that we want to have arrested and interrogate is dead, so there’s no trial, and there’s no cross-examination, and there’s no defendant sitting across from detectives explaining what happened, and sometimes there’s not even a note.

06:05

Investigators really have to reconstruct the story from what remains, and many times there’s not much left.

06:12

Now, one of the cases that we’re discussing involves eight bodies, six of them are children, and a burning house. So, we’re gonna start in Michigan.

06:22

This is in Grand Haven Township, Michigan, on July twenty-fourth. So, all these cases are new. Again, all this information is factual. Grand Haven Township is in Western Michigan, near Lake Michigan.

06:37

This happened inside a home on Riverside Trail, the Carroll-Kiewitz family. Christopher Carroll-Kiewitz was forty-seven, and his wife Amanda, also known as Mandy, was thirty-nine.

06:48

So, they had six children. They ranged in age from five to fifteen. Two of them, I believe I read, were adopted.

06:58

Now, on Friday, July twenty-fourth, firefighters responded to reports of smoke coming from the house, and what they found inside were eight people dead, so the entire family.

07:10

Now, at first, everybody was careful, because when you go through the crime scene, just because there’s a fire, you can’t always assume that’s what killed everybody, especially when there’s eight people.

07:21

Some victims appeared to have gunshot wounds at the time, and of course, there was also fire damage. So, this scene looked very suspicious.

07:31

Murder-suicide was one possibility that they considered in the beginning, but they weren’t really ready to say that publicly.

07:39

This is where I wanna bring you into the investigation with me, because imagine being called to the scene.

07:44

You know there’s a fire, and you learn that there are multiple bodies, but then you learn that some of those bodies are children.

07:52

And so now you’re dealing with two major investigative problems at the same time, a multiple death scene and a fire scene.

08:01

Fire changes everything, because as a death investigator, my first job isn’t to walk into the scene and just automatically decide what happens.

08:10

My job was to document what’s there, where the victims are, what position they’re in, what condition their bodies are in. If there are any visible injuries, is there any blood? Where’s the blood at?

08:25

What does the blood pattern tell us, if anything? It doesn’t always tell us anything. Are there weapons present? Where are the weapons? Are there any shell casings or ammunition?

08:38

Are there any signs that someone moved around the house? Are the doors locked? Are the windows open?

08:45

Of course, in a fire, you can’t always tell depending on how bad the damage is, but are there any signs of forced entry? Where did the fire originate? Which is, again, not my job.

08:55

That’s what the fire marshal’s for. I know nothing about that. And you can’t do everybody’s job. So that’s another part of investigation.

09:04

You have to stand back and let the police do their job, let the fire marshals do their job, and then you do your job. But they will help determine where that origin point was.

09:13

Are there several origin points? And one of the most important questions when a body’s recovered from the fire scene is, was that person alive when the fire started?

09:24

Because a burned body doesn’t automatically mean that the fire actually caused their death.

09:29

So, people hear that someone was found inside a burning house, and they just assume automatically that victim died from smoke inhalation or thermal injuries, but sometimes they did, but sometimes the fire happened after they were already dead.

09:44

And those are two very different investigations. The investigation moves quickly, and this autopsy showed all eight members of the family died from gunshot wounds.

09:56

Now, Amanda and the six children, their deaths were ruled homicide, and Christopher’s death was ruled a suicide.

10:04

Investigators said that the evidence indicated that Christopher killed his wife and children, started multiple fires through the house, and then killed himself.

10:13

I know online there was a lot of speculation in the beginning. Everyone just assumed that the husband did it.

10:18

Some people were angry that was being assumed, but it was found, and a lot of that is when they do the autopsy, they look at the trajectory.

10:28

And authorities believe that these killings may have begun the previous night or during the early morning hours of July twenty-fourth.

10:37

There’s no confirmed motive that’s been announced, and they’re saying that they haven’t located a suicide note. So that leaves questions that we all have, like why did he do this?

10:48

But before we get there, I wanna talk a little bit about the physical investigation, because eight gunshot deaths inside a home create a huge scene, and this is an all-day investigation.

10:59

So, when I hear eight people were found dead inside a house, I immediately think about logistics. Eight bodies mean eight separate death investigations occurring inside one larger investigation.

11:12

So, we have to remember every person has to be identified. Everybody has to be photographed. Every injury has to be documented. Body position matters.

11:23

Their relationship to the scene matters, and we need to kinda understand the sequence as far as who could have died first, who died last. Did anyone attempt to escape?

11:34

Did anyone move after they were injured? Did anyone try to defend themselves? And that’s why we look for defense injuries. Did anybody hear what happened anywhere else in the house?

11:47

And then were all the victims together? Were they separated? Were they asleep?

11:52

So, we don’t publicly know all of these answers in this particular case, and I’m not gonna invent them, but those are exactly the questions that the investigators are asking.

12:04

Now, there were six children in the house. The oldest was fifteen, and the youngest was five. So, think about the difference in those ages. So, a 15-year-old is really gonna understand danger.

12:17

A five-year-old depends almost completely on the adults around them for safety. And the person investigators say caused this danger was their father.

12:28

So, this is where cases involving children affect even experienced investigators, because you have to learn how to work through these scenes professionally, and you definitely learn over time how to compartmentalize, because you have to document what you see, and you have to focus on your responsibilities.

12:49

But being professional doesn’t mean that you have to stop being human. I’ve worked a lot of scenes involving children, and those cases stay with you almost always.

13:01

I can probably over my twenty years as an investigator tell you about every child death that I worked.

13:07

There’s something especially difficult about seeing a child who should have gone to school the next morning.

13:14

When you look around and you see their backpack and their toys and pictures and evidence of this ordinary life surrounding this violent death, you don’t forget those things.

13:26

Investigators said multiple fires were intentionally started inside this Michigan home, and that actually matters because if investigators establish that the victims were already dead before the fires, then the fire just becomes part of what happened after the homicide.

13:43

So why was the fire started? There’s a lot of possibilities that would be considered. Was it to destroy evidence? Was the perpetrator trying to conceal the deaths? Did it mean something?

13:56

Was it symbolic in any way? Was it part of the suicide plan? Was it really meant to destroy the house? But we don’t really know Christopher’s reason.

14:07

And unless investigators find a note and when they’re doing their electronic searches, if they find messages or some evidence explaining his actions, we might never know why he did this.

14:19

But fire investigators and death investigators and the police work together in cases like this. So, the fire scene tells one story, but as we’ve talked about before, the bodies tell another.

14:33

And so, the goal is determine whether these stories actually match up. Did they die before the fire?

14:40

And one question I get frequently asked about fire deaths is how we determine whether someone was alive while the fire was burning, and that’s why the autopsy matters enormously.

14:52

The pathologist actually looks for evidence of smoke inhalation and other things. We consider the toxicology results, including the amount of exposure to carbon monoxide. They examine the airway.

15:06

They look at burns. They consider the victim’s location in relation to the fire, and that’s why we take photos. And then they compare those findings with other injuries.

15:17

So, if someone has a fatal gunshot wound and little or no evidence of inhaling products of combustion, it definitely helps investigators reconstruct that sequence.

15:28

They were shot, they died, then the fire started.

15:32

But that sequence is very different from fire followed by death, and sequencing is one of the biggest responsibilities in a death investigation like this. So, we need to know what happened first.

15:46

With multiple victims, sequence is really critical. You look at blood evidence. You look at shell casings. You look at trajectories, locations of the victims.

15:59

Where are the doors in relation to the victims? Phone messages, surveillance cameras, neighbors’ cameras, vehicle movement, internet activity.

16:09

You look at the last time anybody outside the home communicated with the family, and you start to kinda build a timeline.

16:18

Sometimes the phone in someone’s pocket tells investigators more about the final hours than anyone else in the room. And people always expect suicide notes.

16:29

Most people who die by suicide don’t leave a traditional note. Now, I’ve told y’all multiple times, sometimes they do.

16:36

Sometimes they leave a note for each person in the family, and it’s neatly laid out with the family member’s name on it, along with their driver’s license and a copy of their will and their birth certificate, and very strategically planned, but it’s not always that way.

16:50

So, the absence of a suicide note doesn’t tell us much. Investigators now have something people didn’t have decades ago, and that’s digital evidence.

17:01

We have text messages and emails and search histories, and we can ping locations. We can look at financial records, and we have social media, deleted messages, cloud storage, photos.

17:15

Just all of that may help establish what was happening before the death. And in a case involving eight members, investigators will want to understand what changed to cause this.

17:28

What made them go from what appeared to be a happy family on social media to a death scene? Was there a financial crisis? Were there problems in the relationship? Were there problems at work?

17:42

Are there any legal trouble? Were they planning to separate or file for divorce? Had there been threats between the two of them? Any previous violence? Were the firearms older? Were they purchased recently?

17:56

Were there changes in behavior in anyone in the family? But we need to be careful because those are investigative questions, and they’re not established facts about this family.

18:10

So, there’s already a lot of speculation online, and that moves faster, unfortunately, than evidence. A death investigation has to move in the opposite direction.

18:20

We have to look at the evidence first and then conclusion second. Now, we’re also gonna look at the Sarah Gilson case, and this is in Owasso, Oklahoma.

18:31

So, this case is very different because here there were warnings. Sarah Gilson had filed protective orders involving her estranged husband, Jeremiah Sean Duffy.

18:42

On July twenty-third, twenty twenty-six, police responded to a shooting in Owasso, and Sarah was dead, and Duffy was dead. Now, of course, this was more obviously investigated as a murder-suicide.

18:57

Reports surrounding this case indicated that Sarah had expressed fear before her death and had sought legal protection.

19:06

And that changes the conversation ’cause now we’re talking about a victim who appears to have recognized this danger. She took action, but she still died.

19:17

Then comes the question of the protective order.

19:19

Every time something like this happens, people always say, “But she had a protective order.” A protective order is a legal intervention, and it creates consequences, and it does establish boundaries, and it documents behavior.

19:36

And it gives law enforcement additional authority in certain circumstances, but a piece of paper doesn’t physically stop someone who has decided to commit murder, as we all know.

19:48

This is where we need to stop asking victims, “Why didn’t you leave?” Because sometimes they did. Sometimes separation is in the process. Sometimes paperwork’s been filed, like in cases like this.

20:03

Sometimes the police have been called. Family knows. Friends know. Sometimes the locks are changed. Sometimes everything that everyone claims she should have done has been done, and it escalates anyway.

20:21

So, when investigators examine an intimate partner homicide, the relationship history matters. We need to know, was there a separation? Was their divorce being discussed? Were there custody disputes?

20:37

Was one partner attempting to regain control? Were there any threats? Was there stalking? Did they have weapons? Had suicide been threatened? Did anyone ever say, “If I can’t have you, no one else can”?

20:53

Those statements matter. A threat of suicide during domestic violence isn’t something I would dismiss as drama.

21:02

When someone’s threatening suicide while they’re stalking or controlling a partner, I would want to know about it because that concern isn’t just limited to self-harm.

21:13

If they’re thinking about taking themselves out, they’re not worried about a lawsuit. They’re not worried about going to prison. They’re not worried about Bubba.

21:21

They’re not worried about what they’re gonna have for dinner tomorrow. They’re planning on killing themselves, and they don’t care. They don’t care.

21:29

So, reports surrounding Sarah’s death indicate that a dispatcher actually heard her screaming during the emergency call before officers found them dead. So, think about how quickly that unfolded.

21:42

Police were on their way, maybe even minutes away. I’ve talked about how I’m amazed at how quickly sometimes EMS responds at a scene.

21:53

But with a firearm present, every minute matters because we know how quickly that firearm can go off, and those seconds have to be reconstructed.

22:05

So, we need to know who called, when they called, what was said, what were shots heard, how long until officers arrived, where were the bodies found, where was the weapon, who had access to it.

22:19

The body tells its own story, so this is something that I learned in death investigation. Witnesses tell you what they think happened.

22:28

The scene tells you what physically happened, but those two stories don’t always agree. Sometimes witnesses are mistaken. Sometimes they’re traumatized. They didn’t see the entire event.

22:41

Sometimes they lie. But the body doesn’t give us an interview, but the injuries actually give us the evidence that we need. A gunshot wound has characteristics that tell us a lot.

22:53

The range, how far away did it happen from?

22:57

Of course, we all know trajectory matters, location, clothing, blood evidence, the relationship between where the weapon is found and where the body’s found definitely matters.

23:09

And when investigators classify a case as a murder-suicide, they need evidence supporting which person committed the homicide and which death was self-inflicted.

23:20

So, let’s go to another case in Milford, Delaware.July fifth, Delaware State Police received a nine one one call. A man called and said he killed his wife, and then he disconnected.

23:32

And when troopers responded, dispatchers and officers attempted to contact the man and received no response.

23:39

So, a tactical team eventually entered, and they found a thirty-eight-year-old woman with gunshot wounds, and they also found a forty-three-year-old man with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

23:52

That victim was later identified as Jessica Bradley, and police identified Brooks Bradley as the suspect.

24:00

Now, imagine, and we don’t always think about this, but imagine being the dispatcher that actually received that call. Somebody that says, “I killed my wife,” and then hung up.

24:11

And now there’s so many unknowns. Is she really alive? Did he just shoot her? Is the caller still armed? Are there any children inside? Is anyone else inside? Is this a hostage situation?

24:25

Has he killed himself? Is he waiting for the police? These questions actually change how officers are gonna approach the residents, but in this case, there were no answers to those questions.

24:36

So, this is something that people watch from outside and don’t always understand because they wonder sometimes, why didn’t the police run straight in?

24:47

Because responding officers don’t really always know what they’re walking into. They have to balance getting to the victim with the possibility of getting shot.

24:57

And once the scene is secured, that’s when the death investigation begins. So, the first thing I look for when I arrive at a death scene is I’m looking at the entire environment.

25:09

First of all, is it safe? Have the police secured the scene, and is it safe? Has EMS removed everybody from the scene who possibly does not have life-threatening injuries?

25:21

But I don’t wanna have tunnel vision. The obvious injury is important, but so is everything around it.

25:30

So, a weapon beside a body might seem to answer a question, but it always doesn’t because we need to know who handled it, who owned it, where are the shell casings, where’s the blood, where’s the wounds, does their trajectory make sense, does the body position make sense, does it look like anybody moved after the shooting occurred, does the evidence fit the timeline?

25:56

Investigators don’t determine suicide just because a gun is laying next to somebody. The manner of death is determined by the pathologist after the entire investigation is considered.

26:09

Okay, so let’s look at Largo, Florida.July ninth, deputies in Pinellas County responded to a shooting in Largo.

26:17

They found twenty-seven-year-old Parth Patel dead from what authorities described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

26:24

And his father, fifty-five-year-old Hitesh Patel, was critically injured, and he did later die.

26:30

Now, according to the sheriff’s office there, Parth was visiting from Ohio and had experienced a noticeable decline in his mental health.

26:42

A detective said a comment made by his father preceded the shooting. Parth shot his father and then himself.

26:49

And this case differs a little from intimate partner cases that we’ve discussed because it involves a son and a father, but it also illustrates that murder-suicide describes the outcome, but it does not describe one single type of offender or a relationship or a motive.

27:12

Partners, former partners, parents, children, entire families, all of these circumstances differ, and the investigative principles remain.

27:23

We have to establish who died, the cause of each death, the manner of each death, and basically reconstruct the sequence and understand all of these circumstances and all of these deaths.

27:35

So why are we seeing so many? After several cases occur close together, it feels like an epidemic that suddenly appeared, but we need to separate perception from data.

27:48

Murder-suicides are rare compared with homicide and suicide as separate categories, but they’re also difficult to track because there isn’t one national database giving us a definite count every day.

28:05

The CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System combines information from death certificates and medical examiner, and coroner reports as well as law enforcement records.

28:18

But that combination matters because no single source actually tells the story.

28:24

Historical CDC data also shows homicide followed by suicide appears in a meaningful share of intimate partner violence-related deaths.

28:34

When we see these stories repeatedly, we need to talk about the relationship between domestic violence, homicide, and suicide. So, I wanna talk a little about the terminology.

28:47

Murder-suicide, we say it so quickly, it almost sounds like one event, but there is an important distinction. The victim of the homicide obviously didn’t choose to die.

28:58

The offender made that choice for them, and then the offender died by suicide. Now, when I investigate death, manner matters. Homicide and suicide are completely separate.

29:11

If I have a husband who shoots his wife and then shoots himself, obviously her death is homicide, his death is suicide, and that classification does matter legally and statistically, and it also matters to families because you don’t wanna call the entire event a suicide because that erases the homicide victim.

29:33

Now, familicide, that’s also called family annihilation, and that refers to killing multiple family members. And we desperately, as people, want a psychological explanation for an act like that.

29:48

We want a diagnosis, and we wanna be able to say that’s why it happened. But life rarely gives investigators something that clean.

29:58

Motives in familicide cases have included relationship breakdowns, financial problems, maybe perceived loss of status or control or revenge.

30:10

Mental illness might be present, but it should not become the automatic explanation for every act of violence. Most people experiencing mental illness don’t go out and kill somebody.

30:22

So, our job is to look at individual evidence.

30:26

I wanna spend some time explaining the reality of a scene too when there’s a lot of victims because television kinda compresses everything You have to get it in a thirty-minute episode.

30:38

You’ll be watching TV, and it’ll be okay, the investigators walk in, and somebody sees something, and then there’s a commercial, and then all of a sudden, oh, okay, we figured it all out.

30:47

We know what happened. And it’s not that quick. Real cases don’t work like that.

30:53

A large scene can take hours, sometimes longer, because we’ve got law enforcement and crime scene personnel and death investigators and fire investigators, if there’s a fire. We’re taking photos.

31:06

Technicians come in, detectives get involved, sometimes federal resources, and everyone has a job, and you have to avoid destroying evidence while you’re doing your job.

31:18

The bodies obviously can’t be immediately moved. We have to document where they’re found. Their position is part of the evidence. Where’s the blood? Where’s the weapon? Where are the shell casings?

31:31

We’re looking for phones. We’re looking for mundane things that you might not think matter.

31:38

Half-eaten meal, the TV on, an alarm set for the next morning, a medication bottle lying out, a suitcase packed, a calendar laying out, a document that’s recently been printed.

31:53

Everything helps establish what normal life looked like immediately before this death interrupted it.

32:00

And people always want to know, and I think we’ve talked about this before, what time did they die?

32:06

So, television has given people the impression that when I walk into a room and I look at a body, I say, “She died at ten forty-two.” But it doesn’t happen like that.

32:16

Time of death is an estimate, and it’s based on a lot of things. But we have to consider rigor. We have to consider body temperature. We have to consider lividity, environmental conditions.

32:30

How much clothing did they have on? How big were they? Where were they located? Was there a fan blowing on them? Witness information, electronic records. When were they last known alive?

32:42

Security cameras, text messages, social media posts, all of those things might provide time markers. But in a family of eight, investigators would establish a timeline for every person.

32:55

So, when were they last known alive? When was their phone last used? When did they last communicate with friends? Did somebody miss work?

33:05

So, there’s so many things that are involved in building this timeline piece by piece. A lot of things that listeners ask me is, after we finish at a scene, what happens?

33:18

Each decedent is transported to the medical examiner’s office responsible for the case, and the autopsy documents injuries and disease.

33:29

And in gunshot deaths, the pathologist examines the characteristics of the wounds and the trajectory, and they’ll do X-rays, and they have to recover the projectiles, and toxicology specimens might be collected.

33:44

And then, of course, we have to confirm identity. And in a fire scene, identification sometimes is difficult, depending on the condition of the person. We might have to look at dental records, DNA.

33:58

Everybody receives its own case, and when eight people die together, there are eight individual names and histories and causes of death and manners of death.

34:07

And another group of victims we don’t talk about are the people who receive the phone call after someone dies. Parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, coworkers, teachers, neighbors.

34:24

Imagine learning your daughter and six grandchildren are dead, then learning that your son-in-law did it.

34:31

There are so much grief and anger and confusion and guilt, and of course, everyone starts blaming themselves. Was there a warning? Should I have called? Why didn’t I know?

34:44

And they torture themselves with those questions, sometimes for years.

34:50

After years of investigating death, one thing I know is that the public often sees the end of a story, but I walk into the last chapter.

34:59

Something happened before I got there, and sometimes it was just seconds before, and sometimes the events leading to the death developed over years. But I have to work backwards.

35:11

The body’s where I start, then the scene, then the history, then the people, then the records, and eventually we start to see the life behind the death.

35:21

And that’s one reason why I do the podcast, because the headlines give you eight dead and murder-suicide, but eight people didn’t begin as a headline that morning.

35:31

They had lives and routines and plans and friends. Amanda was a mother. Jessica Bradley was more than a woman identified in a police release. Sarah Gilson was more than a murder victim.

35:47

Hitesh Patel was more than the father killed by his son. And so, the way we tell the stories matters.

35:55

One thing I always like to bring to light, there’s not a checklist that predicts when this is gonna happen. Certain behaviors definitely deserve attention.

36:07

Threats to kill somebody, threats involving children, threats of suicide combined with domestic violence. Stalking is a big deal. Violence that escalates.

36:18

Access to firearms during a crisis is a huge deal.

36:23

People that have controlling behaviors, threats following a separation, statements suggesting this family belongs to me, violations of protective orders, a sudden escalation after losing control of a relationship.

36:41

If somebody tells you, “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself,” that should be taken seriously. If somebody says, “If I can’t have you, no one will,” take it seriously.

36:52

If somebody threatens to kill a partner and then himself or themselves, don’t assume that’s empty talk.

37:01

People love asking this after homicide, “Why didn’t she leave?” But I think we need to ask a different question. Why did he believe he had the right to kill her?

37:15

There’s a lot of reasons that victims remain in dangerous relationships. There’s children, money, housing. Where am I gonna live? I don’t make enough money to survive on my own. Fear.

37:28

Even if I leave, he’s gonna find me. Isolation. I don’t wanna be by myself. Threats, pets. We share a dog. I don’t wanna leave the dog here, and if I take it, it’ll upset him even more. Health insurance.

37:43

I need to stay married because then I won’t have health insurance. And just family pressure. Sometimes the victim is actively thinking in their head, “I need to leave.

37:54

This is how I’m gonna do it.” But leaving also, we have to remember, doesn’t instantly end the danger. The Owosso case is a painful reminder of that.

38:05

Sarah sought legal protection, and the relationship was estranged, yet her husband killed her, and she doesn’t need judgment after her death. She needs her story told accurately.

38:20

And the questions again when someone commits suicide, we wanna ask, why did you kill your wife? Why did you kill your husband? Why’d you kill your dad?

38:29

Why did you feel like you needed to kill six children?

38:32

I’ve stood at death scenes where everyone wanted me to answer why, and sometimes the evidence answers how, and the autopsy answers how, and the investigation establishes who, and of course, the timeline establishes when, but why belongs inside another person’s mind, and if that perpetrator’s dead, that answer dies with them.

38:55

So sometimes we have notes. Those help us. Sometimes there are messages. Sometimes investigators can identify an obvious event that happened before a murder-suicide.

39:06

Sometimes families spend the rest of their lives without the answer, and that is one of the hardest parts of these cases. We wanna sit them down.

39:15

We want them to sit across the table from us, and we wanna be able to ask why, and we want the answer. But if I were assigned to one of these cases, here’s kinda what runs through my head.

39:26

What’s the last known alive time for each victim? Who found them? Who called nine one one? What exactly was reported? Who had access to the home, the weapon? Who owned the weapon?

39:39

There’s so many questions. Surveillance cameras. Were there medications? Were there threats, recent arguments, employment changes?

39:48

A good investigator doesn’t only search for evidence supporting a theory, but you also have to search for evidence that proves your theory wrong because your goal isn’t really to be right.

40:00

It’s to find the truth, and so I think that’s very important. That’s very important thing for people to remember.

40:08

Before we leave a complicated death scene, I like to mentally walk through scenes again and look at the room, and the body, and the weapon, and the blood, and the ordinary objects and just ask myself, “What am I missing?” Because once we release that scene, you don’t get that scene back.

40:29

You have photos, but there might be bits and pieces of pictures you didn’t get. Furniture gets moved. Everything gets cleaned up. The family comes back in. The bodies are gone.

40:40

Our documentation preserves it, and our pictures preserve it.

40:44

And in a case where the offender’s dead, the documentation becomes even more important because there’s not a confession letter, and the physical evidence has to speak for the dead.

40:56

We’ve talked about a lot of different murder-suicides, and I wanna focus more in future episodes on each individual case, but they’re in so many different areas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Delaware, Florida.

41:08

Each case is different. Relationships are different. Circumstances are different. But behind every headline is a scene someone had to walk into. A dispatcher had to answer the call.

41:20

The officer opened the door. The firefighter entered. The death investigator examined the body. The pathologist performed the autopsy.

41:29

And somewhere, somebody received a phone call that changed their life forever. And so that was always the hardest part for me was going and notifying people of the death.

41:40

We never just called and said, “Hey, your daughter and her six children are deceased.” We would send the police in that jurisdiction to the residence.

41:50

But for me, after years of death investigation, these cases reinforced something that I learned very early. It’s not about the bodies. It’s about the people.

42:01

The bodies are evidence, but the person is why the investigation matters. And when somebody dies by homicide, they deserve an investigation that is factual and separates the facts from assumption.

42:15

They deserve well-documented injuries.

42:19

They deserve that their final hours are reconstructed, and their identity is restored, and their story is told, especially when the person who killed them is no longer alive to answer for what they did.

42:32

So, when you read murder-suicide, remember the order of those words. There was a murder. Someone’s life was actually taken and then came the suicides.

42:45

And although those deaths share a scene, they definitely do not share responsibility.

42:52

These cases have just happened so much recently, and so I did wanna talk a little bit about the terms and what goes through our heads as investigators and the things that we have to think about when we walk into a scene.

43:06

And that’s why I love the podcast is because I love the number of people that come up and ask me, “Hey, how’d you start doing this?

43:14

I’m interested.” And I love to help people learn what they need to know to get into this field. And so that’s why I am developing an education program. I am actively working on my book.

43:28

And if y’all haven’t seen my comic book, it’s super cool. I would love for you to go online and order that. It’s available. I can also sign copies for you. We ship anywhere around the world.

43:38

Again, all of that merch is available on pushinguplillies.com. I believe most of it is on there.

43:45

I need to make sure that all my new merch that I took to Crime Con is on there, so I’ll double-check that too. But thank y’all so much for listening, and again, please don’t forget to share, comment.

43:56

All those things help me. I’m looking forward to next week already. Hopefully, I can get ahold of Kelsey, and we’ll see what we can put together. But until then, y’all be safe and be nice. Bye, y’all.

44:09

Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

44:20

This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public. Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplillies.com for merchandise and past episodes.