The history of mass killings is replete with “lone wolves” lashing out at perceived enemies, but rarely are father-son duos or family members carrying them out together, said a leading expert on mass murder. The two men authorities say carried out a massacre during a beachside Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia, are father and son, and are said to have been motivated by Islamic State ideology. James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist and leading expert on mass murder, said it is unusual to see father and son, as well as family members, carrying out mass shootings together, though there are some historical examples of intrafamilial mass violence.
The most infamous includes the Boston Marathon bombing in the United States in 2013, in which brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev detonated pressure-cooker bombs near the marathon’s finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Fox also cited a case in rural Pennsylvania in the 1970s involving a string of burglaries and killings linked to a father-son criminal duo. The case was the subject of a film, starring Sean Penn, called “At Close Range.”
