Understanding Parricide is the most comprehensive book available about juvenile and adult sons and daughters who kill their parents. Dr. Heide moves far behind the statistical correlates of parricide by synthesizing the professional literature on parricide in general, matricide, patricide, double parricides, and familicides. As a clinician, she explains the reasons behind the killings. Understanding Parricide includes in-depth discussion of issues related to prosecuting and defending parricide offenders. The book is enriched with its focus on clinical assessment, case...

Practitioners in the animal welfare field, law enforcement circles, and social services arena have often maintained that childhood cruelty to animals is a forerunner to violence against people. Does this behavior serve as a red flag with respect to extremely violent offenders, such as serial killers? Is it part of the cycle of violence associated with domestic abuse? Perez and Heide provide the first scientific examination of this relationship and examine issues of cruelty across different types of animals (pet, wild, stray, farm). The authors evaluate both qualitative and quantitative data...

Providing an empirical assessment of male adolescent murderers and systematic case presentations of several juvenile homicide offenders, Young Killers addresses psychological assessment, treatment issues and prevention strategies aimed at reducing the incidence of juvenile homicide.

A tragic portrait of adolescents who kill their parents is revealed in this volume: these young people almost always kill out of desperation as they are almost always victims of severe child abuse, neglect and dysfunctional parenting. Drawing upon her experience as a clinician, expert witness and scholar, the author asserts that a combination of interconnected problems creates the conditions for parricide, including: severe sexual, physical and//or verbal abuse of the child; escalating violence in the family; and increasing vulnerability of the child to stressors in the home. This sensitive...