Why ever more fathers are killing their children: Top criminologist reveals her research into this sickening trend



His neighbours said he was like any other loving dad. They'd often seen him and his wife take their two children to the park, and they'd pop out to local restaurants for dinner together.

So why on earth did Julian Stevenson apparently brutally kill his own children? How could a father turn on his own flesh and blood and attack them so viciously?

The 48-year-old Briton has reportedly admitted cutting the throats of his two children — Matthew, ten, and Carla, five — after he was allowed to see them alone for the first time since his bitter divorce from their French mother.



Julian Stevenson, accused of killing his two children in Lyon, France, seen on CCTV footage taking the children, Mathew, 10, and Carla, five, to the bakers to buy sweets hours before their deaths

After killing the children, Stevenson escaped his blood-splattered flat in Lyon, France, on a pair of rollerskates.

While I was as horrified as anyone else at the brutality of this killing, I have to admit that I wasn't in the least bit shocked.

As a criminologist specialising in murder, I have just completed research into the phenomenon of parents killing their children.



And my discoveries left me wondering not how it could happen — but just how soon it would be before another case of parental murder would hit the headlines.

Perhaps the most terrifying thing I have learned from my research is that the incidence of parents murdering their children is becomingly increasingly common. There have been 71 cases since 1980 - and the numbers are speeding up alarmingly.

In the Eighties, fewer than one child a year was murdered by a parent. Over the past decade, numbers have risen to two or three a year - a rate that is increasing steadily.

The sequence of pictures shows the family arriving at the bakery and buying items before leaving

Though mothers are also capable of murdering their children, the vast majority of murders - 59 of the 71 - are committed by men. I call them Family Annihilators because they cold-bloodedly plot their family's destruction.

And the reason why these apparently normal, loving men turn into ruthless killers? Family breakdown, which, of course, is also on the increase.



A HUSBAND JEALOUS OF HIS WIFE'S TUTOR

Ceri Fuller murdered his children Sam, 12, Becca, eight, and Charlie, seven, by stabbing them to death before throwing himself off a cliff in July 2012

Shortly before he took his children's lives his wife Ruth, 34, had told him she had feelings for a university lecturer and was leaving the marriage. At the inquest into the deaths, she recalled how her husband stood in front of her on the last night they spent together, crying, holding his wedding ring and asking if he should take it with him.

I examined all of the cases of murders by parents of their children since 1980, looking at everything from the fathers' jobs to the day of the week they committed the murder — and uncovered some quite extraordinary patterns.

In seven out of ten cases, the children have been at the centre of a bitter family break-up.

Of course, I wouldn't for a minute suggest that divorce inevitably leads to murder.



Far from it.



However, what's extremely worrying is that there is a small minority of men who find it impossible to cope when their families break up.

These men come from all walks of life. They include doctors, businessmen, electricians, lorry drivers and security guards.

But they all seem to have one thing in common. They feel that their masculinity is being threatened.

In getting divorced, they believe they are losing the one thing that makes them feel like successful men: their families.

In murdering their children, they are, in some twisted way, wresting back control not just of their children, but often of their wives, too.

Killing their children is the most shocking and dramatic way they can think of to shout to the world: 'Look how powerful I am.'

Amy Philcox, seven, and her brother Owen, three, who were found dead with their father Brian Philcox In murder, many are also seeking the ultimate revenge. They know that in killing their children they are killing the things that are most precious to their former wives. Horrifically, many of these men leave notes at the scene, blaming their ex-wife for the tragedy. Some even add the extra twist of writing: 'I hope you will be happy now.' In so many ways, then, the case of Julian Stevenson is very typical if he is eventually found guilty of the killings. A FATHER WHO KILLED TO GET REVENGE

In November 2005 hospital radiographer Gavin Hall (right) killed his daughter, Amelia, then tried to kill himself. The 33-year-old fed his daughter anti-depressants two days before her fourth brithday and then smothered her with a rag soaked with chloroform. He tried to kill himself, but was unsuccessful. The court in his murder trial heard he had discovered his wife was having an affair with a man she met on the internet. The prosecutor said: 'His anger and bitterness, his desire to punish Joanne are obvious.' In a text message to Amelia's mother he said: 'Now you have the rest of your life to deal with the consequences.' He was in the throes of a bitter custody battle with his French ex-wife, Stephanie. He had been banned from seeing his children alone after attacking her in 2010, so last weekend was his first unsupervised access visit with his children in three years. There are two patterns that Family Annihilators follow — both equally dangerous for children. The first scenario is that the parents are living together, but the family is fracturing, often because the husband or wife is having an affair. The father can't bear the thought of losing his children and is often raging at his wife, so he exacts the ultimate punishment. In the second scenario — as in the Stevensons' case — the marriage is already over, the family has broken up and the children are living with the mother. Far from satisfied with the outcome and filled with impotent rage, the father wants revenge. I don't know about Stevenson's wife, but often the trigger is that the spouse is with a new partner or is pregnant. He may have been dreaming of a reconciliation: now he has to face the reality of losing his wife for ever. In half of all cases of Family Annihilator, the murderer kills his former wife, too. One of the most chilling examples is that of 53-year-old Brian Philcox, a security guard from Runcorn, Cheshire, who was in the middle of a bitter marriage breakdown. In June 2008, on Father's Day, he collected his children — Amy, seven, and Owen, three — and drove them to a remote beauty spot in Snowdonia, North Wales.

The funeral of Amy and Owen Philcox at All Saints Church in Daresbury in June 2008

After sedating them with drugs and makeshift chloroform masks, he joined them on the back seat of his Land Rover and waited for exhaust fumes to kill them all.

Meanwhile, he'd left a booby-trap bomb in his home, designed to explode when his ex-wife opened a note he had left addressed to 'The Bitch'. Luckily, it failed to explode.

A LOVING FATHER WHO LOST CONTROL BECAUSE OF DEBT

The brother of Christopher Foster (right) spoke about how he often feared the millionaire would kill himself - but says he never imagined he could murder his wife and daughter. 'He was bad-tempered, yes. I never thought he'd go this far. Perhaps kill himself but not his family,' said Andrew Foster today. But he also told how he feared having a shotgun thrust at him by his older brother, who had once fired a gun in his back garden even as children played outside next door. The gun maniac's violent tendencies reached their horrific climax at August Bank Holiday in 2008 when he methodically shot dead his 15-year-old daughter Kirstie and his wife Jill along with the family's dogs and horses. The 50-year-old - whose fortune had turned into a £4million debt due to unwise or shady business deals - then set the family's Shropshire mansion ablaze, having first pumped oil into the cellar and blocked the gateway to hamper firefighters.

For most parents, the thought of sitting down and plotting how we are going to take our children's lives isn't just abhorrent, it's simply unimaginable.

But that is exactly what these fathers do. They spend weeks — sometimes months — planning every gruesome detail.

And perhaps most frightening of all, they are able to do it all while keeping up a facade of normality. While they are plotting, no one guesses what's on their mind.

The terrifying truth is that these men are silent killers. In most cases, no one has seen the clues — not their wives, not their friends and not their families. Friends and neighbours often say they appear to be loving and devoted fathers.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, most murders occur between Friday and Sunday nights. I'm sure this is because weekends are commonly when estranged fathers get to see their children alone — giving them the opportunity to kill.

The way that Stevenson is alleged to have murdered his children — by slitting their throats — is horrifying in its violent brutality.

Incredibly, though, it's not rare. In fact, one of the most shocking things my research has uncovered is that one-third of men stab their children to death.

Stabbing usually occurs where the murderer is full of violent rage and anger and wants to damage his victim's appearance.

It's a violent way to kill, and a horrible way to die. But these men seem to want to inflict maximum damage on their children as a way of proving just how powerful they are — and as a means to inflict the maximum pain on their wives.

It appears that Stevenson was a violent alcoholic, with a record of attacking his wife. In this, he is uncommon. Fewer than 10 per cent of Family Annihilators have a record of domestic violence.

Even more frightening, perhaps, most have no record of mental illness. They have simply slipped beneath the radar.

But the most disturbing aspect of my research is that, as far as I can see, these parent-on-child killings are going to continue happening with increasing regularity. Marriages are going to continue breaking up. Fathers are going to continue feeling aggrieved and powerless.

And there is no way of predicting which men are going to carry on being loving fathers — and which are going to act on these feelings and turn into Family Annihilators.