09/05/2026
Over four weeks this summer, at least three men murdered their families, killing 12 children among them. On July 24, in Michigan, Kristopher Karolkiewicz shot his wife and their six children and set the house on fire. On July 31, in Wisconsin, Jeffrey Manke killed his two daughters, 11 and 16. On August 23, in Montana, Alan Smith gunned down eight of his relatives -- his parents, his grandmother, his sister, and four children -- at a Sunday dinner. Together, the three men killed 17 people, 12 of them children. And within a day or two, each story had vanished from the national news.
Compare this to the coverage of the Lindsay Clancy case. For weeks, the trial of the Massachusetts mother, who killed her three children in 2023, has been a media fixation. Cable networks have carried it live. CNN, NBC, the Boston Globe, and others have run day-by-day live blogs. Reporters have packed the courthouse by the dozen, some sitting on the floor for lack of room. And the trial is only the latest chapter: the case has been dissected in the national press and on true-crime podcasts for years.
A mother killing her children becomes a national obsession; a father doing the same quickly becomes yesterday's news.
The obvious explanation for the discrepancy is timing: Clancy is on trial, while these three men killed themselves and left no one to prosecute. But it doesn't hold up. Men who murder their families do stand trial -- and their cases almost never command this kind of sustained, wall-to-wall attention. The true-crime sagas that grip the nation for years overwhelmingly feature women who kill. The gender of the killer, it turns out, matters more than the crime.
The numbers tell a different story than the headlines. Family annihilation in America is neither rare nor evenly distributed. According to a 2023 investigation by the Indianapolis Star, drawing on data from the Gun Violence Archive, someone in this country murders their own family roughly once every five days. And the people who do it are almost always men -- by expert estimates, some 91 percent of the time. A gun is used in about nine of ten cases. The victims, disproportionately, are children.
The silence has a dangerous cost. Violence by men has become so normalized that even its most extreme form -- a man murdering his own family -- barely registers. And that silence compounds itself: because these killings rarely break through the noise, most people have no idea how common they are, or how overwhelmingly they are committed by men. The pattern disappears into the background, one fleeting headline at a time.
None of this diminishes the horror of a mother who kills. It only raises the question: why does that horror seize our full attention, while the far more common version -- committed by fathers, husbands, sons -- slips past us in a day?
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--> If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.
--> The Danger Assessment, developed by Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell, is a free tool that helps a woman gauge her risk of being killed by an abusive partner -- https://www.dangerassessment.org/DA.aspx
For a potentially life-saving book for older teens and adults about the early warning signs of abusive relationships, myths about abusive personalities, and how to get help, we highly recommend "Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" at https://www.amightygirl.com/why-does-he-do-that
To teach younger children -- girls and boys alike -- about asserting their own boundaries and respecting the boundaries of others, we highly recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)
For two excellent books about a tween girls' experience with sexual harassment - both for 10 and up - check out "Maybe He Just Likes You" (https://www.amightygirl.com/maybe-he-just-likes-you) and "That's What Friends Do" (https://www.amightygirl.com/that-s-what-friends-do)
If you’re a parent concerned that your daughter may be in an unhealthy relationship, check out the books “But I Love Him: Protecting Your Teen Daughter from Controlling, Abusive Relationships” (https://www.amightygirl.com/but-i-love-him) and “Saving Beauty From The Beast: How to Protect Your Daughter from an Unhealthy Relationship” (https://www.amightygirl.com/saving-beauty-from-the-beast)
