The Psychological Autopsy as a Means to Analyse Cases of Mass-murder and Homicide-suicide

Abstract

In February 2013, a 42 year-old worker in Central Switzerland shot four of his colleagues on his workplace in the canteen unexpectedly, wounded five more seriously and eventually he was shot during the event. This event called “amok” in the lay press can be classified as mass murder according to several authors. There was no apparent reason for this deed, and the perpetrator had not been a mobbing victim nor had he been treated unfairly by his supervisors at work. The district attorney ordered a psychological autopsy of the perpetrator which revealed that he had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and acted according to his delusions of persecution. This paper discusses how to perform such an investigation. The application of psychological autopsy is strongly recommend in future similar cases.