If you or someone you love is struggling with thoughts of suicide or in need of emotional support call or text 988 or chat at 988Lifeline.org. If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org.

Two losses in a single moment. 

It took Mitch Maryanov over a decade to find the strength and the space to talk about the day he lost both his parents in what headlines often reduce to a “murder-suicide.” In the quiet of the aftermath, survivors like Maryanov are left navigating a systemic void, lacking resources, recognition, and even the space to talk about their loss.

It was a summer day in 1990 when Maryanov, 33 at the time, received a call from his mother’s best friend. She hadn’t heard from his mom in two days and was growing concerned. 

“It was completely unlike my mom,” Maryanov said. His mother was very social, rarely out of touch, and would never go away without telling someone. The friend asked if Maryanov had any idea where she might be. He didn’t. So, he agreed to stop by the house and check in.

At the time, Maryanov was living about half an hour from his childhood home in Seaford, Long Island, where his parents still resided. Nothing about their lives had given him reason to suspect that anything was wrong. He drove over that evening. Only one car—his father’s—was parked outside. His mom’s car was gone. 

He assumed they weren’t home.

Maryanov let himself into the house. It was quiet. The lights were off. “Pristine like it usually is,” Maryanov told Prism. All the bedroom doors were closed. No one else lived there anymore; his older sister had also long since moved out.  

He opened the door to the master bedroom and turned on the light. 

“I walked into a crime scene,” Maryanov recalled. “A grisly scene.” 

He immediately walked out of the room, went downstairs, and called 911.

Both of his parents lay unconscious, each with gunshot wounds. Maryanov’s parents died in the same room, on the same day. His mother was shot by his father, who then turned the gun on himself.  Following an investigation, the case was ruled a murder-suicide by the Nassau County Police Department. 

“That night is like a photo in my mind,” Maryanov said.

The headlines quickly moved on. But for Maryanov, time stood still. 

“I have two lives,” he said. “Pre-murder suicide loss, and post.”  

“A void in resources” 

Murder-suicide is defined as an incident in which someone kills at least one other person before taking their own life, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). It may sound rare, but in the U.S., this happens with alarming regularity, an average of 10 cases per week. According to a 2023 report by the Violence Policy Center (VPC), studies estimate between 1,000 and 1,5000 deaths by murder-suicide in the U.S. each year. In the first six months of 2021, there were 258 murder-suicide events, translating to an estimated 1,176 deaths that year. 

There is no centralized national database tracking instances of murder-suicide. As a result, comprehensive reports often lag by several years, and researchers are forced to rely on incomplete data. 

“That’s our best guess,” said Joni Johnston, a forensic psychologist, about the estimated annual number of murder-suicides. “I think it’s probably more than that.”

But as Johnston told Prism: If you don’t know what you’re dealing with, how do you change things?

The reasons behind each case may differ, but the common factor, again and again, is a firearm. In 93% of intimate partner homicide-suicide cases, a gun is involved, according to a 2024 report from Everytown for Gun Safety. And in 95%, a woman is killed by a man.

While the report does not include a breakdown of victims’ age or race, national data on overall intimate partner homicides offers some insight. The median age of female intimate partner homicide victims between 2018 and 2021 was 38, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analysis published in August 2024. Non-Hispanic white women made up the largest share of victims at 49%, followed by non-Hispanic Black women at 29% and Hispanic or Latina women at 14%. These figures reflect overall patterns in intimate partner homicides, which make up the majority of murder-suicide cases involving women.

Survivors of murder-suicide experience a specific grief within gun violence, and many describe feeling invisible in broader bereavement communities. While there are support groups for various forms of traumatic loss, there are rarely any explicitly dedicated to murder-suicide survivors. The AFSP includes these losses under its broader suicide-loss programming, but its directory lists only general suicide- or homicide-loss groups. Similarly, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, which supports military families, offers suicide bereavement support but not murder-suicide loss as its own category.

Maryanov, who was very close with his mother, fondly remembered how she once joined a poker game he was playing with friends. He described her as “an extremely caring, hands-on parent.” The shock of the loss threw Maryanov into a spiral. “The weeks and months following had me basically needing to rely on medication for anxiety and depression,” he said. “I believe I lost a decade.” 

Maryanov remembered his father as a distant soul, stern and controlling. He was a workaholic and “somewhat of a depressed man,” weighed down by “feelings of being a failure as a businessman to achieve the success that he wished he had.”

“I know what my dad did was during a mental breakdown,” Maryanov said. “Financial issues caused it. I knew he had been struggling, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until I learned about his debt afterward. He did a good job hiding it. My parents argued about money sometimes, but they mostly kept it to themselves. Maybe those were red flags. I wonder if I should have seen something.”

Maryanov explained that in some cases, these incidents come after long-term mental health issues or substance use. “That wasn’t the case with my dad,” Maryanov said. “I didn’t see any red flags. Maybe there simply weren’t any.” 

Over time, Maryanov began searching for support groups, but nothing felt right. “Most of my adult life, I never fit in in any support group, whether it be strictly suicide or strictly murder,” he said. 

“We feel we’re the king of the hill of grief,” he said.

One night, while getting ready for bed, Maryanov came across the Murder-Suicide Loss (MSL) Network, the first nonprofit postvention community created in 2020 specifically for survivors of murder-suicide. His first meeting, he said, was “almost like a religious experience.” The group runs regular online peer support meetings, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon. 

When you search online for murder-suicide loss groups, only four dedicated organizations come up: the MSL Network, the Georgia Commission on Family Violence’s support group for survivors, a peer circle co-founded by My Grief Connection, and Impacted Survivors of Murder-Suicide (ISMS). 

Survivor-led groups like the MSL Network and ISMS quickly became vital to communities contending with these losses. 

Maryanov, now 68, found in MSL Network a “safe space.” Beginning this year, he became the group’s president, helping to usher in more connection and healing through peer-led virtual support groups and a dedicated community where survivors can “connect, heal, and find hope,” according to the website.

One of ISMS’s founders, Kristina Faulkner, is a therapist, mother, and an only child who lost both of her parents to murder-suicide in 2023. She has also struggled to find a grief group where she felt she belonged. “It’s such an emotional paradox,” said Faulkner. “I’m grieving my father, but I’m also grieving my mother because I lost them in two different ways. … I felt a void in resources for people like us.”

At the time, Faulkner leaned on her cousin and her husband of nearly 25 years. 

“Everything has been impacted by it,” Faulkner told Prism. “You still, unfortunately, tend to grieve in a vacuum. Unless someone has endured something like this, no one really gets it.”.

Wanting to change that, Faulkner helped launch ISMS, which, according to its website, “fosters healing and resilience through community connection, education, and survivor-led support.” 

Specialized support groups are only one resource that’s missing. For survivors like Jenna Howe, who lost her mother and brother in a murder-suicide, the gaps in professional training are just as urgent.

“There’s no real training for the 988 suicide lines or for counselors, medical providers, and psychologists to be aware of what people might say and what might be a red flag. And then what to do,” she explained.

Howe, who now serves on the board of the MSL Network, mentioned that even Local Outreach for Suicide Survivors (LOSS) groups sometimes struggle, with facilitators admitting they’re unsure of how to offer help in cases in which both a homicide and a suicide occurred. 

First responders, often the first point of contact, may also arrive without training in trauma-informed care, sometimes treating the deaths as a crime scene rather than recognizing a survivor’s acute grief and shock, according to Howe. 

Intimate partner femicide

The Everytown for Gun Safety report, based on focus group interviews with 43 survivors of intimate partner homicide-suicide, calls firearm access the “centerpiece” of these tragedies. In homes with abuse, mental illness, or coercive control, a loaded gun can turn a moment of fury, vulnerability, or despair into a fatal act.

Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing who has spent over three decades studying domestic violence, said she’s seen countless cases in which a loaded, unsecured firearm became the tool for an impulsive act. 

According to Campbell, a minute could mean everything.

“Can we at least get guns locked up? So at least the person has to think about it for a minute,” she said. “My hope is that they will get out of that hot rage.” She also argued for basic safety measures like locking guns and storing ammunition separately.

While survivors grapple with the absence of support groups, adequate training, and reliable data, many are also left trying to make sense of their loved one’s actions. 

Johnston, the forensic psychologist, explained that murder-suicides often involve distinct dynamics, with suicidal ideation frequently tied to broader systemic issues like financial stressors, poverty, and lack of health care.

Many other murder-suicides involve domestic violence. In fact, 59% of victims or survivors experienced short- or long-term abuse beforehand, according to the Everytown report.

“My father … worked in law enforcement and had many guns,” one survivor told Everytown. “He used them to intimidate his family. … He abused us. … He threatened to kill my mom several times and to kill me.”

The high rate of women killed in these cases remains a daunting reality. “When women die in the context of intimate partner violence, we call it intimate partner femicide, whether or not it’s followed by a suicide,” said Millan AbiNader, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, in an email.

In those cases, the gun is often the final act in a long pattern of coercive control, abuse, and fear, according to AbiNader. This was illustrated in another story featured in Everytown’s report. 

“My second husband was an abuser and we had a two-year-old daughter together,” a survivor explained. “And when I realized that he was an abuser, because I didn’t realize it at the beginning, I finally got him moved out of the house. A few months later, he murdered our two-year-old daughter and committed suicide.”

Early red flags don’t always include physical abuse, but control is highly common in murder-suicide cases. “It might be monitoring, expecting certain behaviors, consequences for not aligning with the behaviors that are expected,” AbiNader explained in an interview.

Trying to separate from an abusive partner can be one of the most dangerous moments for a survivor. Many women first obtain restraining orders or pursue other legal avenues for protection, to varying results.  

AbiNader told Prism that she often sees suicide threats from men framed as ultimatums: “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself.” These coercive suicide threats are now recognized as significant warning signs for murder-suicide.

Despite clear signs in many cases, few systems are equipped to act in time, according to Everytown. Only 21 states have Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) “red flag” laws. These laws let police ask a court to temporarily take away guns from someone who is at risk of hurting themselves or others. They also block the person from buying new guns during that time. 

In most states with ERPO laws, police can obtain a same-day emergency order to temporarily remove firearms from someone deemed at risk of harming themselves or others. These initial orders typically last seven to 21 days before a court hearing is required. If a judge finds the risk persists, the order can be extended, usually for up to one year, according to Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. California allows final orders of up to five years, while a few states, including Illinois, Vermont, and Virginia, cap them at six months. In Indiana and Connecticut, the order remains in effect until the person can prove to a court that they no longer pose a threat.

Everytown found that for every 17 ERPOs issued, one suicide was prevented, saving an estimated 269 lives.

However, survivors and families shared examples of protective orders issued but never enforced. One woman’s daughter had both a restraining order and a stalking order against her ex-husband. A judge ordered his guns removed. But, as the mother put it, “Nobody checked. It was multiple things, failures all around.”

In theory, law enforcement should retrieve all guns after a protective order is issued. In practice, it’s rare, according to Campbell, the nursing professor, and Everytown’s report. Police often don’t conduct searches. Sometimes, abusers claim certain guns aren’t theirs. Serving a search warrant also takes time, resources, and risk. Many officers don’t pursue it, citing danger or staffing shortages, according to Campbell.

“There’s just a lot of forces that make it easier to just not go get those guns and not actually do that search warrant,” Campbell said.

States that prohibit abusers subject to Domestic Violence Restraining Orders (DVROs) from possessing firearms have seen a 13% reduction in intimate partner firearm homicide rates, according to the Everytown report. Currently, 32 states and Washington, D.C., have laws prohibiting domestic abusers under restraining orders from possessing firearms.

But not all stories fit into the domestic violence framework, according to Faulkner. Survivors often wrestle with these tidy labels, wishing their loved ones weren’t defined by their final act.

Blurred boundaries

Faulkner believes that her father’s motive was “perceived protection,” a warped sense that it would be better if the couple died together. 

“Even on my parents’ police report, it got classified as domestic violence before they even talked to me,” she said during an episode of the podcast “Unspoken Grief.” 

Faulkner said domestic violence is certain a factor in murder-suicides more broadly, but she in her parents’ case, she believes her father saw it as an act of “mercy” to save her mother from suffering if he died by suicide.

“It was a financial situation,” she said. “And so … the perpetrator feels like there is no other option, and so he feels like he’s doing kind of justice by my mother… kind of removing her from her pain.” 

Her parents, Robert and Marcella Caravello, were high school sweethearts. They met when they were 16 and were married for 50 years. “They were a team,” Faulkner told Prism.

Robert was 71 when he died by suicide. He worked in information technology and later took on home inspections; he was meticulous, with “a great eye for detail,” Faulkner said. He was known as “Papa” to her kids and the one who Faulkner sought out for advice. He didn’t have an easy upbringing, she said, and in adulthood, he worked overnight shifts to maintain their family home. 

“He was just a light in our life,” Faulkner said. “I miss him every day.”

Marcella, 69, was a nurse who took care of people living with HIV/AIDS before anyone really understood how the virus spread. “She had a laugh that would light up a room,” Faulkner said. “She was Nana. My kids miss her so much.” Faulkner described her mom as creative and someone who “should’ve been a decorator.” “She was just adorable,” Faulkner recalled.

“As much as I forgive him, I’m still angry at him,” she said of her father. “There’s a part of me that hates what he did, but I don’t hate him.” 

Johnston explained that this distorted altruism involves blurred boundaries, where the perpetrator makes a “huge leap” in deciding what’s best for others, believing, for instance, that their children or spouse “could not live without me” or “would be better off if we both went together.”

If someone has chosen to take the life of their partner, it is considered intimate partner violence, AbiNader clarified. However, “deciding to kill someone else because they don’t want to live anymore is not a decision for anyone else to make,” she said. “You don’t get to choose to take someone else’s life. It doesn’t matter what the context is. … You never have the right to kill someone else.” She explained that even in situations involving severe physical illness, choosing to take that person’s life ultimately removes their autonomy and choice.

AbiNader added that survivors often hold complex interpretations of these acts. She noted the importance of allowing people to “make sense of the world in the way they need to,” especially when it comes to family narratives.

“Yes, he did a horrible thing, but I’m not going to judge my father on his final act because I know who my father was,” Faulkner said on the podcast. “He was a good man.”

As families work to make sense of their loss and the reasons behind it, they may never arrive at a clear understanding. But in newly formed spaces of support for survivors impacted by murder-suicide, built by and for others who truly get it, they can find the language to speak about their grief. They are also able to move beyond the label of “murder-suicide,” reclaiming their narratives and demanding recognition for a kind of loss that has remained in the shadows.

“We’re so underserved that we just want to be able to say we’re here,” Faulkner said. “We see you. We get it. And when you’re ready, here we are. And this is what’s helped us. And if you need it, it’s there.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor