Parricide

The killing of one's own parent or another close relative, a category the criminal law of a number of jurisdictions treats as an aggravating factor warranting a more severe statutory penalty than an ordinary homicide, reflecting the particular breach of trust the law associates with killing a close family member, though other jurisdictions prosecute it under ordinary homicide statutes without a distinct enhanced category. Documented parricide cases studied by criminologists are frequently associated with a history of severe family abuse in which the offender, often an adolescent or young adult, has been a long-term victim of the parent's own physical or sexual abuse, a pattern distinct from parricide committed for financial gain or resulting from a severe untreated mental illness, both also documented as separate recognized motivational categories within the criminological literature on the offense.