Economic Fallout Has Spurred an Epidemic of Murder and Suicide That Has Gone Largely Unnoticed

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted June 5, 2009.

According to a police report, Manchester, Missouri, resident Frank Kavano, 66, who killed his wife and then himself, left a suicide note that mentioned "financial issues and difficulty in the marriage."

After losing a bet on a college football bowl game -- on top of losing his home to foreclosure -- Dante Vinci, age 48, reportedly stabbed a man to death outside a Reno, Nevada, sports bar.

February 2009

According to a news report, Gregory and Randolph Graham, third-generation car dealers from Ligonier, Pennsylvania, "watched helplessly over the past year as their business collapsed under the weight of the recession." One night, Gregory, 61, set fire to some of the cars at his dealership and "died of a heart attack next to the burning wreckage." Days later, Randolph, 51, "was found dead, slumped over the wheel of his car in what may have been a suicide."

When Otero County, New Mexico, sheriff's deputies tried to serve foreclosure papers on Miguel and Inga Gutierrez, the couple armed themselves and opened fire. After a 16-hour standoff, Miguel was found dead and Inga was taken into custody.

"Unemployed, awash in debt and hiding an October foreclosure from loved ones," 55-year-old Wayne "Mike" Anderson of Stratmoor Valley, Colorado, shot himself to death as a sheriff's deputy, ready to evict him, stood at his doorstep.

In Glyndon, Maryland, advertising executive Howard "Jack" Marks Jr., 63, killed himself after, his wife told the police, financial woes left him in danger of losing his business.

According to news reports, 53-year-old Jeffrey P. McKnight of Pataskala, Ohio, was "struggling financially and overwhelmed with caring for his elderly father" when he set his house ablaze and then killed his dad and himself.

Reportedly "upset over being unemployed and his financial status," George Vincent, 49, of Fort Meyers, Florida, drank copious amounts of beer, after which his wife called the police, telling them her husband was drunk, armed, and suicidal. When Vincent pulled a gun on responding officers, they opened fire, killing him, in what the state attorney's office deemed to be a case of suicide-by-cop.

March 2009

Lonnie Glasco walked into the San Diego, California, bus-maintenance depot where he worked as a mechanic and shot two fellow employees, one fatally, before police gunned him down. A friend said Glasco, 47, was "despondent over losing his wife and his home."

Michael McLendon, age 28 and "despondent over his inability to hold a job," fatally shot nine people in Samson, Alabama, and killed a 10th in a neighboring county.

After 46-year-old Springfield Township, Ohio, resident Michael Swiergosz's home went into "foreclosure and had been set for sheriff's sale," he barricaded himself inside "during a standoff with authorities that lasted three hours," before being arrested.

April 2009

In Warrenton, Virginia, police said that "domestic issues," likely compounded by "job-related stress," lay behind 39-year-old Bruce Curtin's decision to kill his wife and then himself.

See more stories tagged with: economy, suicide, murder, foreclosure

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

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