PEOPLE Special Edition - True Crime: A Killer In The Family

Throughout human history—ever since Cain and Abel—murder has often been a family affair. Whether crimes of passion, jealousy, or naked greed, such killings never fail to shock. Yet FBI and DOJ statistics show that an alarming percentage of homicides occur among close relatives and intimate partners. “For most Americans, regardless of where they live, the risk of being murdered is much greater in their own homes than on any main street,” wrote forensic psychologist and attorney Charles Patrick Ewing. This PEOPLE special edition explores the latest developments in some high-profile cases (the Menendez brothers, Scott and Laci Peterson, the Murdaughs, Gabby Petito), along with many others. Shootings, stabbings, poisonings, stranglings. Angry outbursts and diabolical plots. Lives cut short by the ones they trusted most. We can’t look away. “People are fascinated by complex and deviant behavior,” says psychologist Jerrod Brown. “They want to understand the why behind these cases.”