"Mercy Killing" Warning Signs: How to Prevent a Violent End to Dementia

On a cool Southern California day just before Thanksgiving last year, 88-year-old Roy Charles Laird walked into a nursing home and shot his wife in the head, police say. She was lying in bed.

The story made national news. But it’s not unique. Laird’s 86-year-old wife had late-stage dementia. His daughter, Kathy Palmateer, told the Los Angeles Times it was a “mercy killing.”

 “It’s everywhere. This is not new,” says Jane L. Mahakian, Ph.D., founder of Aging Matters, a geriatric-care management company with offices in Orange County and San Francisco, CA. She specializes in helping people with dementia.

Depression is what drives such a decision, she says. One key to prevention is vigilance from people who interact with the caregivers.

Laird and his wife, Clara, had been married for almost 70 years. They lived in a large retirement community in Seal Beach, CA, called Leisure World. “Anyone you talk to will tell you that they were a happily married couple and he was madly in love with her,” says his attorney, assistant public defender Michael Hill.

Laird cared for his wife there for five years—alone, declining to hire help. But he reached his limit and had to move her to a nursing home, Country Villa Seal Beach, three months before he allegedly shot her, the Los Angeles Times reported. According to The Associated Press, Mrs. Laird also had terminal pancreatic cancer.

Caregivers who kill their spouses often have a lack of family support, says Mahakian, who’s licensed as a marriage and family therapist. They’re severely depressed and feel helpless. In Laird’s case, moving his wife may have compounded things. “He more than likely felt a tremendous amount of guilt and sense of responsibility.”

But he didn’t have much of a choice. According to police, Mrs. Laird needed 24-hour care. Hiring around-the-clock in-home aid is usually out of the question because it’s so expensive and Medicare doesn’t pay for it, Mahakian says.
 

Depression Warning Signs in Caregivers

To help prevent something like this in your family, Mahakian advises watching for warning signs that a family caregiver is feeling depressed and overwhelmed—things like:

• self-isolation
• missed appointments
• messy home
• bad personal hygiene
• piled-up bills
• increased falls
• spoiled food.

If you don’t live near the family caregiver, don’t count on phone calls to clue you in. “He or she is probably going to paint a much brighter picture of what’s going on,” Mahakian says. She suggests having a neighbor check in.

When you suspect depression, quick intervention is important: Mahakian advises getting your parent to a doctor and then bringing in a social worker or geriatric-care manager.

Warning Signs That’s Someone’s Planning a Mercy Killing

Laird had previously told his daughter about other men he knew who had killed their wives and then committed suicide, according to the Los Angeles Times. Talking about it beforehand is a warning sign, says Mahakian.

Some couples plan a mercy killing together. If your parents mention such a plan, “the fact that they’re coming to you tells you they don’t really don’t want to do that,” Mahakian says. “They want an intervention.”

Many times professional senior home care agencies are hired to help manage caregiving services, even if only for a few hours a week to relieve the family caregiver.  This allows the family to have another set of eyes and ears to monitor the care, along with the added advantage of professional caregiver training and support.

Update on Roy Charles Laird

In November, Laird pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder. He was released on his own recognizance. His daughter now lives with him.

Laird’s trial probably won’t happen for another year or more, Hill says. Laird faces 50 years to life if convicted. As with any case, a plea agreement may be reached if he changes his plea to guilty, says Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s office. 

Typically with so-called mercy killings, defendants get "a very lenient sentence, if any," says Kathryn Tucker, director of legal affairs at Compassion & Choices, an organization  that supports choice in dying.  They might get probation, for example.  But that's when it's clear the person begged for help dying.  Since Mrs. Laird had late-stage dementia at the time of the alleged shooting, "the difficulty here may be that we don't know this was the patient's choice," Tucker says. 

There seem to be no statistics showing how many mercy killings take place in the United States, but Tucker sees them often in newspapers.  "They're very sensational," and the death is normally not peaceful, she says.  "It's usually with violent means, like a gunshot."

“This story is so much bigger than a single family and so much more complex than the law can address,” the Laird family said in a statement released after his hearing in November. “It is not just a legal issue but also a human issue.”

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