This story contains discussion of domestic violence, murder and suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 800-273-8255 or National Domestic Violence hotline 800-799-7233 or seek out other local resources.

BLOOMINGTON — At first, Lauren Hash thought her best friend was sleeping.

She opened the door to Emma Mumper’s bedroom, ready to tease her about being late for their Labor Day weekend plans — brunch and a movie.

“Time to get up, we need to go!” Lauren called to Emma, who was still tucked into bed.

She touched her foot, shook her leg, called her name. No response. Then she looked up and found the answer to her friend’s silence: blood on the wall. 

Lauren went to the master bedroom to find help. When she opened the door, there was no sign of Emma’s father. But her mother, Greta, was lying in a bloody bed.

Lauren called 911. The operator asked if there was anyone else in the house. 

There was one other bedroom to check. Clutching the phone, Lauren hoped to find Emma’s brother, Jake, still alive. She cracked open his door and called his name. No one answered.

Greta, Jakob & Emma: A man killed his wife, son and daughter in prime of their lives: Who they were

Lauren went back outside to her car to wait for the police. As officers searched the house, they found three members of the Mumper family dead in their beds. Police also discovered Jeffrey Mumper, the 61-year-old husband and father of the victims, dead in the bathroom.

As police recovered Mumper’s body and a handgun, a clearer picture of the events from Sept. 6, 2020, began to emerge. The coroner confirmed it soon after: Jeffrey Mumper shot his wife, son and daughter in the head as they slept, then turned the gun on himself. He spared only the family’s cat and dog.

In the days that followed, police and the media described the case as a murder-suicide. But what Mumper did has a different name: family annihilation. And it appears to be a growing, predominantly American phenomenon.

The characteristics and prevalence of this crime remain relatively unknown. Communities where these annihilations occur often see them as isolated tragedies — but they have just one piece of the puzzle. Few are seeing the bigger picture: The missed warning signs, controlling and angry men, and an impact that reaches far beyond one family.

A new tragedy every 5 days in U.S. since 2020

The Mumper killings are among at least 227 family annihilations across the U.S. since 2020, according to an Indianapolis Star analysis of media reports and data from Gun Violence Archive.

That’s an average of one family annihilation every five days. The death toll: 754.

Researchers have only recently focused on these cases as a specific category of crime. The first study on the characteristics of familicide was published in 1995, and there have only been a handful of studies in the decades since. No comprehensive, public repository for family annihilation data exists. There’s not even a universally accepted definition in terms of the number of deaths or the relationship between victims and killer.

American Annihilation: What’s behind the growing trend of a person, most often a man, killing their own family?

IndyStar’s examination focused on cases in which a person kills at least two types of immediate family members — a spouse or partner, children, parents, or siblings. The analysis also included killings involving ex-spouses, ex-partners and stepfamily. Family annihilators killed themselves in 64% of the cases.

The killing of five people and an unborn child in Indianapolis on Jan. 24, 2021 — the city’s worst mass killing in more than a decade — started with the kind of family dispute that plays out in nearly every home with a teenager. Raymond Ronald Lee Childs III, then 17, now faces murder charges in the fatal shootings of his mother, father, two siblings, and a pregnant teen. Another brother was shot and left for dead, but survived.

Court documents say the shootings spun out of an argument over Childs staying out late. The surviving brother told police their father’s last words to his killer were “I’m sorry Raymond; I love you.”

Indiana had three other family annihilation cases in 2021, including two in Fort Wayne: In June, a man fatally stabbed his girlfriend, her 5-year-old son, 3-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter; in November, a 20-year-old man shot and killed his mother, father, 15-year-old sister and himself.

American Annihilation: A look at ‘family annihilation’ cases in Indiana since 2020 killings in Bloomington

And in July 2021, a 27-year-old man in Lafayette shot and killed his girlfriend and their 3-year-old daughter. Before she died, the little girl told police, “My daddy killed me.”

These are among the most extreme cases of domestic violence, representing a fraction of the thousands of men, women and children injured or killed each year by a loved one or relative. But these heinous crimes create questions and demand answers.

“We don’t know much,” said Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and one of the nation’s leading experts on domestic violence and homicide. “If we had a better handle on the risk factors, we could do some prevention work.”

IndyStar’s examination of thousands of homicides, including the 227 cases of family annihilation since 2020, reveals men are almost always the perpetrators. It also found:

• Primary risk factors include prior domestic violence, substance abuse, and access to guns.
• The killer was a male in 94% of the cases.
• A gun was used in about 86% of cases. Other methods include stabbing, strangulation, blunt force trauma, asphyxiation and arson.
• More than three-quarters of the cases occurred in the South and the Midwest. Texas had the most — 33 — followed by Florida, Arizona and Ohio. Only 10 states and the District of Columbia had none.

“We like to think of the family as a crucible of love and affection,” criminologists James Fox and Jack Levin wrote in their book, “Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder.”

“Hence, murder by the hands of a family member can be too much for the mind to fathom.” 

Learn more: See IndyStar’s searchable database for details on family annihilation case since Jan. 1, 2020.

But it’s happening across the U.S., and the number is going up by the year. There were 62 cases in 2020, 61 in 2021, and 72 in 2022. There already were at least 32 in 2023 through the end of April, a pace that could lead to nearly 100 incidents this year.

The televised murder trial of Alex Murdaugh put a spotlight on the issue earlier this year. The disgraced personal injury lawyer was convicted in March for shooting his wife and son in 2021. Prosecutors in South Carolina argued Murdaugh murdered them to divert attention from his financial crimes and opioid addiction. 

“Those pressures mount,” prosecutor Creighton Waters said during closing arguments, “and that person becomes a family annihilator.” 

Birthday card days before killing: ‘I love you.’

Jeffrey Mumper was quiet and socially isolated. He worked as a medical physicist at IU Health Cancer Radiation Center and previously as an adjunct instructor in Indiana University’s physics department. 

The 61-year-old’s motives in killing his family remain unclear. In the face of impossible questions, there are only theories. 

Family and friends say Mumper was facing a late-stage cancer diagnosis and an impending divorce. Greta Mumper’s nephew, Erich Sands, wondered if he wanted to “take” the family with him in death.

“I like to think that he loved them,” Sands said. “He just wasn’t the best at showing it.” 

Mental health resources: Where to get help for suicidal thoughts, child abuse, domestic violence

Others recall an emotionally abusive marriage. Greta Mumper’s close friend, Susan Stephens, described Mumper as a passive-aggressive and unsupportive husband. She said he left Greta to take care of everything: the house, the kids and her ill mother-in-law. 

“Greta used to say that he could be selfish,” Stephens said. “When she had concerns about the kids, she was basically on her own. It was like he just couldn’t be bothered.” 

Stephens said Greta had been unhappy in the marriage for at least 10 years.

“Greta wanted to divorce him. He wanted things to go on the way they were,” said Stephens. “That wasn’t enough for her anymore. She wanted to be happy.” 

Greta’s plans to leave the marriage were put on hold when the family received Mumper’s cancer diagnosis, Stephens said. Instead, she stayed and took care of him. She was there for every doctor’s appointment.

“She drove him to stinking chemo,” Stephens said, crying. “She got shot in the head. That’s what she got for her compassion.” 

A week after the murders, Stephens was among relatives and friends who returned to the Mumper house to collect what was left. Everything appeared normal until she passed through the living room. 

There was a card on the mantel, dated Aug. 28 — Greta’s birthday. 

 Stephens opened it and read the message, from husband to wife, written just nine days before the murders. 

“Happy birthday, Greta,” Mumper had written. “I love you.”

Killings driven by ‘a very narcissistic orientation’

What makes a person — most often a man — kill their family?

“It’s a very narcissistic orientation,” said David Adams, a Boston psychologist and the author of “Why Do They Kill?: Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners.”

“You’re basically saying, ‘I don’t want to live my life, and I don’t want anyone else to live either.’”

A distinct profile emerged from the IndyStar investigation and other research: The family annihilator’s violent actions are rooted in their failures, insecurities and inability to control their fate. Circumstances — impending divorce, financial difficulties, illness — have robbed them of the life they had imagined. So, they decide to take the lives of those closest to them.

Family annihilators identified by IndyStar included insurance agents, high school students, pastors, former police officers, stay-at-home moms, gun instructors, football coaches, actors, engineers, welders, veterans, golf caddies, school custodians, emergency medical technicians, border patrol agents and more. Many of these killers — perceived as educated, hardworking and family-oriented — flew under the radar of law enforcement, neighbors, their communities, and even their own families.

While every case is unique, a 2014 literature review identified common motives in family annihilation: suicide, immortality, control and revenge.

In some cases, an annihilator plans his wife and children’s deaths as an extension of his own suicide, believing the family cannot go on without him.

Other times, according to the “Journal of Family Violence,” he wishes to immortalize his family in death and protect them from experiencing hardships or failures.

Finally, there are cases in which a perpetrator is enraged at his spouse or partner, angry at their attempts to leave or believing they have been unfaithful. The killer then seeks revenge by destroying the family they created together, exercising one final act of control.

In Mumper’s case, Adams said he may have struggled to come to terms with his own impending death from cancer and decided to “take” his family with him. He may have also harbored aggrievement toward his wife for wanting to leave their marriage. 

“The typical family killer is more likely to be concerned about losing control over more than just his wife or family. His concern is more often with losing control over all aspects of his life,” forensic psychologist Charles Ewing wrote in his book, “Fatal Families: The Dynamics of Intrafamilial Homicide.”

“He is a man, who in his own eyes, is, or is about to become, a failure.”

Ewing notes that these types of murders strike a symbolic blow against the institution at the heart of our social order — the family.

“We can and do take all sorts of steps to minimize the risk of being murdered by strangers. Yet there is very little, if anything, we can do to reduce what is for most of us the much greater risk of being killed by members of our own families,” he wrote.

“Every intrafamilial homicide is a reminder that — even in safe neighborhoods, behind locked doors, and protected by alarms and weapons — we are all vulnerable.”   

Looking back for missed signs

For Amanda Okulski, Jakob Mumper’s 18-year-old girlfriend, it was impossible to reconcile who she thought Jeffrey Mumper was and what he did. This was the man she sat beside on the bleachers at Jake’s high school swim meets.

Amanda even skipped Jake’s 18th birthday party during the pandemic. She was afraid of spreading the coronavirus to his father while he was battling cancer. 

Looking back, Amanda wondered how she didn’t see the signs, if there were any signs to see. How did she not know what was coming?

That’s not unusual. Bloomington police said they had no record of domestic violence reports or runs involving the Mumper family. B