The best remembered and most dramatic case of child-parent murder was the killing of  William Fitzsimmons, 64, and his wife, Peral, 60, by their son George.

George Fitzsimmons murdered his parents on January 12, 1969, by using "karate". George claimed that his father tried ti hit him because he refused to go to church with his parents. George Fitzsimmons was 31 years old at the time.

In an effort to defend himself, he hit his father on the head several times and then beat his mother until she too was death. Thereafter, he drove to Rhode Island in his father's car.

Apprehended and tried for this double slaying, Fitzsimmons was send to de Buffalo Psychiatric Center from which he was released in 1973 on the grounds that psychiatrics testified that "he is without danger to himself and others."

Having inherited $123,000 from his parents, Fitzsimmons went to Potter County in Pennsylvania to stay with his aunt and uncle,  both 80 years old.

Shortly thereafter he stabbed both Euphrasia Nichols, his aunt, and De Alton Nichols, his uncle, to death with a hunting knife. Previously he had been convicted of assaulting his wife.

Gerhard Falk - Murder, an analysis of its forms, conditions, and causes

SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: N MOTIVE: PC-nonspecific

MO: Killed parents (1969) and elderly caretakers (1973).

DISPOSITION: Ruled insane, 1969; released from asylum 1973; two concurrent life terms, 1976.

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers