In news accounts, men who killed their children and then themselves were portrayed as caring parents, while women were portrayed as killers who had disordered personality problems. The analysis is based mainly on two cases involving: (1) a man who killed his three children and himself, and (2) a women who killed her husband, two children, and herself. The analysis revealed that father perpetrators were described in sympathetic terms and the background information provided about fathers was more likely to contradict the violent act than predict it. In contrast, female perpetrators were portrayed as killers who were not good women or mothers and were possibly mentally disordered. Indeed, in the case under analysis, newspaper accounts initially believed the father had killed the family. Neighbors who were interviewed offered their shock and said positive things about the father. When it was later revealed that the mother was the perpetrator, neighbors and childhood friends only had negative things to say about the mother, which included questions about her mental health and piety. The findings illustrate the way in which female perpetrators who kill their children are portrayed as more competent and controlling in their violent actions than male perpetrators, who are typically portrayed as decent men and caring fathers who went terribly wrong in one moment. Data were drawn from Finnish newspaper accounts of murder-suicides involving mothers and fathers. The analysis was mainly conducted on the two case studies described above and involved a feminist ethnomethodological research approach, which focuses on the way people make sense of events and social contexts by using their everyday knowledge of gender. Footnotes, references