Here's just a sampling of a spate of madness since the beginning of March, which is in the running for National Murder-Suicide Month, by the looks of it. Whether it's an angry ex-boyfriend with a gun, or an ex-husband with an airplane, March seems to be the month for men to unleash old-school revenge of Biblical proportions on ex- and would-be spouses.

A particularly disturbing and heinous trend seems to be developing, of fathers murdering their chidren and killing themselves in front of their ex-wives and girlfriends. This happened on March 5th in Springfield, Mass., when, as reported in The Globe, "for reasons that may never be known, Hipolito Ortiz pulled his two young children out of day care..., drove them to the nearby parking lot of the factory where their mother worked, and then doused himself, his children, and the car with a flammable liquid and set all ablaze."

On the same day in Bedford, Indiana, an angry ex "crashed his rented single-engine plane into his former mother-in-law's southern Indiana home, killing himself and the couple's 8-year-old daughter." (He did not manage to take out the mother-in-law, in case you were wondering.)

Both of these terrible crimes took place only three days after a New Hampshire man fatally shot his wife and stabbed and shot his 10-year-old son, leaving the boy critically wounded. The man was said to have been distraught about possibly losing custody of him.

Here's one where the boyfriend totally spaced the suicide part after murdering his three-months-pregnant 23-year-old girlfriend. (I'm sure the while he was saying to himself, "damn, I know I'm forgetting something...")

And finally here's a no-frills Massachusetts murder-suicide that took place in Florida. Is New England exporting murder-suiciders now?

(There was also another Indiana murder-suicide on Friday morning, but it has been deemed a mercy killing.)

Not to make light of tragedy. Particularly where children are involved, these crimes are unspeakable. Obviously the women, too, endured abuse—I'd wager none of these incidents came out of the blue. But the fact that they all took place over the course of a week, and so many in New England, makes you wonder if there's something in the water. Or a government experiment with microwaves.

Maybe April isn't the cruelest Month anymore. Let's hope this year it's not, anyway.