NCJ Number
205956
Journal
Homicide Studies Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2004 Pages: 123-158
Date Published
May 2004
Length
36 pages
Annotation
Using a national database of newspaper accounts from the archives of Lexis-Nexis and ProQuest, this study identified an exploratory sample of U.S. women who, between 1993 and 2001, killed two or more victims during a single episode of domestic violence; case analysis focused on the social characteristics of the offenders as well as their relationship to the victims and the way in which these murders apparently developed.
Abstract
The newspaper search found 32 cases of women who had committed multiple murder in the context of domestic relations between 1993 and 2001. The largest category of victims was children, which was the case in 20 of the multiple killings (57 child deaths and 5 injuries). Most of the women in these cases (n=14) killed all of their biological children, but some children were spared and some survived the attack. The injuries could have been death except for factors unrelated to the intent of the perpetrator. Familicides accounted for another 6 cases, which involved 6 intimate partner deaths, 12 child killings, and 1 injury. The highest death toll for any one event was six. For all cases the average number killed was almost three (2.8). With few collateral injuries, the women involved were determined and efficient killers. Although the weapon used to commit the killings varied widely across cases, guns were used in almost half the cases. The study generally found two broad types of triggering events, with several discrete subcategories in each. The first and most common category of events (almost 70 percent of cases) involved changes in the domestic situation of the offender. These changes represented a loss of fundamental roles for the women in the sample. Typically this involved a stripping of the status of wife. 2 tables