Till death do us part: a study of spouse murder.

Abstract

Killers of members of their own families have long fueled the archetypical imagination. Our myths, literature, and popular arts are full of such charac­ ters as Cain, Oedipus, Medea, Othello, Hamlet, and Bluebeard. In our time the murderous children of movies like Bad Seed and Omen; the homicidal father of Shining; the killer spouses of Hitchcock's Midnight Lace and Postman Always Rings Twice bespeak continuing fascination with the topic. In contrast, until recently the human sciences paid selective inattention I to the topic of family violence. Only in the past decade has violence in the family become a high priority social issue,~ an urgent situation, :1 on which privileged research energy needs to be expended. We deal here with the murder of one spouse by the other, topic on which research remains sparse 4 despite the growing interest in family vio­ lence. Based on data derived from twenty-three males and eleven females accused of such crime, we contrast and compare the two groups attempting to identify common and gender-related characteristics in the offense, the relationship between murderer and victim, as well as the judicial disposition of the accused. The importance of the doer-sufferer relation in acts of family criminal violence has been well established. In major sociological studies-s it has been found that about one out of five (or nearly one out of four) deaths by murder in the U.S. involved family member. Family violence also has been reported to be significant social problem in Great Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Israel, and in Africa.!! In the State of Florida, 10 where the murder rate was 10.6 per 100,000 popUlation in 1978, the murder of one family member by another accounted for 19.3 percent of all murders. Of these murders, one spouse killing the other accounted for 12.75 percent of all murders. In 1980, the proportion of relative and spouse homicide had decreased to 13.7 percent and 8.2 percent respectively, but this reduction appears to be result of sharp increases in other types of homicide. In his classic study, Patterns of Criminal Homicide, Wolfgang examined 588 homicides in Philadelphia to determine the extent and character of family criminal violence. He reported that half of the family killings involved spouse killing spouse. In these murders, the wife was the victim