Getting even? Women who kill in domestic encounters

Abstract

Field research in six U. S. cities, included among cities with the highest murder rates in the country, was undertaken to explore female criminal homicide offenders and the circumstances of their crimes. This article addresses a subgroup of those women; those who kill persons with whom they have been intimate sexually. Many of the results support earlier studies by finding, for example, that domestic homicide is intrafamilial, intraracial and intersexual, but other discoveries such as the preplanning of the homicide, increased use of firearms, more murders committed by single women, and the prior arrest histories of the female offenders suggest that the women who kill as a result of domestic alterations today differ from their battered sisters of past years.