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1. Men Who Kill Their Partners
- Vanderbilt University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 1 | Men Who Kill Their Partners Introduction This book is the culmination of over ten years of work investigating the murders of women by their intimate partners. In 1993, Governor William Weld declared a state of emergency for women in Massachusetts in response to the murders of twenty-eight women and six children at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends. Even People magazine took notice , issuing a cover story titled “The Plague Strikes Home” in response to a spate of five wife killings in the town of Barnstable on Cape Cod.1 Judging by newspaper accounts of these killings, most of the killers had previously battered their victims. Media accounts of the killers pointed to a variety of motives. Some seemed to fit with O. J. Simpson’s alleged motive for killing, that of a jealous husband or boyfriend. John Diaz, for example, mistakenly shot and killed Dawn Brown, the look-alike sister of his estranged girlfriend, Kimberly Brown, whom he had intended to kill. Apparently, Mr. Diaz believed Ms. Brown had left him for another man.2 James St. Cyr was another man who reportedly killed in a jealous rage. Mr. St. Cyr broke into the apartment of his estranged girlfriend, Tara Hartnett, who was a college senior and young mother. After stabbing her to death, Mr. St. Cyr set the apartment ablaze in an attempt to cover up his crime.3 Other killers appeared to have a clear history of alcohol or drug abuse, and judging from the media accounts, some of these deaths were unplanned and even accidental. There were also those who killed themselves as well as their partners. The portraits that emerged from these killings seemed to fit those of suicidal depression and mental illness. In some cases, though, very little was known about the prior histories of the killers and their victims. For the most part, friends and neighbors said they were shocked and had no clue about what motivated the fatal attack. 2 | Why Do They Kill? As someone who has counseled men who batter for nearly thirty years, I also wondered what, if anything, was unique about these cases. Are abusers who kill more violent, or more jealous, or more suicidal, or just plain crazier than those who don’t kill? What could have deterred these men? Despite the sensationalistic headlines and media coverage, very little was really known about wife killings. A few studies had tried to make sense of these situations by interviewing friends and relatives of the murdered women. But even these studies left out the two most important sources of information: the victim and the perpetrator. This is the first study in the United States that sought to gain information directly from men who killed their partners.4 In seeking to interview killers, I never expected them to provide completely honest accounts, just as I knew from my work with batterers that the picture they paint is often skewed. In fact, I knew much of what the killers would say would be self-serving. They still had much to hide, and even more to justify or excuse. I knew that the best sources of information were dead. While it was impossible to talk to the deceased, we decided to do the next best thing: interview women who came closest to being killed, victims of attempted homicide. This study included in-depth interviews with twenty victims of attempted homicide and nineteen additional women who were victims of potentially life-threatening assaults. These subjects were recruited through district attorney offices in Massachusetts and from battered women’s programs. By seeking information from both killers and victims of serious assaults, we sought to increase the understanding about what leads to women’s murders by men. “Is He Going to Kill Me?” For the first time in a long time, Elizabeth Wilson felt she had something to look forward to as she drove home from her sister’s house one late November evening. She was returning from an annual tradition for the Wilson family: dinner following the last hockey game before Christmas. It had felt so good to be where she was so accepted and could just be herself . She had four days off from her job as an office manager. Most of all, she felt relieved not to have encountered her estranged husband, Mark. She realized that Mark was likely aware of her whereabouts that evening because he’d seemed to make it his business to know where she...