Why Do They Kill?: Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners

5. Short Courtships

138 5 | Short Courtships One of the unanticipated findings of this study was that a high proportion of the relationships that ended in murder or attempted murder had very fast beginnings. I further found that the relationships that began with short courtships had much faster demises than those with longer courtship periods . Since length of courtship has not previously been identified as a potential risk factor for femicide, it therefore warrants further investigation. Courtship is defined as the period of time from the beginning of a dating relationship to the start of the couple living together. Both the perpetrators and the victims of abuse were asked how long they had dated or were “involved as a couple” prior to living together. Subjects were asked not only to estimate the number of weeks or months of the courtship period but also to give approximate dates for when they first met, when the relationship began, when they began living together, when and if they got married , and when each child was born. To give meaning and context to the answers, the subjects were also asked to say where they had been living as well as what they were doing work and school-wise during these periods. Table 5.1 shows courtship data derived from the twenty-six killers who had lived with their victims. Startlingly, half of these relationships (thirteen) had had courtships or three months or less, while nearly a third (eight) had had courtships of one month or less! Three of these relationships had had whirlwind “courtships” of one or two days. These were cases in which two strangers had met and almost immediately begun living together. The remaining five killers never lived with their victims, and therefore had courtship durations that could not be objectively measured or meaningfully compared to those couples that had cohabitated. In four of these cases, the relationship had begun when the victim was a teen or preteen Short Courtships | 139 and was still living with her parents. All four of these young women were still living with their parents when they were killed. These non-cohabitating couples most closely resembled those cohabitating couples with short courtships. Though killers with quick beginnings to their relationships were somewhat more likely also to be substance abusers, this connection wasn’t strong enough to characterize them primarily as alcoholics or drug abusers . In fact, these men were amply represented among all five of the killer types that I’ve previously profiled. For this reason, it made sense to analyze how these men and their relationships compared to the rest of the men. I found that relationships with shorter courtships differed in many ways from those with longer ones, and generally seemed to unfold at a much faster pace. Their median courtship duration was forty-five days, compared to 345 days for those relationships with courtships that exceeded six months. Not only was the courtship period shorter in these relationships but also the entire relationship, as measured from the onset of living together to the murder of the victim. As seen in Table 5.2, victims in relationships with shorter courtships were killed more than seven years sooner, on average, than those in relationships with slower beginnings. Only those victims who never lived with their killers died younger and sooner. Besides beginning and ending more quickly, relationships with shorter courtships appeared to be less stable, faster-paced, and possibly more violent . It is worth highlighting the unique features in these relationships Table 5.1: Length of courtships among killers before onset of living together Length of courtship Number (percentage) of killers 6 months or more 12 (46) 6 months or less 14 (54) Breakdown of those with short courtship: 3 months or less 13 (50) 2 months or less 12 (46) 1 month or less 8 (31) 1 or two days 3 (12) N=26 (this excludes 5 killers who never lived with the deceased partner) 140 | Why Do They Kill? since this may help us to identify more specific violence and homicide prevention strategies. Alcohol and Drug Use Many of the relationships with short courtships seemed to revolve around alcohol and/or drugs. In ten of these fourteen relationships (71%), the perpetrator had abused alcohol, drugs, or both. In at least five of these cases, the victim had also abused alcohol or drugs. Often this mutual substance abuse had begun as soon as the relationship did...