Do stats really reveal how many husbands are killed by wives?
Do you ever wonder if more women kill their husbands than the stats reflect? If this story is any indication, the answer would be a mind-boggling "yes" (thanks Graham):
I wonder if this woman was hooking up with these military men to get their VA benefits? And five dead husbands before anyone figures something is going on? And Neumar is only charged with one count of solicitation for murder. If she killed the other four, do the stats reflect this? I doubt it.
Police may have ignored a warning years ago that a woman with five dead spouses was trying to hire a hit man to kill one of the men, investigators in North Carolina said Monday.
Authorities charged 76-year-old Betty Neumar last month with one count of solicitation of murder in the July 1986 death of Harold Gentry. Gentry's brother had begged investigators for two decades to take another look at the case.
Stanly County sheriff's investigators believe Neumar tried to hire several people to kill Gentry. Lead detective Scott Williams said Monday his office is looking into the possibility that one of those would-be hit men went to authorities before Gentry's death, but no one took him seriously....
Neumar has been married five times since the 1950s, but each union ended with the death of her husband. Investigators want authorities elsewhere to look into the deaths. Williams said investigators have uncovered a common link among the victims: They all had military experience.
I wonder if this woman was hooking up with these military men to get their VA benefits? And five dead husbands before anyone figures something is going on? And Neumar is only charged with one count of solicitation for murder. If she killed the other four, do the stats reflect this? I doubt it.
Labels: domestic violence, female violence
posted by Helen at 8:16 AM
35 Comments:
The military experience doesn't seem so surprising. If she's marrying men around her own age, it would be hard to find one without military experience.
And maybe she is drawn to murdering the strong, silent types.
Trey
If you are a man looking to marry or remarry, wouldn't there be something suspicious about a woman who had buried four husbands already?
How many dead husbands does it take before one starts to get curious? Double figures?
Not surprised by this at all. If it were here (Cleveland) the local media would be celebrating her as some kind of hero.
Are you really claiming that one case invalidates/tilts the statistics based on all cases?
anonymess - it was a question, not a proof. One anecdote doesn't prove anything (could progressives please write that down? Thanks), but 5 related anecdotes from different jurisdictions suggest that there may be a systematic bias toward not investigating cases that look like they'd use a lot of resources inconclusively, and this might bias the stats.
It is offered as a plausibility.
It would really be interesting to know how all the husbands died. Sounds like a great detective novel to me.
Stop Her Before She Marries Again
Seriously, I have to take all stats with a grain or two salt. In fact, it might be handy to just keep a saltlick by my computer desk.
Women kill differently than men, for sure. How often women kill, while still probably less than men due to sheer physical strength, is an unanswered question.
SIDS stats are also suspicious..
"The experts have now admitted that they are no longer able to distinguish between SIDS and Suffocation with a soft object."
http://www.criblife2000.com/history.htm
Warren Farrell, Excerpted from "The Myth of Male Power"
THE SIX BLINDERS (to how we have consciously and unconsciously kept ourselves blind to women who murder men)
1. A woman is more likely to poison a man than shoot him, and poisoning is often recorded as a heart attack or accident. [This will skew the figures]
2. Contract killing is also less detectable because it is premeditated and often hired out to a professional. When it is discovered the Department of Justice registers it as a "multiple offender killing" - it never gets recorded as a woman killing a man. [This will skew the figures]
3. The money factor. Women who murder husbands or boyfriends usually come from middle class backgrounds The money allows the best lawyers, more acquittals, therefore fewer female murderers to become Justice Department Statistics.
4. and 5. The Chivalry Factor, the Innocent Woman Factor prevent many women from becoming serious suspects to begin with.
6. The Plea Bargain Defense sometimes leads to the dismissal of charges.
Part of “The Twelve 'Female-Only' Defenses.” Read it here:
http://www.harrysnews.com/tgWomenWhoKillTooMuch.htm
“The Twelve 'Female-Only' Defenses” mentioned above:
http://www.harrysnews.com/tgWomenWhoKillTooMuch.htm
1. THE INNOCENT WOMAN DEFENSE
2. THE PMS DEFENSE ("MY BODY, NO CHOICE")
3. THE HUSBAND DEFENSE
4. THE "BATTERED WOMAN SYNDROME" DEFENSE, AKA LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
5. "THE DEPRESSED MOTHER" DEFENSE: BABY BLUES AND TERRIBLE TWOS
6. THE "MOTHERS DON'T KILL" DEFENSE
7. THE "CHILDREN NEED THEIR MOTHER" DEFENSE
8. THE "BLAME THE FATHER, UNDERSTAND THE MOTHER" DEFENSE
9. THE "MY CHILD, MY RIGHT TO ABUSE IT" DEFENSE
10. THE PLEA BARGAIN DEFENSE
11. THE SVENGALI DEFENSE
12. THE CONTRACT KILLING DEFENSE... DEFEND SELF BY HIRING SOMEONE ELSE
I'm not sure I understand the point of this post. Do women kill intimate partners and get away with it more than men?
I hope that's not what your positing.
@crankyspouse:
Depends on which part the "more than men" part applies.
Do women kill their intimate partners more than men? Probably not.
Do women kill get away with it more than men? Probably so.
What I believe Helen is saying is that women get away with it because they are women too often.
When I was in training as a forensic pathologist back in the mid-1980s, the rather cynical rule of thumb was that "Women get one free dead husband and two free dead babies."
The bottom line was that a woman could walk up on her husband, shoot him, call the police and say "I don't know. He was doing something with his gun, and I just heard a bang." As long as there weren't any glaring discrepancies, she was golden.
Similarly, during the heyday of "near-SIDS," the bottom line was that a dead baby with a negative autopsy was assumed to be SIDS and not smothering, in spite of the rather scary hidden-camera data from the UK.
And we're not even counting the women who NAG their husbands to death...
I think that part of the bias is our own: none of us want to believe that mothers kill. For most of us they were our primary attachment. We needed them to keep us alive, to feed, protect, cuddle, and love us. This is a powerful neurological event that undoubtedly colors all our subsequent experience.
So it may be in part a neurological bias.
Trey
Maybe some women just act on their instincts?? ;-)
And we're not even counting the women who NAG their husbands to death...
I laughed at this line, even though women killing their husbands is a serious issue.
Stats are a wonderful thing. They are easily manipulated and susceptible to all sorts of outside influences. Things like the prejudice of the analyst, bad “raw” data like Trust was pointing out and most times it is manipulated to get the outcome that’s desired. I don’t most of the statistics I see anywhere.
I think it’s probably true that women get away with spousal homicide more often than men, if only because of the stronger preference for poisoning as a method; I’ve read experts who argue that deaths by poisoning are most likely very underreported.
What’s interesting though in the statistics Dr. Helen linked to is, why the big drop in spousal homicides of men vs. of women since 1976? It steadily drops from about 80% as many husbands as wives killed in 1976, to less than a third as many husbands as wives killed in 2005.
The long-term trend can’t be explained by the type of story linked to in the blog post; police have never been all that great at picking up on multijurisdictional histories like Neumar’s, but they’ve gradually been getting better at this rather than worse (thanks to increasing use of national crime databases and improved communication, etc.) Besides, women are not the exclusive beneficiaries of multijurisdictional blindness; I’ve read of several cases of previous spousal deaths suddenly being reinvestigated when the latest wife dies or disappears as well (see the cases of Michael Peterson and Drew Peterson—no relation to each other--for example).
Any theories? I had no idea this trend existed, and am stumped. Could greater social acceptance of divorce be part of it? But why would that not affect men and women equally? A set of statistics I summarized on my own blog showed that women frequently cite spousal battery as a motive for killing husbands. Could it just be that shelters & increased services for battered women are actually working?
"What’s interesting though in the statistics Dr. Helen linked to is, why the big drop in spousal homicides of men vs. of women since 1976? It steadily drops from about 80% as many husbands as wives killed in 1976, to less than a third as many husbands as wives killed in 2005."
There may be some reasons, such as the fact that fewer people are married than 32 years ago, not to mention divorce is easier (and less stigmatized) and current divorce laws make divorcing (as opposed to murder and insurance collection, with the risk of getting caught) a financially attractive option.
Also worth noting, and i don't have the stats handy, contrary to perception, we fluxuate with one generation being considerably smaller than the ones before and after it. I'm not sure where 1976 rests on this, but i can look it up at work tomorrow. Simplest explanation (albeit incomplete) is during the "roaring 20s" people had many children, during the great depression people had very few children (and many were lost in WWII), after which there were more children born again. Obviously, if there were few children born in the 30s and 40s, it results in less parents to have children a couple decades later, whereas during the 20s, many of those children came to age in the late 40s and 50s and had more children when the economy recovered and war was over.
On a side note, failure to predict these trends results in budgetary and funding flunctuations where some people take credit and pass blame where there are simply more people retiring than entering the workforce, or vice versa.
In any case, population shifts and divorce laws may have something to do with statistical fluctuations.
Best,
Trust
Every sensible person knows that there are more men on the extremes than women. Both male and female serial killers get away with their crimes for decades before being caught. This woman does fit the profile. She moved around a lot to evade detection and chose isolated victims. She probably chose isolated areas where the police dept. was not very advanced. I suppose the male sociopaths are far too innocent to think of anything like that. The only way to get an idea about how much more the female sociopaths may be getting away with is to estimate the proportions and compare it to the results.
As for sr's comment, the drastic decline in the domestic homicides against men coincides exactly with the start of the battered women's movement. It would be ridiculous to attribute that to anything else. As soon as women had adequate access to jobs, many decided to leave violence behind. Most women have demonstrated their sincerity in stopping the most severe family violence. Most women have PROVEN that they are not into offing their husbands, even if they find them intolerable.
As far as the services "working", I would say that they are working out just great for MEN. Especially abusers. They are not working out so great for women. Women have done all the work, and men have gotten most of the lifesaving benefits.
SR,
"Any theories?"
I have read that some researchers think that the lower incidence of male homicide is due to services and battered women's shelters. In the past, women may have felt trapped by their circumstances and more desperate and therefore saw their only way out in murder. I think this is now true of men to some degree.
No one wants to help men who are batterers in the way that they want to help women who are victims. Men have nowhere to turn for real help for their rage and hostility and feelings of dependency (research shows men who batter are often more dependent, not less so and have traits of anxiety and other issues). If women have psychological problems, people rush to help, if men do, people run the other way.
With no or the wrong kind of help, men who batter have no framework of services. A man who is angry and desperate rarely has any place to turn. In addition, as laws crack down on men and child support with threats of jail time, men may kill women who are pregnant because they feel there is no other way out. I am not excusing their behavior but I am saying that their motivations for killing may be very similar to women who used to kill---they feel there is no other solution, no help available and laws and a society that force them into a role that they do not wish to be in.
Cara,
Maybe, just maybe if resources went into helping men who are batterers in real ways and funding mental health for men, then female homicide rates would also come down. No one wants to deal with angry men, people, especially therapists are often afraid of these men. I have found that once you gain their trust, they open up and can be helped to sublimate feelings of rage and anger.
In addition, if laws gave men more reproductive rights in deciding if they want to be dads just as women have, then maybe that would effect the numbers also. Women have abortion on demand and control of reproduction--this autonomy may have given them less incentive to feel trapped in a way that lead to murder. Men can have the same motivations. Again, this doesn't justify murder, it only helps to understand why some men may continue to kill their wives --remember, women who felt they had no where to turn also killed.
When I was younger I lived in two states, South Dakota and Arizona, where a lot of people had guns. It was not uncommon to read of a fellow who died while cleaning his gun.
The first thing you do when cleaning a gun is open the action, after which a gun can't fire. I don't know if these were suicides and people didn't want to call it that, or if the wife got fed up and nobody wanted to say that, either.
But unless your method of seeing if a gun is loaded is to peer down the barrel you can't shoot yourself while cleaning your gun.
"But unless your method of seeing if a gun is loaded is to peer down the barrel you can't shoot yourself while cleaning your gun."
This is tangential to the topic of this post, but the "died while cleaning his gun" in older reports is an artifact of having an elected lay Coroner rather than professional Medical Examiner system. When North Carolina went to a State Medical Examiner System in the 1970s, the number of reported suicides increased by some astronomical number (I don't remember, but I think it was a doubling) in one year -- then immediately leveled off. There is strong pressure put on elected officials and personal physicians to do the family a "favor" in cases of suicide and call it an accident.
Unfortunately, this habit also covers up the occasional homicide. I remember a case a few years ago of a woman whose death was not reported to the ME office by a local physician. The local physician assumed it was a suicide, decided to call it a self-inflicted "accident," and declined to report the case. By the time an infuriated family member contacted us, the body had been cremated.
Unfortunately, the description by the ER caretakers clearly made it a distant wound, and it was a shot through the *eye* with a high-powered rifle -- a vanishingly uncommon situation for a suicide. It was clearly not self-inflicted, and it was likely a homicide. But, of course, the forensic data was all gone by the time the family member (who lived out of state) started informing people who cared...
Cara,
"Most women have PROVEN that they are not into offing their husbands, even if they find them intolerable."
I think MOST men have PROVEN that they are not into offing their wives/girlfriends, even if they find them intolerable.
"As far as the services "working", I would say that they are working out just great for MEN. Especially abusers. They are not working out so great for women. Women have done all the work, and men have gotten most of the lifesaving benefits."
Great for men? Are you saying men in general beat their wives and girlfriends? So men have had no part in protecting women who were in abusive relationships? It's only women working to end the abuse?
My wife once saw a story on a TV about a man who was severely hurt protecting a women he never met from an attacker.
She, knowing how I am, said "promise me you'll never do that." I told her I cannot make that promise, and when she asked why I said "because if you were the victim, I would hope that a man wouldn't stand there and watch." I guess to feminists, I'm a chauvinist.
Men get blame when they engage in evil, and they should. But we get almost no credit for the good we do and the sacrifices we make.
This woman does fit the profile. She moved around a lot to evade detection and chose isolated victims. She probably chose isolated areas where the police dept. was not very advanced. I suppose the male sociopaths are far too innocent to think of anything like that.
It’s more likely they just don’t need to move around that much with their mo. Male serial killers tend to victimize strangers with whom they have no connection; their mo actually works better for them if they stick with familiar territory (they need to be able to abduct or lure their victims away unseen, dispose of remains, etc. All of this is easier with an area one knows well and can make predictions about, like when are there a lot of people around, how much traffic at what time of day, how can he spend a lot of time in this area looking for victims without being particularly noticed by anyone, etc.) As long as nobody connects him to any given victim, he’s fine.
A black widow, on the other hand, conducts her business more or less in the open; the victim is her husband, the death along with her name and relationship to the deceased is reported in the papers, the body handled by the usual authorities, etc. You really can’t do that over and over in the same area without somebody noticing.
I don’t know if black widows are really more “successful” overall than male serial killers, as I’ve never seen any statistics comparing the two. It’s hard to imagine a woman who must meet, woo, and marry each of her victims (and probably wait for some period of time for insurance policies to kick in as well) achieving the body count of somebody like the Green River killer, for example.
On the other hand, they may be more likely never to be noticed or caught. The national homicide database run by the FBI is designed specifically to collate information about homicides across jurisdictions and by victim and crime characteristics; I don’t think there’s any equivalent effort to identify multiple “natural” or “accidental” deaths of spouses of the same person. (I should mention in passing that black widows are not always female; there have been men who basically do the same thing, it’s just not as common).
Cara: As far as the services "working", I would say that they are working out just great for MEN. Especially abusers. They are not working out so great for women. Women have done all the work, and men have gotten most of the lifesaving benefits.
Do battered WOMEN's shelters help or hurt WOMEN?
SR, great and thought provoking post. Thanks.
I also checked out your website, that looks interesting as well.
Trey
Good points SR. It is also worth noting, as you indirectly stated, that there would be no such thing as states if the murder was not known to be murder--with serial killers, we typically know of murder even if we do not know the murderer. A black widow will likely kill in a way that is chalked up to an accident or heart attack. The general trust we have in female goodness also affords them more opportunity, since they are not usually suspect.
Conversely, men are more suspect. I know a woman whose sister died at 24 unexpectedly. Her husband saw blood coming from her mouth as she slept on the couch, couldn't revive her, and called 911. The medical staff wouldn't speak to him and wouldn't let him on the ambulance because they assumed he beat her (he didn't). It's hard to imagine a situation where a wife could not ride with her husband because they thought she hurt him.
If I may - here is my theory for why there are a lot less husband-killers in the list than there used to. It's not because there are less husband-killers out there: there are probably more.
It's because the authorities are scared of the "feminist" lobby/mafia and simply prefer not to investigate these cases. If the woman cries and says "he died of a heart attack" then fine, he died of a heart attack. Why risk losing your job over some guy who is dead anyways?
Gil Ronen said...
If I may - here is my theory for why there are a lot less husband-killers in the list than there used to. It's not because there are less husband-killers out there: there are probably more.
It's because the authorities are scared of the "feminist" lobby/mafia and simply prefer not to investigate these cases. If the woman cries and says "he died of a heart attack" then fine, he died of a heart attack. Why risk losing your job over some guy who is dead anyways?
She doesn't even need to claim that he died of another reason. Think of Mary Winkler - all she has to do is say "He MADE me have sex with him!!!" (rayyype!) (even though it used to be reasonable expectation for a man to have toward his wife) "He MADE me wear a wig and high-heeled shoes!!!!" (oh, the horror, the horror, the dreadful "oppression") and she can murder him in cold blood and end up serving less time than Michael Vick did for being involved with dog fighting, and have the courts force her daughers who are terrified of her to spend time with her - because making those girls spend time with their father's murderer is "in the best interests of the children", don'cha'know.
If men started getting the same consideration and protections given dogs, it would be a vast improvement.
Perhaps partly its due to a "look the other way" police department, but I suspect its much simpler then that:
Why would a woman who wants to inflict grievous harm on a man kill him? The laws are set up so that she can do so much MORE to a live one. Enslave him so he works for her for a decade, dangle visitations in front of him, wait till he schedules time off from work, then snatch the day back away.
And if he objects, you have a private army of men to come take him away.
Women don't murder men because they can exact whatever revenge they please, when they please, and take whatever they please.
This also explains why many of the man-on-woman killings are violent. Did you ever hear the phrase "no justice, no peace?"
Serket,
The shelters are a temporary palliative solution. There have been no real improvements for women. The victims are marginalized while the abusers have free run of the community. The victims have to go back into the community when they find new housing. The system has not stopped catch and release and does nothing about stalking. Many of the victims are killed AFTER they have already left.
The abuser still has access to the children. Even with an R.O. As soon as they file for visitation, they have been getting unsupervised visitation, no questions asked. They judges modify the R.O. to include it. The abuse usually continues from two separate households. When the victims realize that there is no help from the system, they start giving in to the abuser again to maintain a minimal level of safety. The abuser continues sabotaging progress, and when the victims get desperate enough, they go back. Then everyone criticizes them for doing it.
That has been the situation for three decades since the start of the battered women's movement. There are some new efforts on the unsafe visitation, but I doubt it will be anything drastic. They always make it sound tough on paper, but the system is slow to act and has no follow through. I don't know how much good it will do, since nothing is being done on the stalking.
Thank you for asking. I wonder why letting men escalate out of control and destroying their own lives with violence is not seen as a men's issue, too.
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