The Murder of Women Intimate Partners

• In Event: Roundtable: When Men Murder Women

Abstract

In this paper we consider the Murder Event and the Lifecourse associated with intimate partner murder (n=105). Type of relationship matters: cohabiting and girlfriend/boyfriend relationships are over represented. However, the context of these murders is similar.
Involving a history of violence against the victim, possessiveness of the perpetrator and most importantly women’s attempts to severe the relationship. These factors are highly dynamic. When women attempt to leave or have left, the perpetrators attempt to force them to remain/return and when they believe this has failed they “change the project” to one of annihilation. In this respect these men were the most purposeful of all murderers – with a fixed intention to kill. The lifecourse of these men suggests two relatively distinct patterns: the main pattern involves a childhood characterized by difficulty and problematic behavior but there was group of men (25%) who might be described as “ordinary guys” with unremarkable childhoods and relatively conventional adult lives. However, a closer examination of this group revealed two-fifths had been previously violent to the victim and their orientations to women and levels of remorse and empathy were similar to men with more criminalistics background

Author

• R. Emerson Dobash, University of Manchester