Women who killed husbands ‘rarely gave a warning,’ and most weren’t abused, study finds

Conventional wisdom suggests that women usually kill their spouses in self defence or as a final, desperate reaction to chronic battery, the burning-bed syndrome that is sometimes cited as a defence in murder trials. A new Canadian study, however, suggests that barely a quarter of husband-killers are victims of domestic abuse, less than half suffer from any identified psychological problem, and fewer still have had trouble with police.

The majority of the slayings – perpetrated by knife, gun and strangulation — appear generally unheralded, suggests the analysis of 20 years of Quebec homicide files.

"Women rarely gave a warning before killing their mates,” concluded the study, co-authored by Dr. Dominique Bourget, a forensic psychiatrist at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. “In the vast majority of cases of women who killed their mates, there were very few indicators that might have signalled the risk and helped predict the violent, lethal behaviour.”

Women who end their partners’ lives have been an under-examined group, the researchers note, given they represent a minority of the total partner homicides. Almost 80% of the 738 spousal killings in Canada between 2000 and 2009 were committed by men, who the study said are also responsible almost exclusively for bloody massacres where children, as well as the partner, are murdered in one act.

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