Nearly half of women murdered are killed by an intimate partner

The Washington Post found that nearly half of the women who were murdered during the past decade were, like Parnell and Cisneros, killed by a current or former intimate partner. In a close analysis of five cities, about a third of the male killers were known to be a potential threat ahead of the attack.

Slayings of intimate partners often are especially brutal, involving close encounters such as stabbings, strangulation and beatings, The Post’s analysis found.

Nearly a quarter of the 2,051 women killed by intimate partners were stabbed, compared with fewer than 10 percent of all other homicides. Eighteen percent of women who were killed by partners were attacked with a blunt object or no weapon, compared with 8 percent of other homicide victims. While a gun was used in 80 percent of all other murders, just over half of all women killed as a result of domestic violence were attacked with a gun.

Violent choking is almost entirely confined to fatal domestic attacks on women — while fewer than 1 percent of all homicides result from strangulation, 6 percent of women killed by intimate partners die in this manner, The Post found. It’s also a warning sign. Those who attempt to strangle an intimate partner are far more likely to later commit extreme acts of violence, police and researchers say, and many in law enforcement believe it to be a strong indicator that an abusive relationship could turn fatal.
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Authorities — and those who work with victims of intimate-partner violence — say the most glaring signs that a relationship could turn fatal are often elusive to law enforcement, including things that are obvious to those around them but rarely make the public record: death threats behind closed doors, easy access to guns, jealousy, separation or a breakup.

“We have a lot of repeat victims and repeat offenders because, for example, it may be the victim’s only source of a babysitter. It may be the victim’s only source of income,” said Lt. Amy Parker-Stayton, commander of the family violence and sex crimes unit in the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. “The victim comes back and says, ‘I love him; I don’t want to prosecute,’ and unfortunately, if it happens again, we revisit it again. And it may be too late. On the second or the third time, they may be dead.”

Tracy Prior, chief deputy district attorney in San Diego County, said about 40 percent of the defendants in the domestic homicide cases her office prosecuted from 2007 to 2017 had a prior criminal record.

“You wish you had a crystal ball, because no prosecutor wants to see the same perpetrator doing that again,” Prior said.

But the most basic step authorities instruct abused women to take — filing a restraining order — can lead to fatal violence because involving the legal system often is a flash point. One prosecutor tells women who request an order to do so with a backpack and a plan.

“It’s not a bulletproof vest,” said Karen Parker, president and CEO of Safe Alliance, which helps abused women in Charlotte, where half, or 60, of 119 women killed from 2007 to 2017 were murdered by an intimate partner, according to The Post’s analysis. “He can still come after you. It’s a legal tool.”

And legally, there is not much that can happen until an order is violated.

“That’s what people think they are supposed to do when they feel as though they are threatened or they are in danger. We tell them, ‘Get an order of protection,’ ” said Travis Partney, chief trial attorney in the St. Louis circuit attorney’s office, which prosecuted Whittier.

“And she did,” he said of Jackson. “And she’s dead.”