Case Throws Light on Underreporting of Husbands Murdered by Wives
October 29th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.We don't yet know what happened in this case (WHSV, 10/27/09). The pair have just been arrested and of course are presumed to be innocent of criminal wrongdoing.
What appears to have happened, though is that Dennis "Chip" Taylor and Lorie Taylor were married and had three children. They got divorced and were in the middle of a heated dispute about child custody. In the meantime, it looks like Lorie married Nakia Keller. On the night of October 23rd, Chip Taylor, his new wife Alaina Taylor and her daughter Kaylee Grace Whetzel were shot to death. Kaylee was five years old. The house they were in was then torched. Nakia Kelly and Lorie Taylor have been arrested in connection with the shootings and fire which has been ruled arson.
Again, we don't know if Kelly and Lorie Taylor committed the crimes described, but let's assume they did for the sake of this question: if Lorie Taylor took part in the murder of her ex-husband, would it appear on the records of the Department of Justice as the murder of an ex-husband by his wife?
The answer is 'no.' It would appear as a multiple offender homicide.
The latest figures we have for husband/wife homicide show that about 1,200 husbands killed their wives that year (2007) and about 400 wives killed their husbands. But the problem with those figures is that women, much more than men, hire or persuade someone else to do their dirty work for them. So the figures for women murdering their husbands leave out all those murders-by-proxy. Those are all hidden inside the multiple offender murders.
The good news of course is that husbands and wives both are, to a large degree, safe with each other. As of March 2007, there were about 56 million married couples living in the United States. That's about 112 million people. If 1,200 wives were killed by husbands that year, each wife in the country would stand a one in 47,000 chance of being killed by her husband. Since the numbers of husbands killed by wives is less certain, we don't know what each husband's chances of being killed by his wife are, but it's probably somewhat less than one in 47,000.
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October 29th, 2009 at 11:07 am
From Minnesota. A new angle - toddler did it!
This Article from StarTribune.com has been sent to you by charlie.
A 25-year-old mother of four fatally shot the children's father in the back of the head in their northern Minnesota home and then tried to pin some of the blame on their 3-year-old son before confessing, according to charges filed today.
Betsy M. Hanks, of Kelliher, was charged in Beltrami County District Court with second-degree intentional murder and remains jailed on $1.5 million bail.
According to the charge:
Hanks called 911 late in the morning on Oct. 20 to report finding her partner, 27-year-old Matthew D. Albert, in bed and shot in the head.
She told authorities that the two of them had been up until 4 that morning discussing Albert's claims that Hanks had been romantically involved with another man. She said she denied the accusation.
After sending the two older children -- ages 6 and 5 -- off to school that morning, she said that she and the 3-year-old boy went to Mizpah, leaving Albert and their 18-month-old child behind.
Hanks said that when she returned home that day, she found Albert in bed, shot in the head but still breathing. She said that Albert kept a pistol in a case by the bed, but the case was empty and the gun missing.
On Oct. 22, the same day that Albert died after being hospitalized in the Twin Cities, Hanks told a Sheriff's Office investigator that she saw her 3-yer-old son playing with the pistol and it went off as she tried to take it from him, wounding Albert in the head.
However, later in the interview, Hanks admitted to killing Albert before heading to Mizpah. She said she shot him in hopes of giving her children a better father.
Hanks said she ditched the gun in a swamp and later showed authorities that location. The weapon was recovered.
Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482
October 29th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
On the way to work i heard twice about how the murder stats have been updated in Canada. Alberta scoring the murder capital, closely followed by a report that women murders are down to levels of the 60's, followed by a rationals that "this is most likely due to intimate partner murders being down, which is usually women being murdered by men".
Nice way to put it huh? ..
Oh here is a link to the article they much have been reading :)
http://www.680news.com/news/national/more.jsp?content=20091028_234444_10756
October 29th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Statistics Canada report says homicide rate up; Winnipeg still murder capital
The Canadian Press WINNIPEG | Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 11:45 pm WINNIPEG - Manitoba again has the dubious distinction of being the province with the most homicides per capita last year, while Winnipeg kept its title as the country's murder capital.
The grim news from a Statistics Canada report released Wednesday notes Manitoba had 40 of the 611 homicides that occurred across the country in 2008.
The majority of homicides were in Winnipeg, which had 30 last year.
The national homicide rate was about two per cent higher than the year before, and was attributed mostly to jumps in gang-related killings in British Columbia and Alberta.
Abbotsford-Mission, B.C., had the country's highest homicide rate of cities with 100,000 to 500,000 people. The city had eight homicides last year, some of which were connected to a local gang war.
The report also said the rate of women killed was at the lowest level since 1961.
The drop might be due to fewer spousal homicides, which tended to involve men killing women in the majority of cases.
``Does it mean domestic violence incidents are down? I don't think so,'' said Lori Rudniski, chairwoman of the Family Violence Consortium of Manitoba, a group of 30 organizations dealing with domestic abuse.
``At the agency levels, we're seeing more complex needs from the women and the families, (and) we're seeing the impact of longer-term incidents of domestic violence.''
The StatsCan report notes 24 per cent of homicide victims in 2008 were women.
The report says there's more gang-related killings since the 1990s, cases which typically are crimes against men. Of the 611 homicides across Canada, 62 were spousal homicides. Women are three more times likely to become victims of spousal homicide than men, with 45 women and 17 men killed by a current or former spouse.
There were also 27 people who died at the hands of either a former girlfriend or boyfriend.
Vancouver had 54 homicides in 2008, with a rate of 2.37 per 100,000 people. Montreal had 48, with a rate of 1.27 per 100,000 people.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Do DOJ statistics for spousal murders exclude ex spouses and partners who are not legally married? Just wondering.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
So, this is something else women can't do on their own? There needs to be a federal program to enable women to murder their spouses without having to get help! It's Just Not Fair!
/sarcasm
October 29th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Barton - I assume they do not. I understand that the people in the story are no longer married, but my guess is that the statistics are parallel between marrieds and recently marrieds. And the multiple offender classification applies to both.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Offended, dad, there is!
it's called work-related deaths. it just needs to be more reliable & predictable.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
To give perspective on the female homicides and their relative size compared to the population of married couples. We have 56 million couples. Out of that 1200 females are killed. We have 56 million men involved in the marriages.
We then have 55,998,800 men who do not kill their wives. Yet billions are spent on the issue. The female homicide rate against the male partner is bound to be larger for all the reasons Bob mentioned and if it is like Canada can be up to the Police or Coroner to say so one way or the other. Sometimes, as was the case in London, ON where a couple who had a relationship but it was failing the female, a Police Officer, shot her partner a retired Officer, and then herself. Neither were classified as DV but the death of the man certainly should have been.
October 30th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Robert,
I'm not sure how you make that jump to the assumption that, that number of men is less than 1:47,000????
November 1st, 2009 at 3:15 am
All interesting and academic, females have a penchant for killing by proxy or a false flag doctrine. We could even say many things that have serious outcomes are instigated by females from policies to poisons. History especially political is our best teacher of these things, unfortunately very few seem to understand nor care to understand what history says. It is like the simple argument of a paid killer it is not the payer we seek but the one who pulled the trigger. Just as in child abuse every male attached to a female with children is by proxy the father whether biological or not. The media, government (includes the judiciary) and feminism itself will always fall over itself to associate any male perp as the father. Giving a bad rep to real bio dad's out there. Seems males are their own worst political enemies, especially when they have no political mill or even the consolidated will from which to counter the absurdity of state and feminist policy. The state will never either fund males nor support them, we have to do it ourselves constructively.