Posted on 01/28/2003 5:13:29 AM PST by runningbear
Homicide victims usually know killer
Homicide victims usually know killer
By PATRICK GIBLIN
BEE STAFF WRITER
If Laci Peterson has been killed, statistics say she was likely slain by someone close to her.
Police still hold out hope for the pregnant, 27-year-old woman's safe return, but veteran investigators know that with each passing day since her disappearance on Christmas Eve, the chance diminishes.
"For much of our search, when we're looking in places under water, we're looking for a body," Modesto Police Chief Roy Wasden said earlier this month.
According to the California Department of Justice, more than 63 percent of the people who were arrested in California on homicide charges in 2001 knew their victims.
That's why detectives usually start investigating family members when they suspect a homicide has occurred, said Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the department's Division of Law Enforcement.
"About three years ago, we had a female agent who didn't show up for work," he said. "The husband said she left in the morning, but our detectives took a look at him anyway. Pretty soon, he told us where to find the body."
It makes sense statistically why police are increasingly focusing on Laci Peterson's 30-year-old husband, Scott Peterson. According to the California homicide figures:
Approximately 46 percent of victims were related to the killer in some other way.
Nearly 7 percent of victims were killed by their spouses.
About 7 percent of the victims were killed by a parent or child.
About 4 percent of the killers had an "other" relationship with the victim. That could mean they were dating or roommates, for example.
About 36 percent of the victims did not know the person who killed them.
But just because Scott Peterson is the husband does not mean he's guilty of anything, Van Winkle cautioned.
Neither does the news that he had a romantic relationship with a Fresno woman he met in late November, a criminal justice expert said Monday.
Jeanette Sereno, a lawyer and assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice with California State University, Stanislaus, warned that Scott Peterson's reported liaison doesn't make him guilty of homicide.
"In fact, just because he (might be) a suspect doesn't automatically make him the defendant," she said.
According to several studies on marriage -- including a 1998 study by the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California at San Francisco -- nearly one-fifth of spouses will have affairs during their marriages. Yet few end up in homicide.
Laci Peterson's case has another factor -- she's pregnant. Their son is due on Feb. 10.
According to a 2001 study by the American Medical Association, the leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide. The study randomly looked at the cases of 247 pregnant women who died and found that 50 of them were murdered.
The other women died from heart problems, car accidents, previously unknown medical problems or complications from the pregnancy.
"Typically, pregnant women don't participate in risky activities such as hiking, mountain climbing or drinking in bars," Sereno said. "They are eating well and seeing their doctors, so their deaths normally would be something out of their control."
Bee staff writer Patrick Giblin can be reached at 578-2347 or pgiblin@modbee.com.
Posted: January 28, 2003 @ 04:50:10 AM PST
You're pregnant. What do you think you would do if you realize that you were married to a creep, maybe a dangerous one at that?
Also, if Scott told the police, why was he out in public denying the rumors he had a girlfriend?
sw
Hey! Me too!
I'm angry, and this guy isn't related to me. We're all angry. WAS Laci a saint? Her own family will tell us how she would have reacted.
Did Laci think this "romantic relationship" was going to be "over" once she delivered? NOT!
The only place where I have been able to find numbers like the ones we saw on earlier threads were on an anti-gun, anti-male website. After they took inflated numbers, they were passed off here on FR with Clintonian word-games, like "had some relationship" with murderer --- counting all the people who were killed by the grocery boy, etc... in a context that made it seem probable that Scott did it.
I am still looking for something reliable, but the best I have found so far is a number that can be derived from FBI stats. In about 500,000 murders, slightly more than 13,000 had the murderer as the spouse of the victim. That yields a little more than 2%. But that is not the exact quantity we are looking for. We would like the percentage of wives murdered by husbands.
I am about to give up, satisfied at least that the numbers are approximately the order of magnitude suggested in this article.
That reminds me of what I heard Dick Armey say during the impeachment hearings, or right afterwards. He said his wife told him, "If you ever pull a stunt like that, the last thing you'll ever see is me standing over you in a pool of blood, watching me re-load."
YIPES!! Good catch!
You should be able to guess that, LOL!
But, as I said in another post, I don't advocate what I speculate.
That's not surreal if you realize they are counting all murder victims together. That's because the majority of murder victims are men, most likely single men, and they are looking at ALL murders. If you look only at female victims, the percentage shoots way up.
Are you sure?
7% of toal homicieds being perpetrated by the spouse would mean a little over 15% of the 46%.
Divorced, but nothing like that...
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