In 2004, 1,807 females in the United States were murdered by males in cases in which a single offender killed a single victim. In more than nine in ten of these cases (92 percent), the victim was murdered by someone she knew. Nearly two-thirds of the victims who knew their offenders (62 percent) were wives, ex-wives or intimate partners of their killers.
These are among the findings of the Violence Policy Center’s annual report, When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2004 Homicide Data. The report details national and state-by-state information on female homicides involving one female murder victim and one male offender. It is based on the most recent data available from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report.
In 2004, the average age of a female homicide victim killed by a male offender was 38. Eight percent of the victims were under age 18, and nine percent were 65 or older.
Firearms were the most common weapon used by males to murder females (49 percent). The report also finds that nearly two-thirds of the females killed with a firearm were murdered by male intimates.
In 2004, the national homicide rate among female victims murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents was 1.29 per 100,000. Alaska was ranked the highest with a murder rate (2.83 per 100,000) more than double the national average. Ranked behind Alaska were: New Mexico, Wyoming, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2004 Homicide Data is available online at http://www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2006.pdf.
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