Mariticide
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Mariticide (from
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
''maritus'' "husband" + ''-cide'', from ''caedere'' "to cut, to kill") literally means the killing of one's own
husband A husband is a man involved in a marital relationship, commonly referred to as a spouse. The specific rights, responsibilities, and societal status attributed to a husband can vary significantly across different cultures and historical perio ...
. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. It can also be used in the context of the killing of one's own boyfriend. In current common law terminology, it is used as a gender-neutral term for killing one's own spouse or significant other of either sex. Conversely, the killing of a wife or girlfriend is called uxoricide.


Prevalence

According to
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the National public health institutes, national public health agency of the United States. It is a Federal agencies of the United States, United States federal agency under the United S ...
, mariticide made up 30% of the total spouse murders in the United States, data not including proxy murders conducted on behalf of the wife. FBI data from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s found that for every 100 husbands who killed their wives in the United States, about 75 women killed their husbands indicating a 3:4 ratio of mariticide to uxoricide.


English common law

Under English common law it was a petty treason until 1828, and until it was altered under the Treason Act 1790 the punishment was to be strangled and burnt at the stake.


Notable instances


Historical

* Laodice I allegedly poisoned her husband Antiochus II Theos of the Seleucid dynasty around 246 BC. *
Livilla Claudia Livia (Classical Latin: CLAVDIA•LIVIA; – AD 31) was the only daughter of Nero Claudius Drusus and Antonia Minor and sister to Roman Emperor Claudius and general Germanicus, and thus paternal aunt of emperor Caligula and mate ...
, along with her lover
Sejanus Lucius Aelius Sejanus ( – 18 October AD 31), commonly known as Sejanus (), was a Roman soldier and confidant of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Of the Equites class by birth, Sejanus rose to power as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, the imperia ...
, probably poisoned her husband Drusus the Younger. * The Roman emperor
Claudius Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; ; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54), or Claudius, was a Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Nero Claudius Drusus, Drusus and Ant ...
was allegedly poisoned by his wife
Agrippina the Younger Julia Agrippina (6 November AD 15 – 23 March AD 59), also referred to as Agrippina the Younger, was Roman empress from AD 49 to 54, the fourth wife and niece of emperor Claudius, and the mother of Nero. Agrippina was one of the most prominent ...
to ensure the succession of her son
Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his ...
. * Jean Kincaid (1579–1600) was a Scottish woman who was convicted of mariticide. Her youth and beauty were dwelt upon in numerous popular ballads, which are to be found in Jamieson's, Kinloch's, and Buchan's collections. * Mary Hobry (1688), decapitated her abusive husband in London. * Mary Channing (1706), a Dorset woman who poisoned her husband to be with her lover. * Marie-Josephte Corriveau, 1763,
New France New France (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Kingdom of Great Br ...
* The Black Widows of Liverpool, Catherine Flannigan (1829–1884) and Margaret Higgins (1843–1884) were Scottish sisters who were hanged at Kirkdale Gaol in
Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...
, for the murder of Thomas Higgins, Margaret's husband. * Rebecca Copin (1796–1881) attempted to murder her husband in Virginia by putting arsenic in his coffee. While the jury agreed that she attempted mariticide in 1835, they did not grant her husband a divorce. * Florence Maybrick (1862–1941) spent fourteen years in prison in England after being convicted of murdering her considerably older English husband, James Maybrick, in 1889. * Tillie Klimek claimed to have psychic powers by predicting her husbands' deaths in Chicago, but was proven after the attempted murder of her fifth husband that she was poisoning them with arsenic. * Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters were executed in 1923 for the murder of Thompson's husband Percy in London. * Annie Walsh became the last woman to be executed in Ireland, in 1925, having murdered her husband. * Betty Broderick shot and killed her ex-husband, Daniel, and his new wife, Linda, in 1989 while they were sleeping in their home in the United States. * Heather Osland drugged and had her son kill her husband in 1991, creating a test case for the '' battered woman syndrome'' defense in Australia. * Katherine Knight (b. 1955) murdered her ''de facto'' husband in October 2001 in Australia by stabbing him, then skinned him and attempted to feed pieces of his body to his children. She was sentenced to life in prison without parole: her appeal against this sentence as too harsh was rejected. * Sheila Garvie, convicted in 1968 of the murder of Maxwell Garvie, her husband, in Scotland. * In 1983, musician Felix Pappalardi was shot and killed by his wife Gail Collins Pappalardi in the United States. * In 1991, Pamela Smart had her husband murdered by a student of hers in New Hampshire. Though the student committed the murder, the courts ruled that Smart had been guilty of mariticide due to her influence on the young man and her convincing manner to get him to carry out the act. * In 1998, entertainer Phil Hartman was killed by his wife Brynn Hartman, who then killed herself in Los Angeles. * In 1999, Celeste Beard killed her husband, Steven, by her lover. * In 2000, Denise Williams conspired with her lover, Brian Winchester, to kill her husband, Mike Williams. She collected a $2 million insurance payment Winchester had arranged for the couple and then later married him. After they divorced several years later, Winchester, following his arrest after an incident where he sneaked into her car and held her at gunpoint, told police where the body had been buried; the information led to Williams' conviction in 2018. * In 2002, David Lynn Harris was run over multiple times by a car. The perpetrator was his wife, Clara, killed him by running him over with a car in a parking lot. She was released from prison after serving fifteen years of her twenty year sentence. * In 2003, Susan Wright tied her husband, Jeff, to a bed and stabbed him multiple times with two different knives in Texas. * In 2004, Jamila M'Barek paid her brother to murder her husband, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury. * In 2004, Melanie McGuire murdered her husband, William, then desecrated his body. * Mary Winkler (born 1973) was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2006 shooting of her husband, Matthew Winkler (19742006), a minister, in Tennessee. * Travis Alexander (19772008) was an American
sales Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred ...
man who was murdered by his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Ann Arias (born 1980), in his house in
Mesa, Arizona Mesa ( ) is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. The population was 504,258 at the 2020 census. It is the List of municipalities in Arizona, third-most populous city in Arizona, after Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, T ...
. Arias was convicted of first-degree murder in 2013 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of
parole Parole, also known as provisional release, supervised release, or being on paper, is a form of early release of a prisoner, prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated ...
in 2015. * In 2008, Chilean architect María del Pilar Pérez hired a hitman to kill her husband along with two other people. She was sentenced to life in prison. * In 2009, Dale Harrell was murdered by his wife Marissa-Suzanne DeVault in Arizona. She was sentenced to life in prison. * In 2018, Daniel Brophy was killed by his wife Nancy Crampton-Brophy in Portland, Oregon; she was later sentenced to life in prison at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.


Mythological

In
Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...
* Clytemnestra murders her husband
Agamemnon In Greek mythology, Agamemnon (; ''Agamémnōn'') was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Achaeans (Homer), Achaeans during the Trojan War. He was the son (or grandson) of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of C ...
as an act of vengeance for the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia, and to retain power after his return from Troy. In
Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; ; /524 – /455 BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek Greek tragedy, tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is large ...
' '' Oresteia'', the
Erinyes The Erinyes ( ; , ), also known as the Eumenides (, the "Gracious ones"), are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the ''Iliad'' invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth tak ...
consider
Orestes In Greek mythology, Orestes or Orestis (; ) was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the brother of Electra and Iphigenia. He was also known by the patronymic Agamemnonides (), meaning "son of Agamemnon." He is the subject of several ...
' matricide a greater crime than Clytemnestra's mariticide, since the killing of a spouse does not shed familial blood, but the opposite view is espoused by Aeschylus's
Athena Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretism, syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarde ...
. * The
Danaïdes In Greek mythology, the Danaïdes (; ), also Danaides or Danaids, were the fifty daughters of Danaus, king of Ancient Libya, Libya. Danaus and the Danaids feared that Danaus's twin brother, Aegyptus, was plotting to overthrow and kill them. So, t ...
were 50 sisters who were forced into marriage. All but one murdered their husbands on their wedding night.


See also

* Avunculicide, the killing of one's uncle * Filicide, the killing of one's child * Fratricide, the killing of one's brother * Uxoricide, the killing of one's wife * Matricide, the killing of one's mother * Nepoticide, the killing of one's nephew * Parricide, the killing of one's parents or another close relative * Patricide, the killing of one's father * Prolicide, the killing of one's offspring * Sororicide, the killing of one's sister *
Intimate partner violence Intimate partner violence (IPV) is domestic violence by a current or former spouse or partner in an intimate relationship against the other spouse or partner. IPV can take a number of forms, including physical abuse, physical, verbal abuse, verb ...


References



{{Domestic violence Homicide Death of men Violence against men Killings by type