Welcome to the Bad Marriages Network.
I started writing Bad Marriages after I stopped following “regular news.” I would rather read and write real news about husbands and wives killing each other.
Bad Marriages Are Interesting
My nightly news became Forensic Files reruns, three years ago. Every episode is interesting. Many episodes describe the murder of a spouse. Many of those surviving spouses were murderers.
Sadly, Forensic Files stopped making new episodes in 2011. However, I researched certain cases after watching the show. Several cases were updated. But I also found additional information, not included in the show.
I discovered late night reruns of Dateline recently. Keith Morrison’s interviews with murderers are excellent. Bad Marriages includes cases that I learned about on Dateline.
I also wrote a computer program to search daily news articles for the latest Bad Marriages. Please visit Recent Fatal Marriages for links to news stories about (mostly American) husbands and wives killing each other.
Why Do Husbands and Wives Hate Each Other?
Marital arguments caused many of the world’s conflicts, and my three divorces.
My first wife Jayne and I attracted a crowd once, during an argument about my weekend schedule with our daughters.
Jayne and I screamed at each for ten minutes on the porch of her newly rented house, on a peaceful dead end street in Rockland County, New York. Hate consumed us and obliterated our senses.
This screaming match ended when we observed her new neighbors staring at us, expecting a murder or an assault.
However, our marital squabbles were unique. We never argued about money, because Jayne refused child support.
I Want My Money
Many married couples argue about money.
For example, Clay Starbuck earned $1,000 a week, working on Alaskan oil pipelines. However, he missed two months of child support payments, after he injured his back.
You cannot pay child support, while you are unemployed or in jail.
Nevertheless, Clay’s wife Chanin asked a judge to send Clay to jail, because he was two months late on his child support. Chanin Starbuck stopped suing Clay when she was murdered.
A jury sentenced Clay Starbuck to life in prison. However, his children believe their father is innocent.
Death Ends Bad Marriages
Martin Daly and Margo Wilson studied the reasons for murder:
Men often hunt down and kill spouses who have left them; women hardly ever behave similarly. Men kill wives as part of planned murder-suicides; analogous acts by women are almost unheard of.
Men kill in response to revelations of wifely infidelity; women almost never respond similarly, although their mates are more often adulterous.
Men often kill wives after subjecting them to lengthy periods of coercive abuse and assaults; the roles in such cases are seldom if ever reversed.
Men perpetrate familicidal massacres, killing spouse and children together; women do not.
Moreover, it seems clear that a large proportion of the spousal killings perpetrated by wives, but almost none of those perpetrated by husbands, are acts of self-defense.
Unlike men, women kill male partners after years of suffering physical violence, after they have exhausted all available sources of assistance, when they feel trapped, and because they fear for their own lives.
Honey, Don’t Murder Me
Crime in the United States is an annual publication of The Federal Bureau of Investigation with crime statistics. Full reports are available through 2015.
FBI Reports for 2015 found 12.8% of homicide victims were killed by a family member.
Additionally, FBI reported that murders rose 8.6% from 2015 to 2016.
American Wives Enjoy Murdering Husbands
Martin Daly and his late wife Margo Wilson analyzed the sex ratio of killing (SROK) in Who kills whom in spouse killings? On the exceptional sex ratio of spousal homicides in the United States.
Daly and Wilson studied husband and wife murders from 1976 to 1985. They found:
A hitherto unremarked peculiarity of homicide in the United States is that the number of women who kill their husbands relative to the number of men who kill their wives (the spousal SROK) is exceptionally high.
It’s Not the Guns
Guns are equalizers. However, petite wives do not need guns to murder giant husbands. Wilson and Daly found:
Rather than guns equalizing, it appears that gun use is still predominantly the province of men and that women’s lethality relative to that of men is actually greater when cases involving guns are excluded…
Life Insurance
Murderers love life insurance.
Angelina Rodriguez should have gotten away with murdering her husband Frank.
However, Frank’s insurance company would not release Angelina’s death benefit, because Frank’s cause of death was “undetermined.”
Angelina said an anonymous caller told her Frank died from antifreeze poisoning. Sadly, Angelina is on death row, because the call did not appear on her cell phone records.
Judy Buenoano was an expert at defrauding insurance companies. She collected over $260,000 of insurance benefits from the deaths of a husband, boyfriend and son. A mysterious house fire also increased her wealth.
However, Judy could not stop. She faked a pregnancy and blew up her boyfriend’s car.
Meanwhile, her boyfriend survived to learn that his girlfriend could not get pregnant. Finally, A Florida jury sentenced Judy Buenoano to death.
Adultery, Murder, Guilt
You need a divorce if you are cheating on your spouse. It is not rocket science.
Bad Marriages in Court
Husbands and wives are arrested for murder every day. But did they really kill their spouse?
Scott Peterson met a new lover when his wife Laci was seven months pregnant. Peterson’s behavior was despicable, but it does not make him a murderer.
Scott Peterson needed better lawyers. Several witnesses saw his wife, but they did not testify.
But Scott Peterson has many supporters. The California Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence, and he might get a new trial.
Despite the nightmare of living on Death Row for over 10 years, Scott Peterson is lucky. Other convicted murderers might be innocent, but they lack supporters and resources.
Neverthess, some murders are never solved.
What’s on Bad Marriages Network?
Homicide, Femicide, Mariticide, Parricide, Uxoricide
- Homicide is causing the deliberate or accidental death of a person.
- Femicide is the killing of a woman.
- Mariticide is the killing of a husband.
- Parricide is the killing of a relative, especially a parent.
- Uxoricide is the murder of a wife.
A murdered woman—unlike a murdered man, is as likely as not to have been slain by her spouse. — Wilson MI, Daly M & Scheib J
I find interesting spousal murders and try to explain them. Everyone should know that convicted murderers might be innocent.
Judges exclude evidence for reasons beyond my comprehension. Additionally, police lose evidence. Defendants request appeals for inadequate legal representation. Currently, innocent people are wasting years in jail, waiting to be exonerated.
I hope you enjoy visiting the Bad Marriages Network. Please send me your suggestions.
Murder rates are rising!
Finally: take a moment to remind your spouse why you married them :)
