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In a previous post I asked the question why do husbands kill their wives. I acknowledged in the post that wives also kill their husbands; but I said it doesn’t appear to happen quite as often; however I stumbled across what appears to be an excerpt from a book titled “The Abuse Excuse: And Other Cop-outs, Sob Stories and Evasions of Responsibility” written by Alan M. Dershowitz. The excerpt references a study of murder in families that was conducted by the Department of Justice some time around the OJ Simpson murder trial.

The finding of the study, according to the text of the excerpt, was that in the context of family murders, wives kill their husbands almost as often as husbands kill their wives. Dershowitz hints that the reason it appears that significantly more husbands kill their wives than wives kill their husbands is because of how differently these matters are handled/reported in the media.

Dershowitz also suggests that, based on the findings in the study, wives who kill their husbands receive lighter sentences over all and get acquitted more frequently.

I’ve searched Google news for recent cases of wives killing husbands. The most recent I was able to find was back on the 25th of November when 83 year old Irene Updegrove shot and killed her husband Louis Updegrove then shot and killed herself. Presumably this was not your typical case of a wife killing a husband out of vengeance. In fact, police have suggested this was an elderly couple who were faced with deteriorating health and other medical issues, and the wife chose to terminate their lives to solve their problems.

Another recent case is that of Miriam Helmick  who has just been arrested in Jacksonville Florida for allegedly murdering her 62-year-old Alan Helmick back in June in Mesa County Colorado. It is being suggested that she might also have murdered her first husband, Jack Giles, six years ago.

Wives Also Kill Husbands–Quite Often by Alan M. Dershowitz