View source for Mariticide

{{short description|The act of killing one's husband or boyfriend}}
{{Distinguish|Matricide}}
{{homicide}}
{{Violence against men}}
'''Mariticide''' (from [[Latin]] ''maritus'' "husband" + ''-cide'', from ''caedere'' "to cut, to kill") literally means the killing of one's own [[husband]]. 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]], mariticide made up 30% of the total spouse murders in the United  States, data not including proxy murders conducted on behalf of the wife.<ref>{{cite web|title=Understanding Intimate Partner Violence|url=https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/ipv-factsheet.pdf|publisher=cdc.gov|access-date=6 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190510022246/https://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/IPV-FactSheet.pdf|archive-date=10 May 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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]].<ref>{{cite journal|title=Wilson & Daley:Who kills whom in spouse killings|publisher=Wiley|doi=10.1111/j.1745-9125.1992.tb01102.x}}</ref>

==English common law==
Under [[England|English]] common law it was a [[petty treason]] [[Offences against the Person Act 1828|until 1828]], and until it was altered under the [[Treason Act 1790]] the punishment was to be strangled and [[Death by burning|burnt at the stake]].<ref name=burgess>{{citation |first=Samuel Walter |last=Burgess |title=Historical illustrations of the origin and progress of the passions, and their influence on the conduct of mankind |publisher=Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green |year=1825|pages=134–135}}</ref>

==Notable instances==

===Historical===
[[Image:Anne Williams burned at the stake.JPG|right|thumb|Anne Williams burned at the stake for mariticide in [[Gloucester]], 1753<ref name=burgess/>]]
* [[Laodice I]] allegedly poisoned her husband [[Antiochus II Theos]] of the [[Seleucid]] dynasty around 246 BC.
* [[Livilla]], along with her lover [[Sejanus]], probably poisoned her husband [[Drusus the Younger]].
* The Roman emperor [[Claudius]] was allegedly poisoned by his wife [[Agrippina the Younger]] to ensure the succession of her son [[Nero]].
* [[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.<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Kincaid, Jean|last=Stronach|first=George|volume=31|page=123}}</ref>
* [[Mary Hobry]] (1688), decapitated her abusive husband in London.<ref name="Bicks2017">{{cite book|last=Bicks|first=Caroline|title=Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare's England|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nDsrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA106|year=2017|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-1-351-91766-7|pages=106}}</ref>
* [[Mary Channing]] (1706), a Dorset woman who poisoned her husband to be with her lover.<ref name="Durston2014">{{cite book|last=Durston|first=Gregory J.|title=Wicked Ladies: Provincial Women, Crime and the Eighteenth-Century English Justice System|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HeUxBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA143|year=2014|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|isbn=978-1-4438-6599-9|page=143}}</ref>
* [[Marie-Josephte Corriveau]], 1763, [[New France]]
* 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]], 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 (murderer)|Annie Walsh]] became the last woman to be [[Execution (legal)|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.<ref>[http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/vic/content/2005/s1420450.htm Stateline Victoria<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
* [[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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.australian-news.com.au/Media/Regina_v_Knight.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303234728/http://www.australian-news.com.au/Media/Regina_v_Knight.htm |archive-date=3 March 2016 |title=HTML Document: Regina v Knight [2001] NSWSC 1011 revised – 29 January 2002}}</ref> She was sentenced to life in prison without parole: her appeal against this sentence as too harsh was rejected.<ref>[http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Knight-life-sentence-appeal-fails/2006/09/11/1157826846642.html Knight loses appeal for skinning partner – Breaking News – National – Breaking News<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
* 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 [[murder-suicide|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, [[Murder of Jerry Michael Williams|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.<ref>{{Cite web |agency=Associated Press |date=2018-05-11 |title=Texas woman who ran over cheating husband freed from prison |url=https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/texas-woman-who-ran-over-cheating-husband-freed-from-prison |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=KEYE |language=en}}</ref>
* In 2003, [[Susan Wright (murderer)|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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kettler |first=Sara |title=Who Is Melanie Slate McGuire, the 'Suitcase Killer'? |url=https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/melanie-mcguire-suitcase-killer |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=A&E |language=en}}</ref>
* [[Mary Winkler]] (born 1973) was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2006 shooting of her husband, [[Matthew Winkler (minister)|Matthew Winkler]] (1974{{endash}}2006), a minister, in Tennessee.<ref>{{Cite web |title=What made the preacher's wife kill her husband? |url=https://abcnews.go.com/US/made-preachers-wife-kill-husband/story?id=109358837 |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=ABC News |language=en}}</ref>
* [[Murder of Travis Alexander|Travis Alexander]] (1977{{endash}}2008) was an American [[sales]]man who was murdered by his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Ann Arias (born 1980),<ref>{{Cite web |last=Fraga |first=Kaleena |date=2024-11-03 |title=Jodi Arias Fatally Stabbed Her Ex-Boyfriend 27 Times — Now, She Leads An Eventful Life Behind Bars |url=https://allthatsinteresting.com/jodi-arias-now |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=All That's Interesting |language=en-US}}</ref> in his house in [[Mesa, Arizona]]. Arias was [[Conviction|convicted]] of [[First degree murder in the United States|first-degree murder]] in 2013 and was sentenced to [[life in prison]] without the possibility of [[parole]] in 2015.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Friends say they warned Travis Alexander that Jodi Arias was dangerous for months before she killed him |url=https://abcnews.go.com/US/friends-warned-travis-alexander-jodi-arias-dangerous-months/story?id=68731237 |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=ABC News |language=en}}</ref>
* 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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ferrarin |first=Elena |title=The Nancy Brophy Story: Killing a Husband Goes From Fiction to Reality |url=https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/nancy-brophy |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=A&E |language=en}}</ref>

===Mythological===
In [[Greek mythology]]
* [[Clytemnestra]] murders her husband [[Agamemnon]] as an act of vengeance for the sacrifice of their daughter [[Iphigeneia]], and to retain power after his return from Troy. In [[Aeschylus]]' ''[[Oresteia]]'', the [[Erinyes]] consider [[Orestes]]' 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]].
* The [[Danaïdes]] 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
* [[Infanticide|Prolicide]], the killing of one's offspring
* [[Sororicide]], the killing of one's sister
* [[Intimate partner violence]]
==References==
<references />
* [https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl01.xls]

{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
{{Domestic violence}}
[[Category:Homicide]]
[[Category:Death of men]]
[[Category:Violence against men]]
[[Category:Mariticides| ]]
[[Category:Killings by type]]