Read Online 'Till Death Do Us Part: Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse by Robi Ludwig, Matt Birkbeck - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robi Ludwig, Matt Birkbeck
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pursuing other romantic relationships. Men are often motivated to kill a spouse out of jealousy, especially if they are estranged and the commitment to the relationship is seen as tenuous or challenged.
Estranged male perpetrators are also more likely than estranged female partners to seek out, track down, and kill an ex-partner for leaving them. Unfortunately that was the case for David and Crystal. She left an abusive marriage and before long started to feel great about herself. But her burgeoning joy was short lived, as was the life of her estranged spouse, who turned the gun on himself.
Homicide is the only crime that regularly results in the criminal taking his or her own life following the act. Although people tend to view homicide and suicide as opposite ends of the spectrum, it is possible for someone to feel homicidal and suicidal at the same time. Such people are typically involved in a chaotic, frustrated, long-term intimate relationship and such relationships often vacillate between extreme feelings of anger and love. There can also be this idea that one person has been sexually unfaithful. The triggering event is often the separation from the spouse or love object. This separation can produce intense and severe depression, which increases the suicide risk factor. The murder/suicide is a consequence of a sense of unbearable powerlessness, a feeling a controlling spouse is trying all along to avoid having. The murderous act is viewed with guilt and shame after the perpetrator realizes the crime that he has committed. This then intensifies his suicidal impulse.
Others argue that the perpetrators of the murder/suicide are trapped in a vicious cycle of frustration-nurturance-frustration. So when the source of the frustration is killed, in this case Crystal, so is the source of nurturance. When the nurturance is lost the homicidal frustration increases, and then turns against the self in the form of suicide, as it did in David’s case. We know that murder/suicides are not monolithic acts. These acts have many different dimensions. Sometimes murder/suicide is an outgrowth of guilt. In other cases, according to Wilson and Daly, it happens because the female becomes so much a possession or piece of property that she also needs to be taken along on the journey of death. In other cases murder/suicide may preserve the fantasy that the two lovers will remain together forever.
What is particularly interesting, statistically, is that, unlike men, women rarely kill themselves after killing their partner. When women kill, it’s often to get away from their partner, to escape, not to take him along into eternity. Men are also prone to be more dependent on women for their sense of self and emotional connection since they often have difficulty developing intimate connections with friends and family, something most women develop early in life. Unlike women, men connect on a more practical/superficial level and rely on the women in their lives to provide emotional and social stability.
And finally, these homicides highlight the point that just because the relationship is over, it does not mean that the control or violence is over.
While most such acts are cold and calculated, I do not think this was so in David Brame’s case. His act seemed to be carried out with about as much thought as a road rage incident. But David was unprepared for what it would feel like to see his wife and not have control of her and her choices. David was unable to tolerate his losses. He had to once and for all show Crystal who was the boss, even if it meant cutting off his own nose to spite his face. It had to be done; there was no other choice, at least for him, not at that moment.
* * * * *
R OBERT B IERENBAUM also felt there was no other choice.
On Sunday, July 7, 1985, his wife Gail, twenty-nine, disappeared without a trace following an argument in their New York apartment. The couple had been married for four years and, despite outward
Estranged male perpetrators are also more likely than estranged female partners to seek out, track down, and kill an ex-partner for leaving them. Unfortunately that was the case for David and Crystal. She left an abusive marriage and before long started to feel great about herself. But her burgeoning joy was short lived, as was the life of her estranged spouse, who turned the gun on himself.
Homicide is the only crime that regularly results in the criminal taking his or her own life following the act. Although people tend to view homicide and suicide as opposite ends of the spectrum, it is possible for someone to feel homicidal and suicidal at the same time. Such people are typically involved in a chaotic, frustrated, long-term intimate relationship and such relationships often vacillate between extreme feelings of anger and love. There can also be this idea that one person has been sexually unfaithful. The triggering event is often the separation from the spouse or love object. This separation can produce intense and severe depression, which increases the suicide risk factor. The murder/suicide is a consequence of a sense of unbearable powerlessness, a feeling a controlling spouse is trying all along to avoid having. The murderous act is viewed with guilt and shame after the perpetrator realizes the crime that he has committed. This then intensifies his suicidal impulse.
Others argue that the perpetrators of the murder/suicide are trapped in a vicious cycle of frustration-nurturance-frustration. So when the source of the frustration is killed, in this case Crystal, so is the source of nurturance. When the nurturance is lost the homicidal frustration increases, and then turns against the self in the form of suicide, as it did in David’s case. We know that murder/suicides are not monolithic acts. These acts have many different dimensions. Sometimes murder/suicide is an outgrowth of guilt. In other cases, according to Wilson and Daly, it happens because the female becomes so much a possession or piece of property that she also needs to be taken along on the journey of death. In other cases murder/suicide may preserve the fantasy that the two lovers will remain together forever.
What is particularly interesting, statistically, is that, unlike men, women rarely kill themselves after killing their partner. When women kill, it’s often to get away from their partner, to escape, not to take him along into eternity. Men are also prone to be more dependent on women for their sense of self and emotional connection since they often have difficulty developing intimate connections with friends and family, something most women develop early in life. Unlike women, men connect on a more practical/superficial level and rely on the women in their lives to provide emotional and social stability.
And finally, these homicides highlight the point that just because the relationship is over, it does not mean that the control or violence is over.
While most such acts are cold and calculated, I do not think this was so in David Brame’s case. His act seemed to be carried out with about as much thought as a road rage incident. But David was unprepared for what it would feel like to see his wife and not have control of her and her choices. David was unable to tolerate his losses. He had to once and for all show Crystal who was the boss, even if it meant cutting off his own nose to spite his face. It had to be done; there was no other choice, at least for him, not at that moment.
* * * * *
R OBERT B IERENBAUM also felt there was no other choice.
On Sunday, July 7, 1985, his wife Gail, twenty-nine, disappeared without a trace following an argument in their New York apartment. The couple had been married for four years and, despite outward
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