Reporters from WKYC-TV and Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer
newspaper have collaborated to review recent unsolved homicides of women and
asked the Murder Accountability Project to review their data on 61 unsolved
killings going back to 2004.
The review found that 34 of these women were killed by
gunfire, 10 by blunt force, 9 by strangulation and 8 by stabbing. Slightly
more than 44 percent of Cleveland’s unsolved female homicides were committed
through means other than firearms, while the national average for such killings
is 29 percent.
Studies of known victims of serial killers consistently show
that serial victims are disproportionately female and killed by
strangulation, stabbing or blunt force.
Women in Cleveland who perished through these more personal,
hands-on methods of killing varied in several statistically significant ways
from the city’s women who died from gunfire. They were much more likely to have
a history of prostitution, to be 40 years old or older and to be white or
Hispanic.
Here are the percentages: Women with a history of prostitution were killed by hands-on methods 77% of the time, compared to 35% for women with no such history. Only 32% of women under 40 died from these personal killing methods compared to 62% of women 40 or older. Among white or Hispanic women, 79% died from the more intimate methods of killing, compared to 34% of African American victims.
To see a discussion by Plain Dealer reporter Rachel Dissell
and WKYC reporter Drew Horansky, click here.
