Homicide Fact: Age Matters

Source: Wikimedia

It is a fact that some people are at higher risk than others of becoming a homicide victim, and one of the leading risk factors is age. Age is inversely related to homicide risk, so that risk decreases as age increases.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data, the average age of homicide victims fell from 34.1 years in 1980 to 31.3 years in 1994, and then increased to 32.7 years by 2008. The data also show that homicide victimization rates are highest for adolescents and young adults.

The number of young people who are murdered has dropped steadily since 1993, as it has for all age groups, but adolescents and young adults remain at highest risk of being murdered.

Those younger than adolescence also become murder victims. Sadly, even young children are at risk, and homicide is a major cause of death among infants and toddlers. Homicide is the third leading cause of death of all persons under the age of five, and it is the leading cause of infant deaths due to injury.

More than eighty percent of infant homicides are considered to be the result of fatal child abuse. In most of these deaths, the perpetrator is a primary caretaker of the child—that is, a parent, stepparent or domestic partner of a parent. The most common method of infant homicide is a tiny victim being beaten with fists or kicked to death.

The age pattern for homicide offenders follows a pattern similar to homicide victims—that is, homicide offending rates decrease with age. According to the UCR data, the average age of homicide offenders fell from 29.6 years in 1980 to 26.4 years in 1994, and then increased to 28.8 years in 2008. From 1980 to 2008, young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four consistently had the highest offending rate of all age groups.

This rate nearly doubled from 1985 to 1993, as it climbed from 22.1 to 43.1 offenders per 100,000 persons. Since 1993, the rate for eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds has declined to 24.6 homicide offenders per 100,000 persons in 2008.

Clearly, homicide incidents involving the elderly are not the norm. Nevertheless, one incident of homicide involving two elderly persons is so extraordinary that it warrants inclusion here. Some years ago, a ninety-eight-year-old woman named Laura Lundquist murdered, Elizabeth Barrow, her one-hundred-year-old nursing home roommate in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, after the two women had an argument over a table Lundquist had placed at the foot of Barrow's bed.

Barrow was found dead September 24, 2009, at Brandon Woods Nursing Home with a plastic shopping bag tied loosely around her head. An autopsy indicated that Barrow had been strangled. State District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter said Barrow repeatedly complained that Lundquist was making her life "a living hell" in the weeks leading up to the woman's death, and that Lundquist had remarked that she would outlive her roommate.

To put this unusual incident in perspective, the odds of Elizabeth Barrow living to be one hundred years of age and then being murdered by another elderly woman in the U.S. are approximately one in one hundred million.

What happened to Barrow’s killer, Laura Lundquist, you might wonder. When she was indicted on a charge of second-degree murder in 2009, Lundquist gained the dubious distinction of becoming the oldest murder defendant in Massachusetts history, and perhaps U.S. history.

But she will never see the inside of a courtroom during her lifetime. Lundquist has a longstanding diagnosis of dementia and she was ruled incompetent to stand trial in 2014. Instead of going to trial, Lundquist is being held at a state psychiatric hospital for the remainder of her days. She was still alive as of this writing.

In a forthcoming book that is tentatively titled Women We Love to Hate: Jodi Arias, Pamela Smart, Casey Anthony and Others I explore the intense fascination with female killers and why they are demonized by the media and much of the public. More specifically, I examine the social processes that transform certain attractive, young, white females who are charged with murder into high-profile, celebrity monsters.

In my current book, I examine the public’s intense fascination with notorious and deadly serial killers, including David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) and Dennis Rader (“Bind, Torture, Kill”) with whom I personally corresponded, in Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers. To read the reviews and order it now, visit: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1629144320/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_B-2Stb0D57SDB

Dr. Scott Bonn is professor of sociology and criminology at Drew University. He is available for expert consultation and media commentary. Follow him @DocBonn on Twitter and visit his website docbonn.com