Mariticide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mariticide (not to be confused with matricide); from the Latin maritus (married) and cidium (killing), literally means the murder of one's married partner, but has become most associated with the murder of a husband by his wife, as the reverse is given the name uxoricide.

[edit] Notable instances

[edit] Historical

• Laodice I allegedly poisoned her husband Antiochus II Theos of the Seleucid dynasty around 246 BC.
• Heather Osland drugged and had her son kill her husband in 1991, creating a test case for the 'battered woman syndrome' defense in Australia.^[1]
• Katherine Knight murdered her de facto husband by stabbing him, then skinned him and attempted to feed pieces of his body to his children.^[2] She was sentenced to life in prison, but her rejected appeal said that the sentence was too severe for the crime.^[3]
• In 1991, Pamela Smart had her husband murdered by a student of hers. 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.

[edit] Mythological

• In Greek mythology, Clytemnestra murders her husband Agamemnon as an act of vengeance for the murder 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.
• In Greek mythology, the Amazons were said to kill men they partnered with after conceiving.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/vic/content/2005/s1420450.htm
2. ^ http://www.australian-news.com.au/Media/Regina_v_Knight.htm
3. ^ http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Knight-life-sentence-appeal-fails/2006/09/11/1157826846642.html

[edit] See also

• Uxoricide, the practice of killing one's wife