Domestic homicides on rise

A 16-year-old girl returned home from school in January to find her mother on the floor of their garage with a 6-inch metal spike from an industrial tree stand sticking through her skull.

Police arrested her on-and-off boyfriend in the slaying.

In July, a 29-year-old woman was strangled in broad daylight in a sport utility vehicle in a southwest valley neighborhood.

Her former boyfriend was charged.

Earlier this month, a 65-year-old woman was arrested in the slaying of her 72-year-old sister with whom she lived in a mobile home near Boulder Highway and U.S. Highway 95.

Those incidents have one common link: domestic violence.

And killings motivated by domestic strife might have another common link as well: the souring economy.

Researchers say historical evidence indicates domestic violence rises as the economy tanks. And a worker at a local domestic violence shelter said she is experiencing firsthand that this is the case in Las Vegas.

A Metropolitan Police Department official said domestic violence-related homicides in the department's jurisdiction in 2008 have well surpassed last year's totals.

There have been 34 domestic violence-related homicides this year compared with 27 in 2007. There were also 34 domestic violence-related homicides in 2006.

But the 2008 figure increases to 43 when police add a new category begun this year to classify homicides, which they call slayings with a domestic nexus.

Police said there have been nine domestic-nexus slayings in which a former lover kills a former partner or that partner's significant other or spouse.

Bill Sousa, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said domestic violence rates are tied to the economy.

"If there are crimes that go up during poor economic times, domestic violence is one that will go up," Sousa said. "People are under more stress. More stress leads to more aggression. And more aggression leads to higher assault rates."

Julie Proctor, executive director of the nonprofit SAFE House, which stands for Stop Abuse in the Family Environment, said workers with the Henderson-based organization are seeing anecdotal evidence of this.

"It definitely has made an impact on the victims and these batterers," Proctor said. "A lot of people are in foreclosure. They are losing their jobs. We're getting feedback like that."

Proctor's organization has a court-ordered program that teaches people convicted of domestic violence how to deal with stress and anger.

For the first time since at least 2003, the program has a four-week waiting list, she said. About 40 people were recently waiting for room to free up before taking part in the 26-week program.

Police homicide Lt. Lew Roberts said he did not know if the new category of domestic-nexus homicides is bloating the overall figure since these cases were not lumped with domestic violence related homicides in previous years.

But he said one thing's for sure: "The bottom line is they are up."

Roberts hesitated to peg the economy as a factor.

"How do we definitively say it's the economy this early in the crisis?" Roberts asked. "If you ask me a year from now, we may know."

Most instances of domestic violence slayings are difficult to trace to the economy, but some are not.

In this month's slaying involving the elderly sisters, Jeannie Twigg told police that she and her sister were in poor health, burdened by bills and medical expenses and wanted to die.

Police said Twigg shot her sibling, Elizabeth Ann Kinch, three times in the chest, and afterward unsuccessfully tried to take her own life by popping pills.

Contact reporter Antonio Planas at aplanas@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638.