IF the headline confuses you, I am sorry about that. Until I started to research the act of killing one’s wife I did not know the word either. So you and I now know that it’s the legal term for killing one’s wife. It is disturbing that it happens enough that they actually made a word for it.

In my line of work, I have been exposed to homicides — far too many. As a matter of fact, it is not restricted to my police work. I am also a forensic reconstruction expert, and almost all my cases of reconstruction involve murdered people. A few, sadly enough, involve the violent death of female spouses.

As a child growing up in a middle class home in St Andrew, Jamaica, gang murder was simply not a concern to me. It just didn’t happen in my community. What did happen was domestic murder.

By the time I was 10 years old I knew of three close friends of my father who had been accused of killing their wives. As an adult, I have been exposed to more than 2,000 murders and assisted in the investigation of hundreds. Many, most in fact, have been killers killing killers. I have never liked violence, so I find even these murders disturbing.

I have found family members killing family members confusing and equally distressing. A dominant factor in the domestic murders I have been exposed to, particularly the murder of female spouses, has been anger. One would think that this would be an ingredient in every murder. That’s not the case, though.

Gangs kill because that’s what they do. They are not necessarily angry. Oftentimes they don’t really even hate the victim. It’s just their nature to kill their opponent.

When spouses kill there is always rage present. Sometimes there is hate, but it seems to dissipate after the act has been carried out.

Professor Jane Monckton-Smith identified a common eight-stage pattern:

1) Pre-relationship history of abuse;

2) Fast romance;

3) Coercive control;

4) A threat to control (eg separation);

5) Escalation;

6) Change in thinking (decision to kill);

7) Planning;

8) Homicide.

I am not sure of the study group that produced these results but in my experience the planning is not evident. What is evident is the provocation and the anger that result from it.

This has been used in a recent defence in a popular case in Jamaica, and I think most of us can identify with the part provocation can play in creating anger, but most of us don’t kill.

What creates that bridge from anger to violence? Is it opportunity? Is it cowardice? I work with an officer called Hulk. His real name is Oshane Wilson, a corporal. He weighs over 300lbs and is built like a powerlifter. I have seen people get angry with him. I have never seen anybody try to hit him because they are angry. They may fight to escape arrest, but it’s not anger that motivates it.

So in the recent case of the politician who killed his wife because he was provoked, would he have done it if Mr Wilson were standing right there? I think not. A lot of what we describe as domestic violence due to provocation occurs because one person is weaker than the other, and that person is usually the female.

When I was growing up women had fewer resources than men. Nowadays, women are the more consistent earners and, in many cases, earn more money than their male counterparts.

When I was growing up, ‘wife-beating’ was more culturally prevalent in the middle class than it is now. Maybe this is because the disparity in income no longer exists. Several major positions in Jamaica are held by women. Our most recently appointed director of public prosecutions is ClaudetteThompson, and she replaced Paula Llewellyn. The person in charge of our army is Vice Admiral Antonette Wemyss-Gorman. We have had a female chief justice, Zaila McCalla, and even a female prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller.

The imbalance is over, the violence has reduced in certain social settings, but the homicides continue. Look at domestic murders in 2009, our most violent year, versus domestic murders in 2025, our most peaceful. You will realise that the number is consistent, but the percentage allocation is not.

The reality is that we have literally stopped the gangs from killing, but not the families. I honestly think it’s about anger — that is the dominant factor in every domestic murder I have been exposed to. If we can somehow teach men how to control their anger, or get them to be as afraid of the legal system as thugs seem to be of Hulk, then maybe we can stop this disturbing, consistent trend of anger, violence, murder, and then regret.

If you look at the popular domestic murder cases in Jamaica’s recent history, Berry, Meeks, Andrade, and now Silvera, you will find one consistent factor, and that is that they regretted the road that they allowed anger to carry them down.

And the victims are not isolated to the dead. The children will be affected far beyond their childhoods.

The convicted will never truly forgive themselves. And society will soon forget them.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com