Killing your spouse - thoughts?

[Florentine_Pogen]

1 hour ago, RH33 said:

I'd suggest you all avoid beef wellington if your ex invites you for lunch.

Only 4 pages long. A Roald Dahl classic :-

https://online.htseden.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Short-story-Lamb-to-the-slaughter.pdf

[Sortmeout]

5 hours ago, hk blues said:

I doubt anybody hires a killer just because they don't want to be married anymore.
 

 

or just unable to tolerate their wife's behaviour anymore. 

 

 

 

Are those two not the same thing? 

[BFTD]

2 hours ago, Richey Edwards said:

It is. "Conspiracy to murder" it's called.

Aye, but nobody would ever know - she certainly wouldn't be daft enough to outline her plan on the internet for all to see, and would probably murder anyone daft enough to confess on her behalf. Possibly with poison and ice cubes.

What are the ice cubes for anyway? Slip them up his arse as the final insult while he spasms on the floor?

[TxRover]

On the whole, I think very few people would be surprised at the sheer number of people who consider themselves “trapped” in a marriage. Kids add another layer to the cake, and custody and such are always grounds for argument and worry. I suspect more people than you might assume are hoping to simply outlive someone or such.

It’s probably part and parcel of the somewhat pragmatic move to partners over spouses across the Western world. With less legal entanglements, it’s easier to get out of the situation. Note, I said easier, not that it doesn’t have many of the same considerations.

[Boo Khaki]

Narcissists usually have completely warped perceptions of what "winning/losing" looks like, are usually obsessed with outwardly appearance and perception, and their sense of self-superiority is what causes them to incorrectly conclude that they can murder or have someone murdered and evade detection.

The motivation isn't necessarily a case of winning or losing in a separation settlement, it can be the thought of the spouse 'winning' custody of the children, or the mere fact that a dissolved relationship is perceived as a "loss" and a failure to them, and they can not cope with the prospect of being outwardly perceived as fallible. 

If your partner or spouse dies/disappears/is murdered by a third party, then that obviously is not your fault (in the mind of a narcissist) so there's nothing to blame you for, you haven't taken a reputational hit, and you can carry on with your life with an unblemished record and your belief in your own superiority undiminished, indeed, you'll likely be on the receiving end of a good helping of the sympathy, attention, and spotlight that narcissists crave if you are perceived to be widowed through no fault of your own.

Obviously there are plenty of cases of spousal homicide motivated purely by greed or spite, but the ones that make you wonder what the f**k the point of it was when walking away or just being honest were options are invariably the ones that set my spidey senses tingling. When you see how these folk behave at trial, or refuse point blank to acknowledge reality when indisputable proof is placed under their noses, that's the tell-tale that you're likely dealing with a narcissist. Oftentimes they'll do in the spouse, bairns, and then top themselves, the so-called "family annihilators", such is their inability to cope with the prospect of being perceived to have "lost" in some way.

[LIVIFOREVER]

21 hours ago, Sortmeout said:

No no, not me. 
 

I was scrolling through X/Twitter there and saw a news story about a guy who had hired a hitman (America obviously) to kill his wife.

Why do people do that? I understand and assume that on occasion it would be for financial gain via an insurance policy pay-out etc but I cannot understand the people that do it who just don’t want to married to their partner anymore.

Why would anyone decide that was the best course of action instead of just separating and moving on? Of course there are evil people out there but some of these crimes must just be out of complete exasperation with the other person/the situation so why wouldn’t you just leave? Surely you would understand that dealing with the fallout from that would be better than the other option? 

I'm sure there will be a few episodes of Columbo covering this.

[Aim Here]

27 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

Narcissists usually have completely warped perceptions of what "winning/losing" looks like, are usually obsessed with outwardly appearance and perception, and their sense of self-superiority is what causes them to incorrectly conclude that they can murder or have someone murdered and evade detection.

The motivation isn't necessarily a case of winning or losing in a separation settlement, it can be the thought of the spouse 'winning' custody of the children, or the mere fact that a dissolved relationship is perceived as a "loss" and a failure to them, and they can not cope with the prospect of being outwardly perceived as fallible.

To add to this, a lot of overly macho narcissists, after doing the old murder-your-wife-and-kids-and-maybe-themselves thing, do it in times of financial stress, and, for those who don't follow through with the intended suicide or leave messages, often their stated notion is that the wife and kids wouldn't survive without them or something similarly self-important. Looming financial disaster is incredibly stressful; coupling that with patriarchical, controlling attitude and feelings of shame about not being able to provide for your family, and men with certain narcissistic tendencies figure this is their escape route.

[ICTChris]

The Chris Watts case was very much like that. He had an affair and then murdered his wife and children when it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to leave and be with his new lover. He then disposed of them in a manner most people wouldn’t do with a dead animal, utterly callous.

I remember in one of the documentaries about the case the police checked his laptop at work and found he’d been googling lyrics to a Metallica song, Battery, which has the lyrics “Smashing through the boundaries, lunacy has found me…..Cannot kill the family
Battery is found in me”. He googled this hours after murdering his children and stuffing them into an oil storage tank. It really smacks of “my life is a movie, I am the main character”. You can almost see him imagining it.

[Guest]

On 15/11/2023 at 19:03, Sortmeout said:

No no, not me. 
 

 

Why would anyone decide that was the best course of action instead of just separating and moving on? Of course there are evil people out there but some of these crimes must just be out of complete exasperation with the other person/the situation so why wouldn’t you just leave? Surely you would understand that dealing with the fallout from that would be better than the other option? 

Religion is another reason people can't get divorced and leave their partners if unhappy, another negative to the most stupid invention of humanity. 

[hk blues]

20 hours ago, throbber said:

i haven’t really - i do know what life insurance we are covered for though and i also know what my house is worth so it’s not difficult to see which is the best financial option for myself if i were that way inclined!

For the OP to say he didn’t understand it makes me think he’s still in his 20’s.

...and single!

[hk blues]

15 hours ago, Sortmeout said:

Are those two not the same thing? 

Not always.  Sometimes folk just don't want to be married to their partner anymore and it's not always because of their spouse's behaviour. It can be as simple as meeting someone else.

[Leith Green]

On 15/11/2023 at 19:55, ICTChris said:

My dad was a witness in a recent trial where William McDowall was convicted or murdering Renee MacRae, his lover, and their four year old son. Obviously Renee wasn’t his spouse but she was his long term lover - they had an affair over several years.

McDowall never admitted his guilt and died not long after his conviction so we don’t know for certain why he did it but he had lead Renee to think that he was going to leave his wife and family to come and live with her. This would have meant McDowall losing his family, losing their large home, losing his well paid job (Renee was his bosses estranged wife). So he told Renee he’d got a job in Shetland in the oil industry, that he would divorce his wife and they would live there as a family. In the meantime he told her he’d booked a weekend holiday together, and to bring their son so he could bond with him. Then in a lay-by on the A9, he murdered them both and disposed of their bodies, which have never been found.  Some of the police think that he burned the bodies in the boot of his car and then scattered the ashes in the countryside, making them impossible to find.

He wanted to have a simultaneous relationship with Renee and have his family life. He wanted to keep all that and lied to maintain it. When it became clear that Renee threatened it, rather than take a course of action that would require some moral courage - leave his wife, break up the relationship with Renee - he took a course of action that meant he benefited him most, even though this meant murdering two people, one of whom was his own child, a boy of three.

Men who murder their spouses in this way all want to have everything they want but don’t want to pay for it, so to speak. He could have made a sacrifice but didn’t want to so sacrificed others in the most callous way imaginable. Obviously many, maybe most, domestic killings are done in anger or as culminations of horrific violence but there are always men who calculate that committing acts of horror will get them what they want. Other high profile examples you can find are the Watts family annihilation murders or the murder of Lynette Dawson in Australia. 

She should have just walked away

[Fullerene]

16 hours ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

I'm sure there will be a few episodes of Columbo covering this.

Speaking of which, did you ever get to see the wife? 

Very suspicious if you ask me.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Fullerene

[hk blues]

4 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Speaking of which, did you ever get to see the wife? 

Very suspicious if you ask me.

She had her own show in her own right -

[scottsdad]

41 minutes ago, hk blues said:

She had her own show in her own right -

Finally a Star Trek link to this thread! I was wondering how to shoehorn one in. 

Mrs Columbo was played by Kate Mulgrew, who was Captain Janeway in Voyager. 

[LIVIFOREVER]

3 hours ago, Fullerene said:

Speaking of which, did you ever get to see the wife? 

Very suspicious if you ask me.

Not in the Columbo series nope. Peter Falk's wife was in 4 or 5 episodes though.

3 hours ago, hk blues said:

She had her own show in her own right -

Never seen this, was it any good? Just read the reviews, nobody liked it.

Looking at its IMDB, doesn't look like Columbo appeared in it either. Donald Pleasence did though, he was a murderer in an episode of Columbo.

3 hours ago, scottsdad said:

Finally a Star Trek link to this thread! I was wondering how to shoehorn one in. 

Mrs Columbo was played by Kate Mulgrew, who was Captain Janeway in Voyager. 

William Shatner was in a few episodes of Columbo too, and Leonard Nimoy was in one.

[supermik]

Been told this is in the running for Christmas present. Death is incoming..

 

[hk blues]

16 hours ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

Never seen this, was it any good? Just read the reviews, nobody liked it.

Looking at its IMDB, doesn't look like Columbo appeared in it either. Donald Pleasence did though, he was a murderer in an episode of Columbo..

Never saw it, like most!

It seems strange to make a spin-off programme with a character that didn't actually appear in the original. 

[Fullerene]

38 minutes ago, hk blues said:

Never saw it, like most!

It seems strange to make a spin-off programme with a character that didn't actually appear in the original. 

Which is why I still suspect Colombo.

"Hey, Colombo.  Where's the wife?"

"Oh, look.  There she is, with her own show."

Except she never appears on his show and he never appears in hers.

Classic Hollywood trope of hiring someone to pretend to be the wife, just enough to throw the police off the scent.

They are not fooling me.

 

[hk blues]

3 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Which is why I still suspect Colombo.

"Hey, Colombo.  Where's the wife?"

"Oh, look.  There she is, with her own show."

Except she never appears on his show and he never appears in hers.

Classic Hollywood trope of hiring someone to pretend to be the wife, just enough to throw the police off the scent.

They are not fooling me.