I'll admit it I am slightly obsessed with this phenomenon, a practice that is as old as the beginning of the birth of emotions like jealousy and rage. What am I referring to? The vicious slaughtering of wives by their husbands. My first question has always and continues to be this; if a man is so unhappy in his marriage why wouldn't he just leave? Why would he choose to kill his spouse? It's a phenomenon that has me completely perplexed especially in this age of CSI and DNA specialists' ability to track and convict a person's transgressions based on a solitary strand of DNA left behind at a crime scene-- why would a man risk forfeiting his freedom and the prospect of spending the rest of his days languishing in a prison cell after being convicted for murdering his spouse? Why choose murder over freedom? Is the murder of one's wife worth the risk of spending one's life in jail with all one's freedoms revoked?
In the recent cases of Laci Peterson, and the horrific end to the nightmare of missing mom Susan Powell, whose husband Josh Powell, while never formally charged with her death lived under a cloud of suspicion until he recently took his life and the lives of his two sons. These women's lives were cut short at the hands of their husbands. And all of us as a society are left to wonder why. And what would possess a man to feel such anger at his wife that he would resort to murdering her? Even in cases where fortunes are at stake and the threat of a divorce might result in a wife inheriting half of her husband's assets, I still don''t understand why a husband would not choose to just give his wife half his money, as opposed to risking losing everything after being charged with her murder.
Marriage; the melding of two people; the expectations, the compromises, the temptation to stray.. is it all just too much to expect in this modern day? Is the stress of it just too much to bear for our men?
And now the latest case of a man murdering his wife is that of Bruce Beresford-Redmond, a highly sought after producer of reality shows like Survivor, who is currently in a Mexican jail awaiting trial. This case once again has me asking the very same question. From day one, his late wife Monica's sisters have said Bruce is the only one responsible for her death. And once again it is a tale of such seemingly bright, shining love gone so very wrong. When they met, Bruce was the man behind the MTV hit reality show Pimp my Ride and Brazilian beauty Monica was a successful businesswoman. After their 1999 marriage they seemed destined for that fairytale ending. Unfortunately, soon Monica began to suspect Bruce was engaged in a torrid love affair with his casting director and a trip to Cancun was, in Bruce's words, a chance at saving their marriage. Two days later on her 42nd birthday Monica's lifeless, naked body was found at their swanky hotel, dumped in a sewage pit and Bruce quickly chose to have Monica's remains cremated.
Of course Beresford-Redmond, like so many of these men when initially charged, says he didn't kill his wife Monica. Yet whether he is found guilty or not, the question remains, why don't these men just divorce their wives; why would they choose to kill them?
