One finding from our exploratory study of reclassified U.S. deaths (see Chapter 1) suggests that the perpetrators and victims in cases of covertly committed murder are disproportionately more likely to have shared a familial or other close relationship compared to those involved in overtly committed incidents. Indeed, an established relationship with a would-be victim—especially if that relationship includes the assumption of trust—would be an advantage for a covert perpetrator. That is because covert violence often requires the perpetrator to have close access to either the intended victim or to an item that they would not hesitate to ingest or have in close proximity. While most people would be suspicious of food or drink that was left on their porch by an unknown person, they would likely put no thought at all into accepting a cup of coffee from a friend or eating a meal prepared by their spouse.

Related to the apparently higher incidence of covert violence within families and friendships is another finding from our study: that women appear to commit covert acts of violence at far higher rates than is reported in official data on violent crime. This may be explained, in part, because of an inverse relationship between women’s access to power and their access to family members and friends. The family happens to be the one social institution in which U.S. women are disproportionately deficient relative to men in all three types of power that are relevant to covert violence (that is, physical, economic, and personal). Economically, women in paid work still earn less than men on average (Aragao, 2023), and mothers are more likely than fathers to head a single-parent household (Livingston, 2018). These facts combined help to account for women’s higher rate of poverty compared to men (Semega, 2019).

While it may be pure mythology to depict our cave-dwelling masculine ancestors as clubbing their female companions before dragging them off by the hair, the contemporary version of the mythical caveman has its counterpart in reality. It is clear, however, that men’s greater-on-average capacity to physically overpower women is exponentially more dangerous when combined with traditional gender roles that legitimate male aggression and encourage female submission, a dynamic that still exists in many American families today.