By Rubén Rosario
Updated: 02/10/2010 01:04:32 AM CST
We did not get to or win the Super Bowl. But we Minnesotans reign supreme in another category: murder-suicides.
Not only are we tops in the nation, but the rate of murder-suicides in the Gopher State in recent years also is about double the national average.
Who dat? It's us. Why? I don't have a clue. Neither do researchers involved in a relatively new and growing body of studies on this disturbing trend.
We've already had at least one this year — a young husband in Hugo who shot his wife dead and then himself, leaving behind their 4-year-old son at the crime scene.
Could be merely, as I suspect, a per-capita geographic quirk or anomaly. Next year, it could be another state or region.
To me, that seemed the only real "news" that came out at Tuesday's annual unveiling of the "femicide" report by the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women.
We jaded journalists, unless there's a new or intriguing wrinkle to report, largely dismiss such perennial issues. After 30 years covering this kind of murder and mayhem, it seems the only thing that really changes is the names.
News is mostly what happens outside the norm, which is why most folks think it's largely negative. I hope it stays that way.
For if murders and crashes and corruption become the norm, then news actually would be the opposite.
In this world, folks kill those they know or supposedly love. Been that way since Cain and Abel. We can't eliminate or legislate away the dark
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side of human nature. Tell me something I don't know.
But some interesting nuggets were gleaned from Tuesday's news conference at the State Office Building:
Minnesota had 28 fatal domestic violence victims overall last year.
Twelve were women slain by current or former intimate partners or spouses.
Ten of the victims were children younger than 18.
Among the victims was Richard Crittenden, the North St. Paul cop killed with his own gun during a domestic incident last year. The assailant was then slain by another cop during the incident.
A female intimate partner killed one man, in case people are keeping a gender scorecard on these tragedies.
Half the 12 female victims were killed with firearms.
Nearly 70 percent of the women killed last year were either separated or attempting to leave at the time of their deaths.
Half the fatal incidents occurred in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
Half the killers abused the same victim in previous incidents. About 25 percent of the killers had previous police contact or were the subjects of an order for protection.
About 70 percent of the child victims were beaten to death. Fathers accounted for 40 percent of those responsible in the fatalities. One of five perpetrators was a mother. But a woman's current or former husband accounted for 30 percent of those involved in the death of a child victim last year.
Half the killers of such female victims committed suicide last year. About 47 percent did so the previous year. According to published studies, about 25 percent of fatal domestic violence incidents involved a murder-suicide.
JENNIFER DENMARK'S STORY
It may be routine, but it's always traumatic, regardless of whether it makes the news. Consider the story of Jennifer Denmark, of Shakopee.
If not for a neighbor who decided to throw out his trash at exactly 11:30 p.m. Feb. 20 last year, Denmark easily could have been victim No. 29.
On that evening, Denmark, a mother of three, came face to face with her knife-wielding estranged husband, Gordon Denmark.
In the midst of an acrimonious divorce, she moved away with the couple's three children four months earlier. But the man supposedly broke into the home that night and threatened Denmark as well as the couple's 9-year-old daughter with a knife.
The young child, prepped to flee by a secret code the mom had designed, took off and sought help at a neighbor's house.
Denmark, a preschool administrator, also ran out of the home with her assailant in close pursuit.
She ran to the home of another neighbor who was putting out his trash.
The homeowner used the trash can to ward off the assailant while his son called 911.
Shakopee cops who responded later found the estranged husband hiding in the attic of the woman's home. He was stunned with a Taser and fatally shot after he refused to drop the knife.
Denmark broke down Tuesday as she told the story.
She related how, though she was "brutally beaten, raped and held hostage" in a previous incident, "I was determined to create a safe and healthy environment for my children.
"I am alive today because the (criminal justice) system as a whole believed me," Denmark said.
Now, that's newsworthy in my book.
Rubén Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@poneerpress.com.
ONLINE
To read the femicide report, go to www.mcbw.org
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