@article{ref1,
title="Are young women the special targets of rape‐murder?",
journal="Aggressive behavior",
year="2002",
author="Shackelford, Todd K.",
volume="28",
number="3",
pages="224-232",
abstract="Working from an evolutionary psychological perspective, M. Wilson, M. Daly, and J. Scheib [1997. Feminism and Evolutionary Biology. New York: Chapman and Hull. p 431–465] hypothesized and found that reproductive-aged females incur excess risk of rape-murder (being raped and murdered) relative to nonreproductive-aged females and that this excess risk cannot be attributed solely to the greater association of young women with violent, young men. The current research provides the first national-level replication of these findings for the United States. I secured access to a national database of homicides occurring in the United States between 1976 and 1994 and selected for analysis cases in which a female was (1) raped and murdered by a male previously unknown to her or (2) murdered in the context of theft by a male previously unknown to her. Results replicate the work of Wilson et al. [1997] and document that (1) young men commit the majority of rape-murders and theft-murders; (2) young, reproductive-aged women are overrepresented among the victims of rape-murder but (3) are underrepresented among the victims of theft-murder. Discussion acknowledges the uncertain generalizability of theoretical and empirical work on rape-murder to rape not accompanied by murder and addresses two challenges to an evolutionary perspective on rape-murder: (1) Why are nonreproductive-aged females raped? and (2) Why are raped females subsequently murdered? Aggr. Behav. 28:224–232, 2002. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.<p />",
language="en",
issn="0096-140X",
doi="10.1002/ab.90024",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ab.90024"
}