No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

by Rachel Louise Snyder

often the rage an abuser feels is highlighted in the particular details of a shooting or a crime scene. One common scenario: multiple bullets in a victim’s body, evidence that the perpetrator kept shooting long after what was necessary for death, perhaps even emptying an entire chamber into his or her victim. Such crime scenes point to a level of rage held by the offender. Often the one who will offer the most resistance is killed first in a family (as with Michelle Monson Mosure). Or a stepchild who is the source of tension between a couple will have an inordinate number of bullets. Sometimes police will find a single deadly bullet in one victim and a constellation of bullets in another. These aren’t simply gratuitous details, Websdale says. They’re clues to the mind-set of an offender, details about the particular psychology of a couple, and often they speak to interventions that could have been made, for example, by mental health professionals.