Abstract
The authors compared a group of young female homicidal offenders with a group of middle-aged homicidal women as to demographic data, psychopathology, physical disorders and type of victims chosen. Young women tend to have low socioeconomic status, have antisocial personality disorder, and I or schizophrenia as psychiatric diagnoses and most likely kill their children, while midlife women tend to have slightly higher socioeconomic status, suffer from affective disorder and alcoholism and have more frequent physical disorders and most likely murder their spouses. A significant finding noted among mid-life women is the high frequency of physical abuse by husbands who later become their homicide victims. Treatment implications of these findings are noted.