Domestic violence cases represent one of the most pervasive and underreported categories of violent crime. These cases range from intimate partner violence that escalates to homicide, to familicide events that shock entire communities, to patterns of abuse that are only fully understood in retrospect. CaseSleuth documents these cases with sensitivity and a commitment to factual accuracy, providing detailed timelines that include prior incidents, law enforcement contacts, protective orders, and the events leading up to the crime. Each entry profiles the victims, the perpetrators, and the systemic factors that may have contributed to the outcome. Many domestic violence cases reveal patterns of missed warning signs and failures in protective systems.
9 cases found
Ana Walshe, a 39-year-old mother of three in Cohasset, Massachusetts, was murdered by her husband Brian Walshe on New Year's Day 2023. Brian dismembered her body and disposed of the remains across multiple locations. He was convicted of first-degree murder in July 2024 and sentenced to life without parole.
In September 2021, 22-year-old Gabrielle Petito was reported missing during a cross-country road trip with her fiance Brian Laundrie. Her remains were found in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and her death was ruled a homicide by manual strangulation. Laundrie, who had returned home to Florida alone, was later found dead by suicide; the FBI concluded he was solely responsible for her death.
Jennifer Dulos, a mother of five, vanished from New Canaan, Connecticut in May 2019 during a contentious divorce. Her estranged husband Fotis Dulos was charged with murder but died by suicide before trial in January 2020. Her body has never been found.
On August 13, 2018, Christopher Lee Watts murdered his pregnant wife, Shanann Watts, and their two young daughters, Bella (age 4) and Celeste (age 3), at the family's home in Frederick, Colorado, before disposing of their bodies at a remote oil work site operated by his employer, Anadarko Petroleum. After initially denying involvement and making a televised plea for his family's return, Watts confessed to the killings on August 15, 2018, and was arrested. On November 6, 2018, he pleaded guilty to nine counts including five counts of first-degree murder under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty, and on November 19, 2018, he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 84 years without the possibility of parole.
Jodi Ann Arias was convicted of the first-degree murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Victor Alexander, who was found dead at his Mesa, Arizona home on June 9, 2008, having been stabbed 27 times, had his throat slashed, and shot in the forehead. Arias was found guilty on May 8, 2013, after a nationally televised trial during which she claimed self-defense. After two juries deadlocked on the death penalty, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 13, 2015.
Former Bolingbrook, Illinois police sergeant Drew Peterson became a national figure after his fourth wife Stacy Peterson disappeared in October 2007. He was subsequently charged and convicted of murdering his third wife Kathleen Savio, whose death had been ruled accidental in 2004.
Scott Lee Peterson was convicted in November 2004 of the first-degree murder of his pregnant wife, Laci Denise Peterson, and the second-degree murder of their unborn son, Conner, after Laci disappeared from their Modesto, California home on December 24, 2002. Originally sentenced to death in March 2005, his death sentence was overturned by the California Supreme Court in 2020, and he was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in December 2021. The Los Angeles Innocence Project took up his case in 2024, filing motions for DNA testing and a nearly 400-page habeas petition in April 2025, which was denied by the appeals court in June 2025.
O.J. Simpson, a former NFL star and media personality, was charged with the June 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. After a televised criminal trial widely described as the 'trial of the century,' Simpson was acquitted on October 3, 1995. A subsequent civil jury found him liable in February 1997 and awarded the victims' families $33.5 million in damages. Simpson was later convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in a 2008 Las Vegas case, served nine years in prison, and was released on parole in 2017. He died of prostate cancer on April 10, 2024, at age 76.
In 2024, renewed attention to the 1989 Menendez brothers case led to resentencing efforts after new evidence of sexual abuse by their father José emerged, including a letter and a corroborating witness.