At least 138 women pensioners have been killed in the UK where a man is the main suspect since 2020, an investigation by openDemocracy can reveal.
Just under a fifth of women killed by men in the past six years were aged over 66, with the oldest in their 90s, according to our analysis of data from the Femicide Census and Counting Dead Women, a project set up by feminist activist and academic Karen Ingala-Smith to record the number of women killed by men.
The majority of men suspected in these cases were convicted of murder or manslaughter. Some died before a case could go to trial, or were deemed mentally unfit for trial.
Of the 31 women suspected to have been killed by a man between the start of this year and 14 May, the most recent entry in the database, seven were over 66. This figure does not include 78-year-old politician Ann Widdecombe, who was found dead in her home in Dartmoor, Devon, on 9 July. She had sustained serious injuries.
Widdecombe, a former Conservative Home Office minister known for her socially conservative views, particularly on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, retired from Westminster in 2010. She pursued a career in reality television and entertainment before returning to politics as an MEP for the Brexit Party in 2019 and, most recently, working as a spokesperson for Reform UK.
Police arrested a 28-year-old white British man from South Yorkshire on Saturday and are not looking for anyone else in connection with Widdecombe’s death. The man has since been re-arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Giving an update on the investigation into Widdecombe’s death on 14 July, assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor, the head of counter terrorism policing, would not comment on whether the suspected terrorism offences are separate from the alleged murder case.
Taylor added that police “are working to understand the planning, preparation and motivation behind the attack” on Widdecombe.
Older women killed by men
Like those aged between 20 and 60, older women are most likely to be killed by a current or former partner or a relative – but they are also at greater risk of being killed by a stranger.
openDemocracy found that in the deaths of 43 elderly women killed by a man since 2020 – nearly a third of cases – the suspect was their son or grandson. A further 43 women were killed by their current or former partners – 14 of whom were killed in a murder-suicide.
In some cases, the relationship between the victim and perpetrator was not specified in the data or the linked news report, but the names and ages indicated a familial or intimate partner connection. We excluded these cases from the total as we could not say with confidence the nature of the relationship.
Three women were killed by other family members (brother, brother-in-law, and son-in-law), and 10 perpetrators were known to the women, such as a care worker or a neighbour. The remaining perpetrators were either strangers or the relationship was not specified in the data or early news reports.
We found that five elderly women have been killed by men as part of a burglary or robbery since 2020.
Previous research by the Femicide Census found that almost a quarter (23%) of women over 80 were killed by a man they did not know, compared to 7% of women aged 30-59.
The findings were made in the Femicide Census’s 2000 Women report, which looks at the first 2,000 ‘solved’ cases of women and girls aged over 14 killed since 2009. That report found that two-thirds of victims killed during a burglary were aged over-60.
“These attacks cannot be described as purely random, as older women are likely selected because of the vulnerability that comes with their age: they are more likely to live alone and to be physically less strong,” the report’s authors state.
Across all the cases we reviewed, the majority of elderly women died as a result of assault or of serious injuries, although in many cases the cause of death was not specified in the data. Four women were killed in a fire, and nine were shot.
We also found at least 25 cases of ‘overkill’, a term created as it is such a common feature in cases of femicide. ‘Overkill’ is defined as “the use of excessive, gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to cause the victim's death”.
This is likely an underestimate, as the data or early news reports did not always include details of the violence. Two deaths of women aged over 66 involved sexual assault. According to the 2000 Women report, there were 113 cases of overkill in incidents where sons killed their mothers.
