Honor Killings in the United States From 1990 to 2021: Primary Victims and Corollary Victims

Abstract

Although honor killings often include multiple fatalities in the U.S., the situational circumstances of why these offenders target corollary victims remain unknown. We used open-source data from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database to qualitatively examine 66 primary and corollary victims of 26 honor killings in the U.S. between 1990 and December 2021. One third of the cases involved corollary victims, and half of all victims were corollary victims. Corollary victims were especially common when the primary victim was the offender’s (ex-)partner. These findings add to the growing body of knowledge that recognizes similarities between IPHs and honor killings.