Warning signs present in 1 in 3 homicides of intimate partners, CBC investigation finds

WARNING: This story contains graphic details of violence. 

More than one in three people accused of intimate-partner homicide demonstrated at least one warning sign prior to the killing, according to a CBC News investigation.

The finding is one of dozens from Deadly Relationships, a sweeping, 16-month CBC News analysis of intimate-partner homicides across Canada between January 2015 and June 2020. 

CBC's investigative team collected nearly 50 data points on close to 400 cases over that timeframe, including the gender and ethnicity of victims and accused, whether the victim was protected by a court order when they were killed and the criminal history of the accused. Altogether, the data paints a never-before-seen mosaic of relationships that turn deadly.

More than three-quarters of victims were women. Most of the accused, 78 per cent, were men.

Intimate-partner homicides in Canada are among the most traumatic and horrific of crimes, often occurring in the victim's home, scarring families and communities for decades. Our investigation found more than 400 people, mostly children, lost parents to domestic violence over the course of five and a half years. 

What's more, these crimes are preventable. There are known warning signs that a relationship could turn deadly, so we set out to find how many were present in Canadian cases. Future stories in this series will take a closer look at what can be done. 

CBC's investigation tracked known predictors of homicides in relationships and the extent to which they were present in each case. 

These included:

The analysis found at least one warning sign was present in 36 per cent of cases. The most common were recent or pending separations (one in five cases), previous reports to police and patterns of coercive or controlling behaviour (both 15 per cent of cases).

CBC identified four of the above warning signs in the case of Nichole Clifford. The 31-year-old mother of two was killed in Wainwright, Alta., in 2017. Her husband, Robert Clifford, faces charges in her death.

Nichole Clifford's mother Delilah McKeith says the prevalence of warning signs across cases of intimate-partner homicide is striking. 

"That's shocking. It tells me that that's more serious and it's going on more than what we realize."

Notably, at least 36 victims, all but one women, were under court-ordered protection intended to keep them safe from the accused when they were killed.