Sex and Murder
In this dataset the vast majority of murder victims were men, out of thirty cases nine involved women. Seven of those cases detailed female victims, while the other two discussed alleged female murderers. Hampering any attempt to examine these stories is the fact that many are being rereported by the Intelligencer which might eliminate much of the context of the stories. However, there are some patterns in the stories.
One pattern is that all the female victims (with the possible exception of the Turkish case) were white or the race was not mentioned and were murdered by a colored person. Three cases stand out, where a white alleged victim is killed by a Mexican, Black (though this case also had two white men involved), and an implied Chinese murderer. An egregious example of both race and sex in reporting is the Article Swing them up!
The first article suggests an innocent white woman was murdered and raped by two blacks (the story itself is from Little Rock AK). But reading the story, four men were arrested two blacks and two whites and while the article does state she was "ravished" it does not mention who raped the victim. This is a symptom of racism and sensationalization on the papers part.
The second case, has a Mexican man murder another woman because he was rejected. One could make the argument that colored people can't handle rejection from a white woman. The offender is identified by his full name while the victim is only named by her last name. The mexican was lynched at the end and the paper does not condemn it (however the paper does not condone it either).
Another pattern that emerges is that women are in need of protection and are passive. One article reports a Miss. Kate has her boyfriend killed in her car. The paper speculates that her father, a jealous lover, or some rowdy boys might have murdered her boyfriend, but does not consider the possibility that she could have killed him.
Female murderers also seem to be rare, but have their stories drawn out to generate interest. A murder case involving a woman named Mrs. Warren who killed her husband has two brief articles dedicated to her.
I must admit I had trouble determining patterns and whether there was sexism in the reporting or not. While the victims were white and they were killed by non whites, I asked myself if the paper was trying to be objective. As only in the "Swing them up" article was the race of the offender made important and the fact they "ravished" a white woman. While in the Mexican rejected case, there was not any naming of Mexican stereotypes or any talk of him "tarnishing" a white woman's innocence.