© cmgdigitalKimberly Lindsey
This is how middle-school nurse Kimberly Lindsey ended up dead two weeks ago, shot by her ex-husband, a doctor who cut off her head and fingers.
This is how police say Watisha Wallace died three weeks ago, shot multiple times by a husband who had threatened to blow her face off.
This is how Dominique Flood lost her life at 21 from a single shot to the neck four weeks ago. The suspect: Her 18-year-old boyfriend.
Domestic violence is the No. 1 cause of injury to women in America.
It happens to men, too, of course. But 75 to 80 percent of victims are women - and it's a problem so big that State Attorney Dave Aronberg felt compelled to issue a warning at a news conference last Sunday, after Lindsey's ex-husband, Albert Lambert, was found dead, hours before he was to be charged with her gruesome murder.
"The most dangerous time is at the end of a relationship," Aronberg said.
That's when abusive men feel they've lost control - so they must force their dominance.
Lindsey was the 10th woman to die at the hands of a lover or former lover in Palm Beach County this year - and the fourth murdered in October, which happened to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Sixteen people have died at the hands of someone in their families in the county so far this year. Seven of those cases were murder-suicides.
Lindsey's murder happened soon after a court hearing over money.
"But it's not about money," Aronberg said. "You can't separate the money from the control."
Lambert was losing control. Calling his ex-wife names - "parasite," "welfare mother" - had not stopped her efforts to collect child support.
They were divorced, but still linked - by three daughters and a 22-year history, and the raw anger that spilled over into Lambert's texts and Facebook page.
"This was a long-term relationship that was dissolved a year earlier," Aronberg said. "The timing of the murder (after a court hearing) was not unusual. What the guy did is what made it so unusual."
Dismembering Lindsey's body is an act of rage so vengeful that the state attorney and Sheriff Ric Bradshaw called it one of the most heinous crimes they've ever seen. And they have seen a torrent of domestic violence - 4,351 cases in Palm Beach County last year alone.
Aronberg first got a sense of the pervasiveness of this violence when he was a young attorney doing pro-bono work in Miami.
"The first time I'd ever been in court, I worked on restraining orders, and I never forgot that," he says. One of his priorities after taking office was to reinstate the Domestic Violence Unit, called "DOVE."
Alexsia Cox heads the DOVE unit, and her office contacts victims of domestic violence within 12 hours of an arrest.
"We help them get a real safety plan," Cox says, stressing the word "real" - because those victims are so caught up in the cycle of violence by then, they don't know what to do, and they often do nothing.
"Love is one of the most dangerous emotions," Cox says - because women can confuse obsession with love, and "love" leads to other extreme emotions.
Abuse creeps into relationships, said Suzanne Turner, CEO of Palm Beach County's YWCA, which has run the Harmony House shelter for women for 20 years.
Maybe a boyfriend starts by isolating a woman from her family and friends. Then he starts criticizing her, humiliating her, berating her for every problem or pain he feels. Then he starts pushing, kicking or slapping her, or threatening their children, pets or friends.
Maybe he threatens to withhold money, she said, or kick her out on the street.
After the Bernie Madoff scandal, Turner saw a bump in the number of upper-class women calling her, asking for help. They'd say they were asking "for a niece from Chicago, say - but I knew they were asking for themselves."
"They didn't know how to go to a lawyer, they didn't know what would happen to them financially," she said. "The husband was getting angrier, telling her she would have to curb her spending, and these women had never been told that before."
The more professional, educated and well-off a woman is, the more reluctant she is to admit she's being abused, Turner said, "because they feel with their background and upbringing that they should be able to handle it."
Domestic violence happens to all classes, all races, all religions, all ages - and shame is always a factor, Turner said.
Women often feel ashamed to tell the people most likely to help them - their families - because they are "afraid to admit defeat."
"We hear the same story over and over - young women, 19, 20, 21, they think they are so in love. When they tell their parents, the parents say: 'He's not the one.' Then the young woman says, 'Well, I'll show you.' When the relationship turns out bad, they can't admit it," Turner said.
This alienation from the very people who love them most can fuel the abuser. This is what haunts Herman Wallace, whose daughter, Watisha, police said was shot and killed by her husband in West Palm Beach recently.
"We should've stepped up," Wallace told The Post last week. "Parents of these children, and I'm talking about me, need to know if you see them in this abusive stuff, step in. Please step in."
Step in. Do something. Even if all you can do is clip out the phone numbers in this newspaper and hand them to someone who needs help.
"Some women believe it's better if they do nothing," Cox said. "But I tell them: The violence will not stop. It will not change. You have to change. You have to stop the cycle."
Lindsey's death and the press coverage of the shocking killing shined a light on domestic violence - and illumination is crucial, Cox said.
"We had two victims in court this very week, women who had suffered felony abuse from boyfriends, and they were confused about what to do," she said. "They both commented that they had seen the news. Now they know people are dying from this. That's what finally made them take action."
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