ABSTRACT
Assailant-victim interaction has been likened to a dance of death, and in many if not most cases in the United Kingdom there has often been a complicated interaction over a long time. Straight, sudden, savage attacks on an unknown victim are different. They occur when a massive stimulus results in an angry, excited, murderous assault. Sometimes the roles are reversed and the victim designate counterattacks and overcomes the aggressor. On the other hand, victims may pursue their own destruction with what looks like the inevitability of Greek tragedy. An attractive, older man told his wife that he was going to leave her. She reacted by clinging to him, but her fatal mistake was to threaten that she would never let him go. The husband disappeared but was caught later over another matter. She could easily have saved herself, but only on conditions she neither would nor could accept.
