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When police entered the master bedroom of the house in Brimfield, Ohio, they saw Renee Bauer first. She was lying on the floor, face down, arm draped protectively over her seven-year-old son, Dakota. Both had been shot multiple times. Both were dead. Both had been living with James Trimble.

Both were wearing jackets and shoes. Why?

According to published reports, police found the answer in the living room. A bag, containing clothing for a woman and a child, was packed and sitting on a lounger. Hanging on the refrigerator, was a piece of paper with a phone number written on it-the number to Safer Futures, a Portage County shelter for battered women and their children. Renee never made it to the shelter that night.

Waiting too long to leave an abusive relationship can be fatal, experts agree. In 2000, 1,247 women were killed by an intimate partner, according to a report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice. Further, for those who are not killed, the statistics are even worse-in 2001, there were 691,710 violent actions committed by intimate partners of the victims. But, this figure may be a conservative one for, as The Center for Battered Women reports, only about 1 in 10 incidents of domestic violence are reported to authorities.

Certainly, Renee Bauer never reported Trimble's abuse. Before the tragic night of January 21st, 2005, the police had never been dispatched to their house for any reason-by any person-not even the neighbors, who were well aware of the tense situation next door. At Trimble's trial, neighbors testified about the extremely loud fights at the tiny house on Sandy Lake Road, about Trimble's anger at Renee, about the excessive alcohol usage.

Why didn't they report the domestic disturbances at the time, when it might have saved Renee and Dakota? Perhaps the neighbors didn't want to get involved. Perhaps they thought that the fights next door were harmless. Perhaps they thought that Renee actually liked the way Trimble treated her. What they didn't-perhaps-consider is that Renee was caught up in a cycle of violence from which she couldn't easily escape. By then, Trimble had an iron hold on her will, on her emotions. Her memory, too, may have betrayed her, for she likely remembered another Trimble, a kinder, sweeter man than the one who pumped her body full of bullets. In his book, The Gift of Fear, former FBI profiler Gavin De Becker describes the beginning of these relationships. "Spousal

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