When police responded to a 911 call of “shots fired” at the home of NewsRadio actor and comedian Phil Hartman on May 28, 1998, they found both Hartman and his wife Brynn lying on their bed, dead of gunshot wounds. Police believe that Brynn had shot and killed her husband before they arrived, and then shot and killed herself as her children were removed from the house.

Those who knew the Hartmans were well aware that Brynn sometimes had trouble controlling her anger and flew into fits of rage. Some domestic violence experts contend that Phil Hartman’s death is an extreme, but not unusual, example of female domestic violence against men. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 38 percent of the victims of spousal homicide are men who were killed by their wives. Murray Straus, Richard J. Gelles, and...