No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

Snyder lays out the scene: a dingy apartment, special needs children, and a detective sitting at a table with the children’s mother, Grace. Snyder is in Cleveland, and the detective is Martina Latessa from the Homicide Reduction Unit. Latessa is one of Cleveland’s two detectives working High Risk cases, a title that is unique in the US. Latessa meets victims in their homes and finds out about their lives, something that strikes Snyder as both meaningful and effective.

Latessa has unique motivations for her work: Her childhood home overlooked the backyard of the house where Ariel Castro held three young girls for a decade. Her older sister’s boyfriend also murdered a family neighbor. Before the murderer was arrested, Latessa was found, scared and crying, by a homicide detective who promised to check on her every day. This began her 30-year odyssey towards the job she now possesses, where Latessa’s background, natural empathy, and listening skills get a remarkable number of women to cooperate with her efforts. Latessa and the rest of the High Risk team in Cleveland average around 50 cases a month: “Cleveland’s violence is a lot of things—gangs, drugs, thuggery. But above all else, Cleveland’s violence is domestic violence” (249).