IStock Photo 7696971 © macfoto80

In a previous article, Book of Odds concluded that the odds of a person being killed by a cow are nothing compared to the odds a cow faces at the hands of a human being. To which we now add this seemingly obvious addendum: it is far more likely a person will be killed by another human being than by a cow.

From 2003 to 2007 there was an average of 21.6 cattle-related deaths of human beings per year.

And it appears that prior to that, some cows may have been framed.

In 1992, William Edward (Ed) Dossett, a 44-year-old farmer in Knoxville, Tennessee, was found dead in his family's cattle corral. An initial autopsy ruled he had been “trampled to death by cattle.” Today, 18 years later, his wife, Raynella Dossett Leath, has been charged with his murder.

Here’s the background:

Ed Dossett—a county prosecutor in Tennessee, married to Raynella Dossett for 22 years, with three children—was dying of cancer. On July 9, 1992, his body was found trampled in the family's corral, a hoof print in the center of his chest. The autopsy determined the cause of death to be an agricultural accident, although years later a medical examiner in Ms. Dossett Leath's trial for the murder of her second husband, David Leath, would pronounce the autopsy incomplete.

Raynella Dossett had told the police she had helped her terminally ill husband to the corral, at his insistence, to feed their cattle. Due to the nature of his death, she collected double indemnity on his life insurance—a double payout for an accidental death.

Six months after her husband's death, Ms. Dossett married Leath, a neighbor and family friend. As the years passed, her behavior became volatile at times, particularly following the discovery that the deceased Mr. Dossett may have had another son by another woman. Ms. Dossett invited the woman's husband—a Mr. Steve Walker—out to the Leaths' farm, where, according to the man's testimony, she promised to kill him and his wife and raise the child as her own. She then chased Walker across a hayfield, emptying a gun at him. He was uninjured.

Dossett Leath spent six years on probation for attempted murder.

Then, 11 years after her first husband’s death, a tragic event took the life of her second. This time, there was immediate suspicion. Less than a year after Dossett Leath’s probation was up, David Leath died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head. The circumstances of his death—he was killed by the second of three shots—led prosecutors to charge his wife with murder.

After an initial trial ended in a hung jury, Raynella Dossett Leath was tried again, and convicted of first-degree murder in early 2010—she is currently serving a life sentence and now awaits trial in the death of her first husband. Ed Dossett, whose body was recently disinterred, was found to have died not by cattle, but likely from something more pernicious—a morphine overdose. After 18 years, the cattle have been exonerated, the murderer likely corralled.

The odds a person will be murdered in a year by another human being: 1 in 18,690.