The five categories included strangers, acquaintances, friends, relatives, and those romantically linked. The research explored the relationship between this expanded typology and individual attributes, motives, and event characteristics. Study data came from the records of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and included all 792 homicides reported for 1985-89. Results revealed that motives and victim-offender relationships are related less strongly than previous research would suggest. Offenders were strangers in 18 percent of the cases, acquaintances in 46 percent, friends in 12 percent, relatives in 8 percent, a person romantically linked in 12 percent, and unknown in 4 percent. This finding indicated that categorizing victim- offender relationships merely as stranger or nonstranger events masks important variation in the latter category. Despite this finding, other correlates generally confirm the findings of earlier research. Tables, footnotes, and 47 references (Author abstract modified)