This study extended the experimental narrative analysis of public perceptions of domestic violence incidents to the study of reactions to lethal violence in domestic and non-domestic violence narratives. It focused on the effect of victim-offender gender on public reactions to homicide offenders in two different narrative situations (domestic and a bar). Respondents were asked to assess guilt and assign a sentence to the perpetrator within various conditions, as well as discuss the rationales for their assessments. Study findings suggested considerable gender parity in respondent reactions to men and women who kill. Both qualitative comments and quantitative variations across defendant-victim gender combinations in the bar narrative support the argument that reactions to men and women who kill are to some degree situationally specific. These led to more lenient responses to the woman who killed a man in the bar but sentence severity was not significantly more lenient. Situated gender equality prevailed in the reactions to defendants and victims in the domestic violence narrative. There were no significant differences found in guilt assessments or in recommended sentence severity for the wife who kills compared to the husband who kills. Study findings offered some support for both equality and leniency perspectives depending on the exact nature and gender combination of the homicide situation. Since the narratives were not identical, it was considered problematic to compare violence in the home with violence in a bar. Tables, appendices, and references