Homicide victims were most likely to die from stab wounds inflicted by a partner at home on a Saturday night, a national report has shown.
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The Australian Institute of Criminology has released its findings on the country's 479 homicides, which resulted in 511 deaths, in the two years to July 2012.
While the overall homicide rate fell, the report revealed women were vastly more likely than men to fall victim to intimate partner homicide, and knives were still the most common weapon used to kill.
Many of the report's findings on the most common homicide circumstances reflected cases that came before the ACT's courts in the past year.
The national homicide rate hit 1.1 incidents per 100,000 people, the lowest since monitoring began in 1989.
That figure was on par with the ACT rate in 2011-12, with four homicides recorded in that period.
Men remained the most likely to kill and be killed.
They accounted for 85 per cent of offenders, and 64 per cent of victims.
However, women continued to be over-represented as victims of intimate partner homicide.
Females made up 76 per cent of victims who died at the hands of a partner.
Homicides were most likely to take place on a Saturday, and least likely to happen on Monday and Wednesday.
More than half the deaths happened overnight between 6pm and 6am, with the largest cluster of homicides occurring between 6pm and midnight on a Saturday.
Seventy per cent happened at a residential premise, compared to 16 per cent in a street or open area.
Knives remained the weapon of choice for offenders, with 37 per cent of victim deaths caused by knife wounds.
That was followed by beatings, with 24 per cent, and gunshot wounds, at 14 per cent.
Two accused killers who allegedly stabbed their victims to death in separate incidents have been committed to stand trial in the ACT Supreme Court this year.
One is Christopher David Navin, 28, who was charged with murder after his friend Nicholas Sofer-Schreiber died of stab wounds in his Lyneham unit on December 26, 2013.
The other is Luigi Costa, 71, who was accused of stabbing his Mugga Way neighbour Terrence Freebody, 89, to death in Costa's Red Hill home in July 2012.
In November last year, Alexsander Vojneski was sentenced to life behind bars after he was found guilty of the stabbing death of his partner, mother-of-three Paula Conlon, in her Macgregor home in March 2012.
Arguments, including domestic disagreements and alcohol-related disputes, were the most common motive and were behind 42 per cent of homicides, the report said.
The average age for a victim was 38 years, and 18 per cent of victims were children.
Thirty-four children were killed by a parent, nine of which involved the death of a child under one.
The offender had been drinking alcohol in 26 per cent of cases, while illicit drugs were a factor in nearly one quarter of homicides.
Aboriginal people continued to be over-represented as victims of homicide.
The homicide rate for indigenous people was almost five times the national average for the non-indigenous population, with 5 incidents per 100,000 people.
Of the 479 incidents, 34 remained unsolved.
