Hi,
How many murders occurred in the US in the last year?
thanks

Here's an estimate from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
Program. This is likely to be the most accurate and most recent
information available:

"The violent crime of murder is the most serious crime in the UCR
hierarchy. An estimated 16,204 murders took place in 2002, a
1.0-percent increase over the 2001 estimate."

Federal Bureau of Investigation: Uniform Crime Reporting Program
Releases Crime Statistics for 2002
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel03/ucr2002.htm

A detailed breakdown of the FBI's murder statistics may be found here:

Federal Bureau of Investigation: Murder
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/web/offreported/02-nmurder03.html

Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "statistics" + "murders" + "united states"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=statistics+murders+%22united+states

I hope this information is useful. If anything is unclear, please
request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further assistance before
you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud