This is an interesting take.

Woman being brutally murdered by man/lover/.. is definitely the dominant theme.

You could compare it to the modern tv thriller, how many plots revolve around a woman killed by a man with the female character basically just playing the part of the symbolic victim?

I'm not sure the idea that the murderer's emotions are given so much more focus resonates with me though. Obviously hard to generalise as the world of folk music is vast, but my impression is that these kinds of songs usually skip over almost all nuance and detail, being made up of a few standard tropes/cliches, and the interest often comes from some twist/variation on the theme, or what the musician brings to it.

The world of folk music is filled with distasteful themes, and stuff that hasn't aged well. I'd say that sometimes performing a flawed song in a modern context can itself be subversive though. Not every performance of a song is a celebration of it. There's space for nuance.