I'm sorry, but this is on you. Nothing has changed. These cases are big news and are shocking because they are so exceedingly rare. They didn't just start happening recently; they've always happened. You're not in more danger than you used to be; you have lived your entire life at this level of "threat". You need to make a choice for yourself: am I going to let fear control and dictate my actions for no good reason, or am I going to look at these unfortunate events in context and see they are so vanishingly rare that the odds against them happening to me are vast.
You probably hop in a car regularly without any fear or trepidation, even though your risk of death or serious injury massively increases. The odds of dying in a car accident vs being murdered in your home while your boyfriend is away are phenomenally higher. In fact, I think your odds of being murdered in your home by your boyfriend far exceed and risk you'd be taking by staying in the house yourself (nothing against your boyfriend. I'm sure he's a lovely, gentle soul who'd never hurt you, but statistically speaking you're more likely to be murdered by someone you know than a stranger, and more than one woman a week dies in a domestic violence incident - in the first 7 weeks of 2015, it was two a week but I don't know if that trend has continued).
Please don't let publicity for these horrible crimes make you think you need to be afraid. They are big news because they are so rare. If they happened every week, well... The media world ignore them they way they have ignored Kerry Michael, 44, bashed to death by her husband while hiking in Tasmania earlier this year. The only reason we know the name Alison Baden Clay is because her husband tried to cover his tracks by making out that it was a stranger abduction slash murder, and not just a boring old everyday domestic incident. No one cares about those because they happen every week, sometimes twice.
VS took Steph Scott's life. Let's make that the last thing he ever takes from a woman. Do NOT let him take your confidence. Women are not helpless creatures who need to be chaperoned at all times.
-- Walk A Mile, female, alone in the house for the next 48 hours and unafraid.