I haven't seen the movie yet but I've read plenty of spoilers, so I know the basics of what happens. When I noticed that at least one of the promotional tie-ins for the movie included a copy of the graphic novel "The Killing Joke," it started to add up that a major female character in this version of the story would have to die to prove how bad The Joker really is, and yes, cue the "women in refrigerators" syndrome.

I had to check Wikipedia on Rachel Dawes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dawes) to be sure that she had never appeared in the comics (I hadn't seen or heard of her in the comicverse, but there are a lot of comics out there that I haven't read), but given that she doesn't exist as a character in the established Batman mythology, and that Barbara Gordon hasn't been established yet as Batgirl in the Christian Bale movieverse, killing off Rachel would be the only way to get a "Killing Joke" level of emotional impact from any action by the Joker in this movie.