CHARACTERIZATIONS IN MURDER

CHARACTERIZATIONS IN MURDER (2019)©

By

Janet E. McClellan, Ph.D.

Introduction

James (2003) stated that the need for a variety of scientific inquires in the attempt to understand the causes and outcomes of human actions is central to the formulation of “relatively simple explanatory principles laying beneath immediate appearances, and behind what people say . . . are the reasons for their actions” (p. 18). Because humans engage in a constant state of “building and sustaining [of] mental models of reality . . . [the] regulator and arbitrator” (Donald, 2001, pp. 75-76) of the violence committed against the victim. The regulators and arbitrators of behavior in the mental models of offenders are then assumed to be detectable in violent sexualized murder offenses and to depict or represent the operational realities of the offender and subject to identification and analysis by the investigator.

Violence is one of the many interactions in which people engage. People rationalize their violent acts through the lens of their experiences and expectations that frame (Goffman, 1974) and organize their analyses of those interactions (Overington & Mangham, 1987) that are familiar to them. Therefore, to understand of violence and its extremes, the researcher must consider the offender’s construct of reality that displays, depicts, and asserts the rationalization of violent interactions with others and the pathological constructs of the offender. The Toch (1969) study provided for the possibility of a set of stages of interaction and reaction fundamental in the interpersonal encounters culminating in violent acts.

Definitions of the stages include,

Stage 1: the classification of the other as object or threat

Stage 2: an action (real or perceived) that forms the basis of the classification of the other

Stage 3: the other may attempt to preserve their personal integrity by responding to the perceived threat

Stage 4: the violent prone person commits violence against the other. (Toch, p. 184)

The sub-classification of sexualized murder as homicide, whether ascribed to a single incident or serial events, provided a way to distinguish modus operandi or signature of the violence committed against the victim and the offender’s psychological predispositions through the analysis of a crime scene. Sexualized homicide is the acting out of aggressive ideologies described by investigators as cruelty, torture, or other acts sexual in nature that ultimately culminates in the death of the victim and includes those acts of homicide commonly referred to as sexual sadism. However, unlike Hazelwood and Dietz (1992), in this definition the suffering of cruelties and injuries of the victim caused by the offender does not require that the victim retain consciousness or life during all or part of the violent behavior by the offender. This more broadly inclusive definition of sexualized torture includes conscious, unconscious, live, or dead victims. The rationale for a more inclusive definition arises from Hazelwood and Dietz (1992) who stated that fantasy is a central feature and as such exists in the mind of the offender and does not require the active presence of anyone other than the one who fanaticizes. The consciousness or life of the victim is not a prerequisite for the offender in the conduct of his violent, torturous, or sexualizing activities against the object of his attacks. In this study, victims, alive or dead, conscious or unconscious, are presumed to have suffered and tortured, mutilated, or otherwise harmed by a sexualized homicide when such facts are apparent through the wounding and control techniques discernible on the person of the victim.

Sexualized homicide is indicated when offenses exhibit a sexualization in the types of violence committed against the victim. In the last twenty-five years, since the study and examination of sexualized homicide and serialized sexualized homicide was initiated by Ressler, Burgess, and Douglas (1985), and continuing with a more recent book by Purcell and Arrigo (2006), researchers have focused on the criminal, psychological, and developmental aspects of offenders who engage in violent sexualized homicide. Egger (1984) defined the classification of serial murder as the following:

One or more individuals (males, in most known cases) commits a second murder and/or subsequent murder; is relationshipless (victim and attacker are strangers); occurs at a different time and has no connection to the initial (and subsequent) murder; and is frequently committed in a different geographic location. (pp. 8-9)

Essentially, the study and exploration of sexualized homicide involves the analysis of a specific type of human aggression, violence, motivation, offense behavior and medico-legal reports containing specific and detailed information regarding explanations or interpretations of injuries, wound patterns and sequence of events . . . [play] . . . a major role in the process of case analysis because the results were of central importance for the case reconstruction and further deductions (e.g., offender aims, organized/disorganized components, escalation). (Schroer, Trautmann, Dern, Baurmann, & Puschel, 2003, p. S243)

Arrigo and Purcell (2001) noted that the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) compiled annually by the FBI does not mention sexual homicide; “sexual homicide is generally indexed under Unknown Motive . . . because federal and state law enforcement agents are largely unaware of the underlying sexual dynamics of criminal conduct” (p. 6). This lack of recognition, frequently the result of inaccurate medico-legal (autopsy report) information further complicates the identification and investigation of sexualized homicide offenses and serial sexualized homicide. However, Skrapec (2001) cautioned against a general acceptance of an apparent sexual assault on victims of homicide in behavior analysis of sexualized homicide as “interpreting the sexual violation of victims as primarily sexual in nature” (p. 51).

Investigators who view sexual violation of victims as sexual in nature frequently become sidetracked and confused regarding the motivation of the offense ignoring the facts that cruelty, wounding, and terrorization are the primary motives rather than the offender’s sexual gratification. Additionally, Salfati (2003) observed that, “impulsive behavior . . . is not out-of-character behavior but reflects habitual responses” (p. 491) and that which has been learned during the actor’s earlier development “persist into adulthood [to be] used as guides for behavior and social problem solving” (p. 491), including violent interactions which result in homicide and display a sexualization of the offense. Keppel and Wies (1997) noted that offenders may “gratify their sexual desires by demonstrating their control over their victims by or through the use of” (pp. 23-24) devices such as bondage, sadism, acts of torture, necrophilia, and posing victims in intentionally degrading or humiliating positions, done to shock or appall those who discover the body. In that manner, the offender continues their control over the violence and the victim. However, control and manipulation not gratification are the center features of the offender’s activities and intent.

Berner, Berger, and Hill (2003) argue that cruel, violent, and sadistic behavior is reflective of the character of the offender. Therefore, it is important to remember that, “Character is only a mirror of drives (instincts), and character tendencies of perverse people may be only another manifestation of the same instinctual urges, therefore visible and symbolic signs of perversions” (p. 386).

There are variations in the nature of the offense of sexualized homicide and changes in the nature of the violence done to the victims. Keppel and Wies (1997) noted that some offenders prefer to enact “prolonged and ritualized assaults [where] torture and mutilation become the focus of sexual ideation. . . . [and] asphyxiation is used as a sadistic control and for purposes of arousal [such as] recreational strangulation” (pp. 74-77). Those methods frequently culminate in victim wounding with the purpose of maintaining control, experimenting with the infliction of terror, of torture, and the infliction of pain with blunt force devices, sharp-edged instruments for cutting, biting, and object penetration during their peri-mortem and post-mortem behavior.

Although some rapists who ultimately commit murder s in retaliation of real or perceived threats to their personal integrity (Kocsis et al., 2002a), the sexual violence and murder can also represent a deeply harbored anger with pre-identified or preferred target types (Hickey, 2002; Holmes & Holmes, 2002).

The substitute victim comes from areas in which the aggressor may live or work . . . while conducting routine, everyday living; the aggressor may find a potential victim who reminds him of his mother or girlfriend . . . [when] the potential victim is selected, he will keep in mind the location and living circumstances of the victim. . . . Regardless whether the victim is alive or dead, the assault continues until the subject is emotionally satisfied. (Keppel & Walter, 1999, p. 428)

Of the varieties of sexualized homicide, the offender who proceeds to commit numerous offenses and is serial in his victimization is the offender who plans the “sexual assault and homicide . . . designed to inflict pain and terror on the victims for gratification of the perpetrator” (Keppel & Walter, 1999, p. 431).

The prolonged torture of the victim energizes the killer’s fantasies and temporarily satisfies a sexualized homicide for domination and control. . . the approach of the victim, exploitation of naiveté, torture, and mutilation all serve to appease the perpetrator's insatiable appetite for the process of killing. (Keppel & Walter, p. 431)

The behavior of extremely violent and sadistic sexual rapists and sexualized homicide (single or serial event) frequently indicated planning, concealment, movement of victim’s body, and actions associated with significant organization and control throughout the offenses rather than the frequently depicted frenzied, impulsive, or disordered attacks on victims. Therefore, sexualized homicide is not the behavior of persons acting at random, nor is it necessarily symptomatic of a disorganized mind. Rather, the offender’s actions are intentionalities. The vagaries of behavior are intended to satisfy the psychological, and emotional needs of the offender through directed purpose and planning resulting in the sexualization of the victim and the injuries of that victimization.

Violence and Sexualized homicide

Sexualized homicide is the acting out of sadistic ideologies by means of cruelty, torture, or other acts, sexual or sexual in their nature, that culminates in the death of the victim (Santtila et al., 2001) and the definition used includes those acts of homicide commonly referred to as sexual sadism, sexualized homicide, and rape homicide.

[M]any people feel drawn towards violence because it can give pleasure. Means and ends then become fluid concepts that are inseparable. Form and meaning become the same . . . that is its own goals, in which means and end melted together. (Schinkel, 2004, p. 19)

Fromm (1973) stated that passions are the “strivings to love, to be free, as well as the drive to destroy, to torture, to control, and to submit” (p. 5) to the passions that are the basis of a person’s interest in life, enthusiasm, and excitement. These then are essentially the dreams that fuel the passions and encompass the “art, religion, myth and drama” (p. 5) of the individual. Thus, the passions of human beings can create, invent or destroy. Human beings are not simply biological automatons but because of their passions, they seek excitement and desire drama.

The typical emotional object is either the person experiencing the emotion or another person. People are more interesting to people than anything else is. (Ben-Ze’ev, 2000, p. 29)

If a person fails to achieve or secure the satisfaction of their passions through the otherwise acceptable, mundane, or socially approved manners of the times, they may create, seek, and use destructive means and devices to secure the ends of their desires. As underscored by Fromm (1973),

Man differs from the animal by the fact that he is a killer; he is the only primate that kills and tortures members of his own species without any reason, either biologically or economic, and who feels satisfaction in doing so . . . The distinction between benign-defensive and malignant-destructive aggression [is the difference between] instinct and character, or more precisely, between drives rooted in. . . physiological needs and those specifically human passions rooted in . . . character. (pp. 4-5)

Fromm (1973) was adamant and appropriately so contending that human beings in the exercise of their passions want to be the creator of their destiny “to transform [their] state of being unfinished into one with some goal and some purpose, allowing . . . to achieve some degree of integration” (p. 9) through membership, success, competence, or experience to try to make sense out of life and to experience the optimum of intensity and strength he can (or believes he can) achieve under the given circumstance. They are his religion, his cult, his ritual, which he has to hide (even from himself) in so far as they are disapproved by his group. (p. 9)

Human interest focuses on other human beings directly or indirectly. By way of example, all pursuits firmly or loosely associate themselves with the desires, interests, usefulness, possibilities, propensities, profits, benefits, use, or utility of their endeavors or functions as they pertain to human beings. Ultimately, human interests and human interactions for good or ill are the central curiosity, relevance, consequence, and product of other persons.

Fromm (1973) contended that the inclinations of destruction and cruelty are the great paradox of human behavior and the only true perversion that exists is the desire to distort and express oneself through violence and murder thereby creating a “life turning against itself in the striving to make sense of it” (p. 9). The destructive and cruel person is awash with desires, consumed by their own needs, and blind to anything other than their goal or satisfaction even when it means that they would satisfy those needs through the victimization, cruelty, injury, and at its most extreme, the murder of others.

Toch (1969) described two types of orientation to violence, “one of these is that of a person who sees other people as tools designed to serve his needs; the second is . . . the individual who feels vulnerable to manipulation” (p. 183). Each interpersonal interaction is dependent upon which one of the actors tends towards violence prone behaviors and if they additionally consider someone as a potential target or source of threat. The perception of threat or preferred target can and frequently will result in a violent interaction.

Toch furthermore stated that, “[v]iolence is habit forming” . . . [and people may] discover that they can satisfy new unexpected needs by becoming aggressive . . . start seeing elements of past encounters as they approach fresh situations and . . . respond accordingly” (p. 186) in an aggressive manner. With each new encounter, the opportunity for aggressive behavior exists and with each new outcome resulting favorably for the aggressor, the violently prone individual gains a sense of success. The propensity to seek new victory increases the likelihood of successive aggressive behavior. “The initial stance of the violent prone person makes violence probable; his [sic] first moves increase the probability of violence; the reaction of the victim converts probability to certainty” (184). Therefore, the violence prone person is always at the ready to be violent.

Whether the violent action stems from the view of the victim as a vehicle (instrument) used in the furtherance of the goals or the victim represents a real or perceived threat, the offender’s primary interpersonal tool and medium of exchange is violence. “[P]eople in real life are dependent on and connected with each other . . . and as such, demographics and psychology are resources used by the individual in pursuit of their own interests” (James, 2003, p. 35) and as such, individuals act from a basis of self-interest. Interaction with others, from the view of the violent prone person presents an opportunity for violent interactions (new successes), and therefore, the violent prone individual presents themselves as a opportunistic predator (Teichman & Teichman, 2005). Opportunistic violence makes violence possible by the offender who, by definition, is in possession of the motivation to be violent and as such, he seeks or creates instances to take advantage of violent interpersonal interactions.

Suggesting a source or cause of those factors shaping propensity towards violence and/or criminal behavior, DeWall, Faumeister, Stillman, and Gailliot (2007) proposed that “ego depletion, caused by prior efforts at self-regulation . . . weaken inner restraints and thereby increase the chances that aggressive impulses would lead to aggressive behavior” (p. 73). According to Duncan and Apel (2005), the opportunistic offender must have or believe that he has a sufficient amount of time to complete the act of violence combined with the intent (desire/motivation) to do so, access to the target (preference), and a reduced anticipation of apprehension.

Depicting Typologies of Sexualized Homicide

Research in criminology, psychology, and forensics provided an examination of the activities, motivation, and behavior of sexualized homicide and potential tools for the investigator for the identification and apprehension of the perpetrators of sexualized homicide. One of the earlier attempts to categorize and explain sexual homicide behavior through a depiction of offender actions and personality traits was proposed by Ressler et al. (1985), later advanced by Burgess et al. (1986), and formalized by Burgess et al. (1992) in the Crime Classification Manual. Although a significant amount of research has occurred since 1986 and much of the research enumerated the depiction of offender actions and personality traits, no typology or characterization has presented the information in an organized fashion utilizing the categorical features of profile, crime scene behavior, forensic findings, and victimology. Douglas and Munn (1992) published an article on violent crime scene analysis examining the modus operandi, signature, forensic information value, and victimological analysis and it provides a means of developing a more rigorous presentation style for use by law enforcement officials.

Based on the issues a Douglas and Munn table has been developed to use as an informational organizational model through which one can more easily examine and compare the descriptive typologies contained in the Godwin (2001), Holmes & Holmes (2002), Keppel & Walter (1999), and Kocsis, Cooksey, and Irwin (2002b) sexualized homicide classifications. The importance of developing an organized modeling of typologies cannot be understated. Although much of the research presents interesting descriptive discussions of offender behaviors, statistical examinations and summaries of that behavior, little of it is easily accessible or informative to the investigator. Long complicated descriptive discussions with assortments of outlying offense styles are not easily deciphered. The creation of a modified Douglas and Munn (1992) table resolved inaccessibility of research outcomes to the application of investigative processes by organizing the information in a comprehensible fashion. The four-part tables are used to sensibly present the features and characteristics of sexualized homicide data embodies in the research of Godwin (2001), Holmes and Holmes (2002), Keppel and Walter (1999), and Kocsis, Cooksey, and Irwin (2002b) sexualized homicide classifications typologies.

The Burgess et al. (1992) classifications of violent sexualized homicide presented in the Crime Classification Manual using a modified Douglas and Munn table are presented below. The use of the table creates a fairly accessible and readable template and reduces the descriptive materials in the book in the homicide chapter from 21 to 8 and essentially reduces descriptive presentation it its key components. The Douglas and Munn table is used with the Godwin (2001), Holmes and Holmes (2002), Keppel and Walter (1999), and Kocsis, Cooksey, and Irwin (2002b) sexualized homicide classifications to highlight the key characterization identifiers in each of those typologies.

It should be noted that a number of researchers have additionally investigated the similarities of the victimization, targeting and offender strategies in rape that appear to significantly resemble a pre-murderous activity. Hazelwood and Dietz (1992) and Hazelwood and Burgess (1999) characterized categories of rapists using a modified version of the classifications developed by Groth, Burgess, and Homston (1997) and as ultimately applied by Keppel and Walter (1999) in their discussion of sexual murder classification. The Hazelwood and Burgess (1999) classification provided an informational base that emphasized offender descriptive behaviors and crime scene activity. The significance of the revised classification model developed by Keppel and Walter (1999) was that their work focused on the examination of 2,476 convicted sex-murder offenders (single or serial) in the U.S. and analyzed the offense dynamics, offender characteristics, homicidal patterns, and general victimology to develop a classification of sexual murders (p. 417).

Of special note, the Beauregard and Proulx (2004) research found that although mutilation was more characteristic of a disorganized murderer the crime scene areas of a organized serial murderer exhibited artifacts and activities associated with planning, concealment, movement of victim body, and control throughout the homicidal processes. Therefore, they concluded that violent and highly sadistic crime scenes of serial murderers appeared to be “. . . planned and repetitive, show increasing offender sophistication over the offending series, and escalating levels of violent conduct with each new homicide” (p. 396).

Woodworth and Porter (2002) found that homicides committed by psychopathic offenders were likely to be “. . . cold-blooded in nature and therefore associated with premeditation more often murders committed by nonpsychopaths”(p. 436). Furthermore, the psychopaths were capable of being less reactive under provocation, control their impulses, plan violent offenses and to anticipate victim acquisition opportunities that reduced the likelihood of detection or apprehension by authorities. Patterning and consistency in the planning of sexualized homicide murder, and therefore serial murder, is a significant feature associated with serial offenses and was further supported by Goodwill and Alison (2005) and Lundrigan and Canter (2001a, 2001b). Specifically, Lundrigan and Canter (2001a) found that criminal activities of serial murderers tended to be around a home base of the offender. Goodwill and Alison (2005) noted that serial murderers tended to commit their first through third offenses closest to home. The geographic area in which the offender attained their first successes (murder without detection or apprehension) suggested offender familiarity with the area and success reinforced other offending in the same vicinity.

Goodwill and Alison also observed that of equal or greater importance to,

serial offenders is the psychological importance of the target . . . [specifically, the] greater dispersion in rapists and murderers than burglars may indicate that in these crimes the victim selection is an important element of the crime and the offence patterns simply reflect a more determined search pattern. (p. 175)

Counter to the original expectations of some researchers, the practice of mutilation, torture, and other violent behavior does not diminish the offender’s predatory skills over time. Other researchers have found that the behaviors of violent homicide offenders were not random actions or events but were instead a presentation of the profound psychological mechanisms that indicated symbolic representations of an offender’s psychological disposition. Santtila et al. (2001) further underscored the fact that a crime scene and the activities of the perpetrator were the signals of the offender’s psychological inclinations that were visible and available for interpretable by investigators, familiar with such offenses and therefore aids in the possibility of more successfully identifying a suspect pool or primary suspect.

Kocsis, Cooksey, and Irwin (2002a; 2002b) examined the crime scene and victimological information associated with sexualized assaults and sexualized homicides in which offender characteristics of known offenders presented violence-associated behaviors and noted “valid criminal profiling techniques requires the study of offender behaviors as distinct from inferred motives . . . offenders differ in their behaviors [and those differences] relate to characteristics of the offender” (p.146). Moreover, in their research on serial rapists and serial murderers they developed a set of interconnected characteristics regarding the offender, the victim, offender-victim interaction, and offender violence/tools/techniques and created a descriptive typology set defining those groupings of behaviors as undifferentiated, ritual, intercourse, brutal, and chaotic.

The undifferentiated category contains a mix of crime scene behavior, activities, and evidence indicative of a particular catalog of offending conduct that lead to the death of the victim. More specifically, as with statutory constructs in penal codes, certain specific elements of an offense always exist (i.e., in a homicide there is always the death of one human being that is the result of the direct premeditated actions of another and in which intent is based on specific actions and elements of planning). Therefore, the investigation of sexualized homicide is the investigation of offensive behavior, actions, and activities by the offender that are inherently excessive in their construct (Hickey, 2002). Therefore, those structures present themselves to the investigator through the presence of materials, artifacts, forensic objects, violent actions, and activities undertaken by the offender at the crime scene that indicate behavior, motivation, intentionality, and the offenders’ psychological inclinations. Consequently, that which distinguishes a sexualized homicide murder from other homicides are actions, activities, and behaviors that exceed the basic elements of a murderous wounding found in the commission of ordinary homicide. In sexualized homicide murder, the peri and post mortem actions of the offender significantly exceed those required for the acquisition, containment, and murder of the victim.

Sexualized homicide (erotophonophilia) tactics and tendencies are to target victims or have a victim preference further identifies sexualized homicide as a unique set of homicide offenders. As previously noted, sexualized homicide murderers use their targeted victim(s) as vehicles of instrumental violence to satisfy their intrapersonal motives, to drive their fantasies and to achieve their goals of violence and abuse. To reiterate the propensity for violence associated with the inclinations of the sexualized homicide murderer, “The initial stance of the violent prone person makes violence probable; his first moves increase the probability of violence; the reaction of the victim converts probability to certainty” (Toch, 1969, p. 184). Therefore, the sexualized homicide murderer essentially resides in a constant state of preparedness for the next victim of design or opportunity; the acquisition of the victim and the type of violence they prefer after acquiring a victim.

The offender classifications of Godwin (2001), Holmes and Holmes (2003), Keppel and Walter (1999), Kocsis et al. (2002a; 2002b), and Ressler et al. (1988) present offender motivation of sexualized homicide as action and reaction with intentionality rather than being motivated by an emotional wellspring or simple impulse. From targeting through planning to opportunistic acquisition of the victim, the sexualized homicide murderer is predominantly predatory in nature and commits sexualized cruelty as his weapon of preference.

(The foregoing appears in the 2nd Edition (revised and updated) of

African-American Serial Killers (2019) 2nd Ed. available through Amazon.com

at https://www.amazon.com/African-American-Serial-Killers-Neglected-Investigative/dp/1797910051/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=janet+mcclellan&qid=1552682353&s=gateway&sr=8-5