Necrophilia and Sexual Homicide

Abstract

A closed case-file review of 211 sexual homicides identified 16 cases of necrophilia. The results of this unique descriptive study of necrophilia associated with sexual homicide provide information on crime-scene locations, methods of killing, body disposition, premortem sexual assault, specifics of the necrophilic acts, methods of victim abduction, and motivational dynamics. The findings suggest that the most common explanation for necrophilia—the offender’s desire to have an unresisting partner—may not always be applicable in cases where this rare paraphilia is connected to sexual murder. The possibility of using crime-scene behaviors in these cases to investigate serial sexual murders is offered.

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Linkage Blindness

Law enforcement investigators sometimes do not see or are prevented from seeing beyond their own jurisdictional responsibilities. The officer's responsibility usually stops at the boundary of the jurisdiction except when hot pursuit is necessary. A police department's accountability and responsiveness to its jurisdictional clients can create a sense of isolation from the outside world. The term linkage blindness was coined in 1984 to denote an underlying problem with law enforcement serial murder investigations and some other crimes as well.

Intergovernmental conflict between law enforcement agencies is unfortunately a common occurrence. The basis of these conflicts is a real or perceived violation of an agency's boundaries or geographical jurisdiction, or of the specific responsibilities of an agency to enforce specific laws. Agencies large and small continually ...

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A Working Definition of Serial Murder and the Reduction of Linkage Blindness

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify and clarify the issues facing our society resulting from the phenomenon of serial murder. It will be argued that the extent and prevalence of serial murders in our society today is an indirect effect of the almost total lack of sharing or coordination of investigative information relating to unsolved murders and to the lack of adequate networking among law enforcement agencies in this country. This lack of coordination and networking will be referred to as linkage blindness. This inability of law enforcement to link unsolved murders to a serial pattern greatly increases the probability that this serial sequence of murders will continue until the murderer makes a mistake...

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Diagnosing Homicidal Mania: Forensic Psychiatry and the Purposeless Murder

It is not every criminal defendant in late Victorian England who writes to the medical officer of the prison, inviting him to attend his trial and more than likely, his execution. The defendant had already discussed his forthcoming date at the Old Bailey with the prison doctor in a mood that bordered on ebullience: “he appeared in very great glee at being about to be … tried … he thought it would be a splendid sight … he said he would wear his best clothes and have his boots well polished—then he began to talk about his cats”. It might seem odd to shift the conversation so easily from a possible death sentence to asking about one's pets, but then, thirteen-year-old boys are often concerned about their pets, even thirteen-year-old boys who conspire with a younger brother to murder their mother and leave her body to rot for a week...

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Homicide Or Suicide: The Killing Of Suicidal Persons By Law Enforcement Officers

Abstract

This paper presents 15 deaths of suicidal persons in Oregon and Florida who, by their behavior, sufficiently provoked law enforcement officers into killing them. Four deaths were certified as suicide, one as undetermined and ten as homicide. All of the deaths are individually described in detail and their case characteristics are presented in a table. The method of study is a descriptive analysis of the case characteristics, including 21 variables which are determined to be relevant to the classification of death. The variables were grouped into six categories: (a) personal information; (b) criminal behavior during the fatal incident; (c) dangerous behavior during the fatal incident; (d) toxicological data; (e) mental illness information; and (f) certification data. From the analysis, reasons for the opinions on manner of death classification are presented. All incidents were perceived as life-threatening to law officers, family members, or hostages. All victims were male except one,...

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Paula Sladewski Pictures Exclusive: Parents Told Playboy Model to Leave Violent Relationship

NEW YORK (CBS)

Murdered model Paula Sladewski's step-father, Richard Watkins, said there was never a "honeymoon period" for the slain beauty and her boyfriend Kevin Klym. And the mourning dad begged the couple to break off their violent relationship. Photo: Paula Sladewski and boyfriend Kevin Klym.

"They fought from the beginning - physical, knock down fights," Watkins told CBS News' Crimesider.

Police have said Klym is a person of interest in the Jan. 3 murder that left Sladewski's body so badly burned it took Miami police two days to identify her - eventually through her dental records. She was believed dead before her body was desecrated, but police have not yet said how she died.

She was last seen alive sometime between 7 and 9 a.m. Sunday morning at a Miami night club. In a missing person report he filed hours before her burning body was found in a dumpster, Klym told police...

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The Management Of Retrograde Ejaculation: A Systematic Review And Update.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To determine the best management of retrograde ejaculation to optimize the chance of conception.

DESIGN: Systematic review.

SETTING: Tertiary reproductive medicine center.

PATIENT(S): Subfertile men with retrograde ejaculation.

METHOD(S): Systematic search of studies using search terms "management" or "therapy" or "treatment" and "retrograde ejaculation." We excluded case reports and papers not in English.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Pregnancy and live birth rates and rates of achievement of antegrade ejaculation.

RESULT(S): Thirty-four studies met our criteria. Studies were mostly observational. Descriptions of predictive and confounding variables were often insufficient. The treatment options included urinary sperm retrieval and medical management with anticholinergics and sympathomimetics. Successful pregnancies and live births were also achieved using surgical techniques and electroejaculation; however, numbers were small.

CONCLUSION(S): Many treatment options exist in the management of retrograde ejaculation; however, current literature is insufficient to allow firm...

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Casting Credibility: Patterns of Audience Assessment of TV News Programs

In 2010 the annual survey of Nielsen Media Research reported that 91% of 2,000 polled respondents obtained information from television (TV), compared to only 65% from radio, 58% from outdoor advertising, 15% for print media, and 9% from magazines. Further, an estimated one-fi fth did not read newspapers because TV was their preferred medium. Six years earlier, a Pulse Asia survey reported that 63% considered TV the most credible source of news and information, leaving behind radio (20%) and newspaper (5%). In 1999, TV’s credibility rating was only at 53%, with radio at 35%, and newspaper at 27% (as cited by Arao, 2004). Television (TV) continues to be the preferred source of information in the Philippines.  e technological features of a media channel are among the key factors that affect its credibility. Studies have shown that TV’s visual nature enhances the audience’s perceived trustworthiness, compared to...

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Autopsy Vincent Foster Part (2)

Kavanaugh, then 30, argued that unsupported allegations that Foster may have been murdered gave Starr the right to probe the matter more deeply. Foster's death had already been the focus of two investigations, both concluding that Foster committed suicide.

"We are currently investigating Vincent Foster's death to determine, among other things, whether he was murdered in violation of federal criminal law," Kavanaugh wrote to Starr and six other officials in a memo offering legal justification for the probe. "[I]t necessarily follows that we must have the authority to fully investigate Foster's death.

The four-page memo, obtained by The Washington Post from the Library of Congress, sheds light on how Kavanaugh's thinking evolved on the legal rights of sitting presidents.

His handling of Starr's Foster probe helped elevate Kavanaugh's career, but the lengthy inquiry enabled conspiracy theories to flourish and add to the tumult of the Clinton presidency. Once the Foster matter was closed, Starr's...

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NCJRS | Frequency of Body Posing in Homicides

Abstract:

Analysis of the cases revealed three specific motives for posing: fantasy (offenders pose a body to satisfy a perverse sexual fantasy), retaliation (offenders pose a body out of anger), and staging (offenders pose a body to make it appear to be a sex-related murder to mislead the police investigation). This study provides investigators with a frame of reference regarding staged homicide scenes involving posing. Crime scene staging and sexual posing and/or positioning of a body in a crime scene are recognized dynamics in homicide investigations. Staging, if it goes unrecognized, might misdirect an investigation. This study collected data from 43 renowned homicide experts who regularly provided expert testimony and advanced training in their particular field of expertise, and who supervised or consulted on 44,541 homicide investigations collectively. Of these homicide investigations, 185 cases used for this analysis maintained full documentation, such as crime scene photographs, the offender’s statements and confession, and investigative reports....

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Frequency of Body Posing in Homicides

Crime scene staging and sexual posing and/or positioning of a body in a crime scene are recognized dynamics in homicide investigation. Staging might misdirect an investigation if unrecognized.

A careful and intelligently guided examination of the crime scene and of the forensically analyzable evidence found there gives direction to and often determines the success or failure of an investigation. It is clear, however, that some crime scenes are difficult to evaluate when the victim’s body and perhaps other elements of the scene have been deliberately manipulated.

A number of authors have defined staging as the purposeful alteration of a crime scene in an attempt to mislead investigators and to frustrate the criminal justice process. An example would be making a homicide appear to be a suicide. Staging does not refer to efforts taken by a surviving family member or other loved ones to cover or dress a victim in order to avoid embarrassment.

In death investigations,...

Additional Resource: Frequency of Body Posing in Homicides (2101 downloads )

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Justice Story: Death of the Speed King

In a way, the surprising thing was not that Marion (Mickey) Thompson was dead, but that he had lived so long. He had been flirting with death all his life.

How he died was even more out of character for the man known as the Speed King. It was not, as everyone had predicted, in a hunk of metal hurtling across the Utah salt flats or on a hairpin turn on a mountain road or on a drag strip.

When Thompson met death, he was moving at about 2 mph, walking toward his Toyota van at dawn on March 16, 1988. Padding along beside him was his wife of 17 years, L kmkmTrudy.

They were on their way to work at Anaheim Stadium, where they ran a racing-promotion company - Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group.

No one saw the killing, but neighbors in the posh community of Bradbury, Calif., heard screams and Thompson's voice, pleading,

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The Decomposition of Hair in the Buried Body Environment

The hair protein is consists mainly of such a peptides which is highly coiled-coil in structure and covalently linked peptides that's why these proteins are robust and flexible in structure (Coulomb et al., 2002;Lee et al., 2012). In crime scene investigation hair is forensically important and environmentally stable component compare to DNA (Thompson et al., 2014;Van et al., 2010;Wilson, 2008;Wilson et al., 2007). However, the extraction of DNA from hair is difficult. ...

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Legendary Lawman Jigsaw John

I've noticed that there has been a definite trend in the articles written for this column. Most of the characters have been from the old west and a great majority of them have been Texas Rangers. I know that the Rangers history is filled with tales of individual valor and remarkable feats of heroism, but I wanted to get a little closer to home: both geographically and chronologically. So here, I give you one of the LAPD's finest.

In 1986 a slightly round 67 year old LAPD Detective was working a serial homicide case as the string of dead call girls had grown to 15. John P. St. John was one of 19 detectives assigned to the murders. He was the oldest, most renowned officer the PD had to offer. A real no-kidding detective, he was both meticulous and tenacious. Sounds like the stuff legend doesn't it? "Jigsaw John" was old school even before they called it old school....

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Criteria For Homicide And Suicide On Victims Of Extended Suicide Due To Sharp Force Injury.

Abstract

This report is about the findings in association with the extended suicides of nine victims killed by sharp force. All victims were killed by sharp force. The perpetrators were predominantly the parents, the victims their children. Regarding the criteria for differentiating self-inflicted injuries from injuries inflicted by another person, the victims' injuries presented patterns usually found solely in suicides. Thus eight of nine cases presented tentative and hesitation injuries, in three of five cases areas of injury covered by clothing had been exposed beforehand. Despite extremely narrow intercostal spaces in children, injuries to the bones in thoracic stabbing were avoided more often than not (four of seven cases). Only the criterion "defence injury" occurred nearly as often as in homicide victims (three of nine cases). The psychopathology of extended suicide can explain this pattern. The perpetrator's motive is characterised by his pseudoaltruistic belief to save the loved ones from a world that is ...

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Sexual Homicide: Differentiating Crime Scene Actions

Abstract:

Recent studies have focused on how previous thematic approaches can help explore the style of the offender, specifying the way each offender interacts with the victim. In the present study, it is hypothesized that there are thematic distinctions in sexual homicide, expressive and instrumental, which can be interpreted from the analysis of co-occurrence of crime scene actions. The case files of 40 convicted sexual homicide offenders were content analyzed using the Homicide Profiling Index (Salfati, 2005). Using a multidimensional methodology, Smallest Space Analysis, the present study showed that these crime scene actions could be successfully differentiated in terms of expressive and instrumental aggression. The expressive theme consisted of violent behaviors that centered on hurting the victim, whereas the instrumental theme consisted of behaviors that were more focused on the benefits the victim provided for the offender. In order to provide a basis for the types of behaviors that investigators can use for effectively differentiating...

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