Chloroform

What is chloroform?

Chloroform, also called trichloromethane or methyltrichloride, is a colorless liquid with a pleasant, nonirritating odor and a slightly sweet taste. As a volatile organic compound (VOC), chloroform easily vaporizes (turns into a gas) in the air. Chloroform does not easily burn, but it will burn when it reaches very high temperatures. Chloroform was one of the first inhaled anesthetics to be used during surgery, but it is not used in anesthesia today.

Where do you find chloroform?

In order to destroy the harmful bacteria found in our drinking water and waste waters, the chemical chlorine is added to these water sources. As a by-product of adding chlorine to our drinking and waste waters, small amounts of chloroform are formed. So small amounts of chloroform are likely to be found almost everywhere. In industry, nearly all the chloroform made in the U.S. is used to make other chemicals. From the factories that make or use this

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Crime Scene Staging: An Exploratory Study of the Frequency and Characteristics of Sexual Posing in Homicides

Abstract

Crime scene staging and sexual posing and/or positioning of a body in a crime scene are recognized homicide investigation phenomena. Even though staging and sexual posing might misdirect an investigation if unrecognized, there are no reliable data on the frequency of occurrences. The results of a survey administered to 46 trained homicide investigators indicated that while staging may be frequently observed at crime scenes, sexual posing occurs infrequently. Of an estimated 44,541 homicide investigations, respondents indicated that sexual posing was present in less than 1% of the cases (n = 428). Results also indicated that most often sexual posing, in contrast to crime scene staging, was typically not carried out to mislead, but the offenders' motivation was more often based on a psychological need for sexual fantasizing or to satisfy anger at the victim. Homicide case examples are presented and discussed to elaborate on the characteristics of sexually-posed crime scenes The scene of a homicide is the most important criminal

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The Analysis of the Crime Scene

Obviously, some crimes are more appropriate for profiling than others. We have listed these crimes in Chapter 1: sadistic torture +In sexual assault, evisceration, postmortem slashing and cutting, motiveless fire setting, lust and mutilation murder, and rape (stranger rape, not date or acquaintance rape). Such crimes as check forgery, bank robbery, and kidnapping, in contrast, are usually not appropriate candidates for profiling, nor are “smoking gun” or “dripping knife” murders. In this chapter we focus on those crimes to which the process of profiling is directly applicable.

BEYOND THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for investigators to accept is the need to look beyond the physical evidence. Homicide detectives are generally trained to reconstruct a crime based on the physical evidence found at the scene, such as blood spatters, fingerprints, and semen. This kind of evidence is often mistakenly thought to hold the key to the successful resolution of any criminal case.

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Female Stalkers and Their Victims

Female criminality is rarely studied and little understood. Although the crime of stalking is receiving a growing amount of research attention, the 15 to 20 percent of stalkers who are women are usually subsumed by the larger proportion of male stalkers in all research designs. Gender differences among stalkers have been studied only once, in an Australian community forensic mental health clinic. Purcell et al. found that male stalkers in that study out numbered females by a ratio of four to one. Similarities were more frequent than differences in most demographic, clinical, and forensic variables. The females were significantly less likely to have a history of criminal offenses, violent criminal offenses, or substance abuse diagnoses. They were significantly less likely than men to stalk a stranger, but more likely to pursue a prior professional contact, motivated by “a desire to establish a close and loving intimacy with the victim” (Ref. 7, p 2058).

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Are You Lying to Me? Using Nonverbal Cues to Detect Deception

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the relationship between response latency, speech rate accommodation, and judgments of deception. Participants listened to a recorded conversation between Jim and Claire, a dating couple. The conversation contained 32 question/answer pairs, with each speaker responding to 16 questions. Half of the responses were self-oriented (benefiting the self), and half were other-oriented (benefiting someone else). Each response was manipulated in terms of response latency and speech rate accommodation. Participants rated each response as either honest or deceitful, as well as confidence in their judgments and seriousness of each lie. Results showed that response latency was generally weighted more heavily than speech rate accommodation as a cue to deception. Early and on-time latencies were viewed as truthful, while late latencies were viewed as deceitful. In addition, several significant differences emerged as a function of type of lie (self- vs. other-oriented), gender of speaker, and gender of participants. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models, /stereotypes.

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When Silenced Voices Speak: An Exploratory Study of Prostitute Homicide

ABSTRACT

The FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) recently cited an increase in consultations involving serial, or multiple, homicide of female prostitutes, including anecdotal evidence of distinct victimology and crime scene differences among the victims. Of particular interest to the NCAVC was whether such variables (e.g., work location, body disposal method) could classlfy a deceased prostitute case as being either “single” (i.e., the only victim of a murderer) or “serial” (i.e., one of several victims of a murderer) in nature. Because this phenomenon had not been examined empirically, this exploratory study investigated dBerences between samples of serial and single prostitute homicide victims. The NCAVC’s anecdotal data and variables excerpted fiom relevant research literatures were included in an instrument designed for the study, the Prostitute Homicide Questionnaire (PHQ; Dudek & Nezu, 2000). Psychopathy was measured retrospectively with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R, Hare, 199 IC). Efforts were made throughout the study to control error variance. Trained raters examined 123 closed homicide files

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Sexual Attraction to Corpses: A Psychiatric Review of Necrophilia

Necrophilia, a sexual attraction to corpses, is a rare disorder that has been known since ancient times. According to Herodotus,' the ancient Egyptians took precautions against necrophilia by prohibiting the corpses of the wives of men of rank from being delivered immediately to the embalmers, for fear that the embalmers would violate them. According to a legend, King Herod had sex with his wife Marianne for seven years after he killed her.3.4 Similar legends exist about King Waldemar and Charle-mag~e.'.~ Necrophilia was considered by the Catholic Church to be neither whoring ("fornicatio") nor bestiality, but "pollution with a tendency to ~horing."~ In more recent times, necrophilia has been associated with cannibalism and myths of vampirism. The vampire, who has been romanticized by the Dracula tales, obtains a feeling of power from his victims, "like I had taken something powerful from them."' Cannibalistic tribal rituals are based on the notion that consumption of human flesh imparts a special power or

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Crime and Violence in Central America: A Development Challenge

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Crime and violence are now a key development issue for Central American countries. In three nations— El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—crime rates are among the top five in Latin America. In the region’s other three countries—Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama—crime and violence levels are significantly lower, but a steady rise in crime rates in recent years has raised serious concern. There is reason to worry. To put the magnitude of the problem in context, the entire population of Central America is approximately the same as that of Spain, but while Spain registered 336 murders (i.e., fewer than one per day) in 2006, Central America recorded 14,257 murders (i.e., almost 40 per day) in the same year.Beyond the trauma and suffering of individual victims, crime and violence carry staggering economic costs at the national level. Indeed, some experts estimate these costs at close to eight percent of regional GDP if citizen security, law enforcement and health

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Interrogations and Confessions

Introduction

Interrogations

The writings of the late Professor Fred Inbau of Northwestern University continue to have a significant influence on the tactics and strategy of police interrogations. Professor Inbau argued throughout his career that detective novels, films, and television had misled the public into believing that the police solve most crimes by relying on scientific evidence or eyewitness testimony. He pointed out that in a significant number of cases, this type of evidence is unavailable and that the police are forced to rely on confessions. Professor Inbau illustrates the importance of confessions by pointing to the hypothetical example of discovering the dead body of a female who appears to have been the victim of a criminal assault. There is no indication of a forced entry into her home, and the police investigation fails to yield DNA, fingerprints, clothing fibers, or witnesses. Law enforcement officers question everyone who may have had a motive to kill

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Gun Crime Risk Factors: Buyer, Seller, Firearm, and Transaction Charicteristics Associated with Gun Trafficking and Criminal Case Use

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Controlling gun crime continues to be a difficult challenge for policymakers and practitioners in the United States. With an estimated 258 million guns in private hands and millions more produced each year, there are many sources and means through which offenders can obtain firearms despite legal restrictions on gun purchasing and ownership by convicted felons, juveniles, and other high-risk groups. In order to better understand the workings of illicit gun markets—and particularly the rapid diversion of guns from the retail market into criminal channels—this study utilizes a decade’s worth of data on handgun sales in the state of Maryland and subsequent recoveries of those guns by police in order to identify the characteristics of firearms, sellers, buyers, and sales transactions that predict whether a gun is used in crime subsequent to purchase. The study provides some of the most sophisticated evidence to date on crime use risks associated with high-risk buyers, problem gun dealers, preferred crime guns, purchases involving multiple guns,

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Interpretation Of Post-Mortem Stimulant Laboratory Determinations

Abstract

Detailed human case data is presented to illustrate the dramatic extent of the phenomenon of post-mortem drug redistribution. The data suggests that there is a post-mortem diffusion of drugs along a concentration gradient, from sites of high concentration in solid organs, into the blood with resultant artefactual elevation of drug levels in blood. Highest drug levels were found in central vessels such as pulmonary artery and vein, and lowest levels were found in peripheral vessels such as subclavian and femoral veins. In individual cases, in multiple blood samples obtained from ligated vessels, concentrations of doxepin and desmethyldoxepin ranged from 3.6 to 12.5 mg/l and 1.2 to 7.5 mg/l, respectively; amobartital, secobarbital and pentobarbital from 4.3 to 25.8 mg/l, 3.9 to 25.3 mg/l and 5.1 to 31.5 mg/l respectively; clomipramine and desmethylclomipramine from 4.0 to 21.5 mg/l and 1.7 to 8.1 mg/l, respectively and flurazepam 0.15 to 0.99 mg/l; imipramine and desipramine from

Additional Resource: Post-mortem drug redistribution--a toxicological nightmare

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Signals and Rituals of Humans and Animals

Ritual is a universal feature of human behavior. While rituals differ from culture to culture, the defining features that distinguish them from “ordinary” behaviors are surprisingly consistent across all human societies. Rituals tend to be formal, stereotyped, repetitive, and “traditional”. They are therefore easily distinguished from other behaviors. Rituals help pattern and predict social interactions. For example, when two people meet they have expectations about how the social interaction will proceed. In Western societies, meetings commence with a handshake and a simultaneous “How are you?” or some similar formality. While none of us invented the handshake, we all recognize it as a greeting ritual. Religious rituals are particularly easy to detect as they tend to be more elaborate than other rituals. They also generally include music, chanting, or dance, which further distinguishes them from other behaviors. Masks, icons, special settings, extraordinary garments, and even distinctive languages may be used to further demarcate religious ritual from the ordinary. While religious

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The Psychiatry of Opera

A Personal View

That art is an expression of man's attempts to understand himself and his environment is as important as the purely aesthetic qualities of the piece, whatever it may be. Opera, together with the other performing arts, literature and painting, cannot simply be seen as pure entertainment. It is also a reflection of the society in wHich the composer and librettist lived, and the issues and values contemporary to those people. Opera with its fusion of words, music and theatre is able to delineate those issues involved and present them with an emotional intensity possibly unequalled elsewhere in art. Musical imagery is used to portray and develop the characters in opera by inflecting the librettist's words and embedding them in a sound world. This is how we can gain access to those characters' thoughts and emotions. As psychodramas the works of the late 19th and the 20th centuries reach the greatest level of complexity

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Hypnotherapy for Traumatic Grief: Janetian and Modern Approaches Integrated

Traumatic grief occurs when psychological trauma obstructs mourning. Nosologically, it is related to pathological grief and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therapeutic advances from both fields make it clear that the trauma per se must be accessed before mourning can proceed. The gamut of psychotherapies has been employed, but hypnosis appears to be the most specific. Pierre Janet provided a remarkably modern conceptual basis for diagnosis and treatment based on a dissociation model. His approach is combined with contemporary innovations to present a systematic and integrated account of hypnotherapy for traumatic grief.

Hypnosis is widely used in the treatment of pathological grief but is much underreported. It speeds and facilitates mourning and makes possible a personal reorientation to the future (Fromm & Eisen, 1982; Yager, 1988). Hypnosis is specifically indicated in the resolution of traumatic grief. Grief is traumatic when it follows objective and severe subjective trauma and when posttraumatic reactions inhibit mourning. In recent years, reports of traumatic..

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Youth Gangs: An Overview

Introduction

The United States has seen rapid proliferation of youth gangs since 1980. During this period, the number of cities with gang problems increased from an estimated 286 jurisdictions with more than 2,000 gangs and nearly 100,000 gang members in 1980 (Miller, 1992) to about 4,800 jurisdictions with more than 31,000 gangs and approximately 846,000 gang members in 1996 (Moore and Terrett, in press). An 11-city survey of eighth graders found that 9 percent were currently gang members, and 17 percent said they had belonged to a gang at some point in their lives (Esbensen and Osgood, 1997). Other studies reported comparable percentages and also showed that gang members were responsible for a large proportion of violent offenses. In the Rochester site of the OJJDP-funded Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency, gang members (30 percentof the sample) self-reported committing 68 percent of all violent offenses (Thornberry, 1998). ...

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Safe Neighborhoods Act Protect Victims Stop Gangs & Thugs

SECTION I. TITLE Arndt. #18

This act shall be known, and may be cited as, the "Safe Neighborhoods Act : Protect Victim s, Stop Gang and Street Crime."

SEC. 2. FINDI NGS AND DECLARATIONS

(a) The People of the State of California find and declare that state government has no higher purpose or more challenging mandate than the protection of our families and our neighborhoods from crime.
(b) Almos t every citizen has been, or knows someone who has been, victimized by crime.
(c) Altho ugh crime rates have fallen substantially since the early 1990s, there have been some disturbing increases in the last few years in seve ral categories of crime. According to the Federal Bureau or Investigation, there were 477 more homicides in California in 2006 than there were in 1999, a period during which homicides and homicide rates declined in many other states. In add ition, the California Department ofJustice has reported that there were 74,000

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