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Homicide Investigation

Differences in Characteristics of Criminal Behavior Between Solo and Team Serial Killers

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Introduction

Numerous research and theory have been published in an effort to better understand and categorize the most aberrant of pathological behaviors, those of a serial killer. This research is not only used to understand these individuals and what causes them to act out in this manner, but is also applicable when thinking about prevention and early detection of such behavior. When one can accurately understand patterns of behaviors, and the characteristics of such patterns, one can then begin to understand and trace back psychological mechanisms and etiologies of such behavior. Understanding and identifying precursors to these behavioral patterns will aid in early detection and intervention. A considerable amount of this research has focused on solo serial killers specifically, or serial killers as an entire population. Very little research is available regarding differences between different categories of killers, such as solo and team types of serial killers. The current research aimed to increase specificity of the available research and examine whether there are key differences in various aspects of criminal behavior between solo and team serial killers.

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Body Dismemberment in Sexual Homicide Cases: Lust Murder or Rational Decision?

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Introduction

Sexual homicide (SH) is a rare crime that represents only a small proportion of homicides committed every year (see Beauregard & Martineau, 2017 for a review). Despite the rarity of these offenses, SHs often monopolize media headlines and have the unique ability to provoke wide-spread fear in the community due in part to the apparent randomness of victim selection, but also because they are often characterized by gratuitous brutality as well as a combination of irrational behaviors (Roberts & Grossman, 1993). In some cases, certain acts committed during the crime-commission process become even more shocking and irrational than the murder itself. One of the most exemplary among these acts is the criminal dismemberment of the victim’s body, which is considered to be the ultimate act of aggression (Holmes, 2017). This act, whatever its motivation, is not only shocking but also demoralizing as it constitutes a way to deny the victim’s integrity (Black et al., 2017).

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Iowa Missing Person Training Curriculum

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INTRODUCTION

Approximately 2 years ago I received information regarding grant monies that were available for state clearinghouses through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Immediately my thoughts went to the need for training in the area of missing persons. \-Vith new laws that had been passed and improved resources that were available to law enforcement agencies I felt the need for training in these areas to be very important. I not only wanted to be able to provide this training in the area of missing persons, I wanted to be able to make it available to all Iowa law enforcement agencies. I realized that many agencies did not have the funds to pay for the registration, travel or overnight stays for their personnel. I also realized there were those agencies that would not be able to allow personnel to be gone for any great length of time, due to the fact they were either understaffed or one man departments. The decision was made to apply for the grant monies and bring training to as many law enforcement agencies as possible by dividing the state into sixteen different regions and presenting a one day seminar in each region.

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The Prostitution of Lying in Wait

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Kurt Michaels planned and executed the murder of JoAnn Clemons.' He and an accomplice waited at a construction site adjacent to some apartments where they could view the victim's third-story window After several hours, the light in the victim's apartment went out and the two set off across the parking lot, walked up the stairwell and, using a key supplied by the victim's daughter, entered the apartment.' The victim called out, "Who is it?" Michaels and his cohort entered her bedroom, struggled with the victim and killed her. The San Diego District Attorney capitally charged Michaels, alleging as one of the death qualifying circumstances that Michaels murdered while "lying in wait."

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Journey to Crime Estimation Location Theory

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Location Theory

Location theory is concerned wit h one of the central issues in geography. This theory attempts to find an optimal location for any particular distribution of activities, population, or even ts over a region (Haggett, Cliff and Frey, 1977; Krueckeberg and Silvers, 1974; Stopher and Meyburg, 1975; Oppenheim, 1980, Ch . 4; Boss a rd, 1993). In classic location theory, economic resources were allocated in relation to idealized presentations (Anselin and Madden , 1990). Thus, von Thünen (1826) analyzed the distribution of agricultural land as a function of the accessibility to a single population center (which would be more expensive towards the cent er), t he value of the product produced (which would vary by crop), and transportation costs (which would be more expensive farther from the cent er). In order to maximize profit and minimize costs, a

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Investigator Beliefs Of Homicide Crime Scene Characteristics

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Homicide investigators rely on a plethora of sources to solve a case, including their own beliefs and intuitions. We discuss a variety of these beliefs and explore their veracity using a novel approach, coding cases from the documentary television show, Forensic Files. Our results indicate that most of these beliefs are unsupported. However, some beliefs may be predictive. Specifically, a body that was wrapped or placed in a container was indicative that the body had been transported. In addition, finding the victim nude was predictive of rape. We discuss the problems of following inaccurate beliefs, and the potential use of the accurate beliefs we identified.

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Identification Of Clandestine Grave Sites By Understanding Location Choices From An Environmental And Psychological Perspective

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1.0 ABSTRACT What factors influence an offender’s decision-making process in choosing a particular clandestine grave site? This study attempts to answer this question and in doing so proposes that it is best answered using a multifaceted approach. This approach is required to appreciate how Winthropping is a relevant method to employ to understand these decision making factors. An offender’s decision-making process is affected by theoretical underpinnings in forensic psychology and environmental criminology. Forensic psychology informs us that the environment plays a significant role in influencing decisions made by an offender, who scours it consciously and subconsciously for relevant information about how best to commit their crime. Environmental criminology states that these decisions aggregate to form larger trends about how crime is committed across geographical areas and how best we can use these to apprehend offenders. Furthermore, knowledge gained by applying statistical methods such as Matrix Forecasting, and Behavioural Sequence Analysis...

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The Psychology of Murder Concealment Acts

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Abstract:

The escalating trend of murder victim concealment worldwide appears worrying, and literature does not reveal any specific study focusing on victim concealment amongst convicted male Malaysian murderers. Therefore, this study was aimed at investigating the psychological traits that may underlie the act of murder concealment in Malaysia via mixed method approaches. Male murderers (n = 71) from 11 prisons were selected via purposive sampling technique. In the quantitative analysis, a cross-sectional study design using the validated questionnaire was used. The questionnaire contained murder concealment variables and four Malay validated psychometric instruments measuring: personality traits, self-control, aggression, and cognitive distortion. The independent sample t-tests revealed the significantly higher level of anger in murderers who did not commit concealment acts (8.55  2.85, p < 0.05) when compared with those who did so (6.40  2.64). Meanwhile, the Kruskal–Wallis H test revealed that anger and the personality trait of aggressiveness hostility significantly varied across the different groups of murder concealment acts (p < 0.05). The qualitative data obtained via the in-depth interviews revealed...

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Homicide By Necessity

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Introduction

In phiosophy we sometimes consider the question, put by way of hypothesis, of how we should act in the midst of a calamity, disaster, or other danger, if it is apparent that we can save our own life only by the destruction of another’s. We can hardly imagine that such a question would have much practical importance, or that a court would ever need to rule upon conduct under such circumstances, or, for that matter, that we would ever personally encounter an ordeal in which we face a dilemma between self-sacrifice and the sacrifice of another.

In fact, there have been numerous instances of homicide by necessity, some of which have resulted in murder or manslaughter convictions, and others which have passed quietly into history with no action taken by the authorities. This topic, homicide by necessity, refers to the killing of innocents in order to produce a greater good or avert a greater...

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Cold Case Models for Evaluating Unresolved Homicides

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Abstract

During the period 1980-2008 the United States has accumulated nearly 185,000 unresolved murders. Based on the number of homicides and clearance rates for murders 2009-2012 this figure is either closer to, or well over 200,000. As of 2004 the United States also had approximately 14,000 unidentified sets of human remains, many of which could be homicides, further increasing our total number of unresolved cases.The efforts to resolve some of these cases by law enforcement and others have been unrelenting. And while historically we can easily identify the early 1980s with Dade County Sherriff’s Office as the beginnings of the “cold case concept” , a standard protocol for evaluating cold cases has not yet been identified and implemented, as noted by the Rand Corporation study for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).4 The intent of this article is to provide the readers with two cold case models that can assist in streamlining the evaluation process and possibly significantly contribute to the resolution of cold cases.

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Travel-To-Crime: Homing In On The Victim

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ABSTRACT

Environmental criminology focuses on the intersection in time and place of the offender and victim. Patterns of crime are generally explained in terms of the routine activities of the offender. His or her travel to crime distances are short and crimes are committed within the offender's 'awareness space'. It has generally been theorised that victims also have short journeys to crime, associated with their routine behaviour. This review, however, suggests that occupancy of 'unawareness space', where people are away from familiar surroundings, may confer heightened risk. This is supported in research in the special case of crime and tourism, though other travelling victim patterns have been largely ignored. This paper postulates that crime risk increases at the intersection of offender awareness and victim unawareness spaces. The 2002–3 British Crime Survey provides some suggestive evidence on this. Its analysis reveals that 26.9% of self-reported victimisation occurs more than 15 minutes away from the victim's home. For personal

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Homicides of Children and Youth

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Murders of children and youth, the ultimate form of juvenile victimization, have received a great deal of deserved publicity in recent years.1 Yet, while images of Polly Klaas and student victims at Columbine High School are vivid in the public’s mind, statistics on juvenile murder victims are not. Substantial misunderstandings exist about the magnitude of and trends in juvenile homicide and the types of children at risk of becoming victims of different types of homicide.

This Bulletin gives a brief statistical portrait of various facets of child and youth homicide victimization in the United States. It draws heavily on homicide data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHRs), which are part of the Bureau’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program; however, it also relies on a variety of other studies and statistical sources. Highlights of the findings presented in this Bulletin include the following:

◆ In 1999, about 1,800 juveniles (a rate of 2.6 per 100,000) were victims of homicide in the United States.

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Homicidal Sex Offenders: Psychological, Phallometric, And Diagnostic Features.

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Abstract

Homicidal sex offenders represent an understudied population in the forensic literature. Forty-eight homicidal sex offenders assessed between 1982 and 1992 were studied in relation to a comparison group of incest offenders. Historical features, commonly used psychological inventories, criminal histories, phallometric assessments, and DSM diagnoses were collected on each group. The homicidal sex offenders, compared with the incest offenders, self-reported that they had more frequently been removed from their homes during childhood and had more violence and forensic psychiatric contact in their histories. On the self-report psychological inventories, the homicidal sex offenders portrayed themselves as functioning significantly better in the areas of sexuality (Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory) and aggression/hostility (Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory). However, on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), researchers rated the homiciders significantly more psychopathic than the incest offenders on Factor 1 (personality traits) and Factor 2 (antisocial history). Police records revealed the homicidal subjects also had been...

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Race, Gender, And The Newsworthiness Of Homicide Incidents

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Introduction

It is nearly impossible to escape crime imagery in the news media. Scholars have found that crime is generally a staple of news programming, comprising from 10 to 50 percent of all news stories (Chermak, 1995; Ericson, Baranek, & Chan, 1991; Graber, 1980; Klite, Bardwell, & Salzman, 1997; Maguire, Sandage, & Weatherby, 1999; Yanich, 2005). In addition, not all crime is presented similarly by the news media. In particular, research has consistently shown that crime is distorted in favor of uncommon events (Chermak, 1995; Ericson et al., 1991; Fishman, 1980; Gans, 1979; Tuchman, 1973). This same research has generally found that violent crimes such as homicides, for instance, are overrepresented while minor, more common crimes are ignored or de-emphasized. Consequently, research examining media coverage of crime, particularly homicide, has increased in recent years (Buckler & Travis, 2005; Johnstone, Hawkins, & Michener, 1995; Lundman, 2003; Paulsen, 2003; Peelo, Francis,...

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Modeling Criminal Distance Decay

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Criminal distance decay is the fundamental notion that a relationship exists between the distance from an offender’s home base to a potential target location and the likelihood that the offender chooses to offend in that location. This relationship is important both for its operational effect on police agencies and on models for offender behavior. A number of factors influence the distance decay function of an offender, including the local geography and the offender’s decision making process.This article addresses a study of the interactions between the two-dimensional offense distribution that describes how offenders select targets and the corresponding one-dimensional distance decay function. It also present the calculation of the coefficient of variation for 324 residential burglary series in Baltimore County, Maryland. These data do not support the notion that the distance decay behavior of an individual offender is governed by a number of common choices for distance decay, including the negative ...

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Violent Crimes Making a Federal Case out of a Death Investigation

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I. Introduction

How do you respond, as an Assistant United States Attorney, when an agent walks into your office and says, "I've got an investigation involving a death. Can that be a federal offense?" What establishes federal jurisdiction over a death case? After all, "[m]urder . . . is a quintessential example of a crime traditionally considered within the States' fundamental police powers." United States v. Drury, 344 F.3d 1089, 1101 (11th Cir. 2003). Must the death be a "murder" to constitute a federal offense? What evidentiary issues arise in these cases? What are the sentencing implications? This article is intended to provide answers to some of these questions. It is designed to arm you with some basic information so when that agent enters your office with a case involving a death, you will at least have a working knowledge of the subject matter sufficient to identify the issues and begin to...

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