Concealment Acts

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...