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Homicide Studies

Hired Killings in Intimate Partner Relationships: A New Breed of Violent Offenders?

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Abstract:

In respect to hired killings in intimate partner relationships, several aggravating factors can be discerned: (1) the murder is carefully planned; (2) it is a rational act with the deliberate intent to kill; (3) others are persuaded to and offered a reward to commit the actual killing; (4) the ploy of playing the role of the bereaved partner; (5) the primary offender’s deliberate lies to the police; and (6) the lack of remorse. Despite the emerging pattern regarding hired killings, the complexities of these premeditated murders should not be ignored. Diverse motives, including financial considerations and abusive relationships particularly in the case of female primary offenders, place a heavy burden on the criminal justice system to act fairly and justly. Murder is an intensely personal type of crime and regarded by some researchers as the most problematic of all criminal behaviors. Due to some highly publicized incidents in South...

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Learning to Kill: Contract, Serial, and Terroristic Homicide

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Abstract:

The majority of homicides are spontaneous acts with a smaller number of homicides not of the spontaneous or unplanned type. These are planned and sometimes highly planned. In this chapter, three different types of homicide, where the offender not only plans the crimes, but frequently studies methods to kill in order to perfect the technique are reviewed: the contract murder, serial murder, and terroristic murder. The contract murderer is an individual who is hired to take the life of another person, with the majority of contract murders carried out by amateurs acting for a specific gainful purpose. Serial murder is viewed as sexually motivated and basically a subtype sexual homicide. Sexual homicide becomes serial when multiple victims are involved, usually in multiple locations. The terroristic murderer is not seeking sexual gratification or money, but rather the killings are motivated by political philosophy or extreme religious doctrine....

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Assessing the Interaction Between Offender and Victim Criminal Lifestyles & Homicide Type

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Abstract:

Study findings show that criminal lifestyles are common among both homicide victims and offenders. At least 75 percent of the victims and 87 percent of the offenders engaged in some type of criminal/deviant lifestyle. The analyses did not find much variation among the lifestyles of homicide victims and offenders in Newark; however, there were two types of homicide victims and offenders. One group of victims and offenders were apparently less involved in the criminal world, and the other group was heavily involved in the criminal world. Still, this small variation between homicide victims and offenders did influence homicide type; for example, the combination of the most criminally involved victims and offenders was more likely to lead to gang-related and drug-related homicides, and the more criminally involved youth were more likely to kill the less criminally involved victims in escalating dispute/revenge-related homicide incidents. In addition,...

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Serial And Spree Homicide: Different Crimes Or All Serial Crimes?

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Abstract:

Currently in the literature there are three types of multiple homicides that have been defined; serial homicide, mass homicide, and spree homicide. Serial homicide is generally defined as an offender who commits a minimum of 3 homicides, with a ‘cooldown’ period in between each homicide. Mass murder generally refers to a single incident, in a single location where an offender kills a number of people. The time element of the definition make these two types of multiple homicides clearly distinct from one another. Spree homicides are generally defined as a series of crimes that occur in a short space of time at different locations, with no cooldown between each homicide. Although on the face a clear definition, confusion arises as to the exact difference between serial and spree homicides due to the lack of definition of the exact time element involved, and the exact nature and duration of a cooldown period. In order...

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Killed in the Act A Descriptive Analysis of Crime-Precipitated Homicide

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Abstract

By disaggregating homicide into group-specific measures, insight may be gained into the many forms of lethal violence. In this article, the authors provide a descriptive analysis of a specific type of homicide that they refer to as “crime-precipitated homicide.” They argue that this categorization is distinct from both felony homicide and victim-precipitated homicide. Crime-precipitated homicides are those in which the victim was killed while participating in illegal behavior including predatory crimes, vice crimes, or narcotics dealing. Using the Homicides in Chicago, 1965-1995 data set, the authors describe the characteristics of crime-precipitated homicide offenders and victims including age, race, gender, and criminal histories. They also report on characteristics of the homicide event including where the homicides occur, when they occur, the type of weapon used, and the relationship between offenders and victims. Results suggest that crime-precipitated homicide is a distinct type that warrants further study....

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Towards A Typology Of Homicides On The Basis Of Personality

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Abstract

This paper presents the results obtained by examination of 112 homicide convicts in a penitentiary institution. The following psychodiagnostic instruments were applied: standardized interview, MMPI, and S-R scales of morality and aggressiveness. A series of demographic, criminological, victimological, sociopathological, and psychiatric data, classified into twenty-six variables, was gathered by reviewing police files. On the basis of typical MMPI profiles, the subjects were classified into four groups: psychoses, hypersensitive—aggressive personalities, psychopaths, and ‘normal’ subjects. Factor analysis was carried out using the personality variables and other relating to criminality etc. Six factors were interpretable, each describing more closely the types suggested. Discriminant function analysis proved this typological classification to be justified. The role of aggression and psychopathological factors in homicide etiology is discussed....

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Parasite Stress Promotes Homicide And Child Maltreatment

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ABSTRACT

Researchers using the parasite-stress theory of human values have discovered many cross-cultural behavioural patterns that inform a range of scholarly disciplines. Here, we apply the theory to major categories of interpersonal violence, and the empirical findings are supportive. We hypothesize that the collectivism evoked by high parasite stress is a cause of adult-on-adult interpersonal violence. Across the US states, parasite stress and collectivism each positively predicts rates of men's and women's slaying of a romantic partner, as well as the rate of male-honour homicide and of the motivationally similar felony-related homicide. Of these four types of homicide, wealth inequality has an independent effect only on rates of male-honour and felony-related homicide. Parasite stress and collectivism also positively predict cross-national homicide rates. Child maltreatment by caretakers is caused, in part, by divestment in offspring of low phenotypic quality, and high parasite stress produces more such offspring than low parasite stress. Rates of each...

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Exploring The Interrelationship Between Alexithymia, Defense Style, Emotional Suppression, Homicide-related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder And Psychiatric Co-Morbidity

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Highlights   •Perpetrators can develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following homicide. •Different psychological factors contribute to the severity of PTSD and psychiatric co-morbidity. •Alexithymia is associated with defense style which is also correlated with emotional suppression. •Emotional suppression is associated with homicide-related PTSD and psychiatric co-morbidity.   Abstract

This study investigated the interrelationship between alexithymia, defense style, emotional suppression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following homicide and psychiatric co-morbidity. One hundred and fifty male homicide perpetrators and 156 male perpetrators of non-violent crime completed the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (except for non-violent perpetrators), the General Health Questionnaire-28, the Defense Styles Questionnaire, the Courtauld Emotional Control Scale and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20. The results showed that 44% of homicide perpetrators met the criteria for PTSD. No significant differences were found between groups in alexithymia, defense style and psychiatric co-morbidity. Homicide perpetrators suppressed depression significantly more than the non-violent group...

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Fantasies of Female Serial Killers

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Police come to me when they have cases where they suspect a woman of serial murder. I am the expert on the topic having interviewed a large group of female serial killers back in the 1990's. From those interviews and studying their murders, I created the profiles of female serial killers. To this day, such a case is the most difficult type of homicide to work. People are reluctant to believe a woman could be so violent, and these women offenders are careful in the way they kill. They use covert murder methods such as asphyxiation or poisoning to kill, and they chose victims who are easy to kill.

People are even less likely to consider that females fantasize about killing. However they do! When I interviewed the female serial offenders, I learned a great deal. First, fantasy is an elaborate set of cognitions...

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Examining Attributes of Homicides Toward Quantifying Qualitative Values of Injury Severity

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Abstract

The empirical value of traditional measures related to homicide, the cause of death, and weapon use are well researched and documented in the literature. This research proposes new scale measures quantifying the degree of injury exhibited in homicide cases that can be used to further examine the dynamics of homicidal behavior. These scales are then tested in an examination of a limited set of data reflecting homicides of elderly women. Normally the purview of trauma studies, where the use of injury scales to assess patient survivability is known, homicidal injury is examined using a similar method as a means for exploring offender and crime scene variables. As proposed here, these injury scales may also prove to be useful in furthering other areas of homicide research...

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Evaluating What Works for Victims and Offenders: The Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention Demonstration Initiative

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Domestic Violence Awareness Month this October marks the one-year anniversary of model implementation in the first two sites of the Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention Demonstration Initiative ​(DVHPDI), managed by the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) and evaluated through funding support from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).

The Demonstration Initiative The demonstration initiative is a multiyear, two-phase project intended to assist local sites nationwide in reducing domestic violence homicides through promising domestic violence homicide prevention models. The models focus on identifying high-risk victims and offenders in order to target specific community-based resources directly to those cases. In March of 2013, Vice President Biden and former Attorney General Holder announced the initial grant awards establishing the demonstration initiative.

During Phase One, 12 initial sites received grant funding to assess local criminal justice and community response structures to domestic violence cases and data-sharing capabilities among...

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Types of Intimate Partner Homicides Committed by Women Self-Defense, Proxy/Retaliation, and Sexual Proprietariness

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Abstract

Margo Wilson and Martin Daly began scientific work to explain intimate partner homicides (IPHs). Key to their work was women’s increased risk of IPH victimization relative to men. In the 1990s, many U.S. jurisdictions implemented Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committees (DVFRCs) to improve responses to potentially lethal abuse. We report findings from 117 closed heterosexual IPH cases collected by the Denver Metro DVFRC 1991-2009. As expected, IPHs perpetrated by women against men are frequently motivated by self-defense. Although Wilson and Daly’s “sexual proprietariness” is primarily characteristic of men killing women, we find it applicable to some women killing male mates...

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The Effect of Interrogation Length and Perceived Crime Seriousness on Confession Decisions

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Abstract:

This research tested whether an interrogation’s length and a crime’s perceived seriousness influenced the extent to which suspects made short-sighted confession decisions. Participants (N = 118) were questioned about 20 criminal and unethical behaviors and were required to admit or deny each. Admissions and denials were paired with either a proximal or distal consequence. Results showed that the tendency for the proximal consequence to influence admissions more strongly than the distal consequence was greater during the second half of the interview than during the first. Moreover, this tendency was greater for less serious than more serious crimes....

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Ice Pick Death: A Case Report And Discussion Of The Injury Pattern.

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Abstract

Death due to ice pick injury rarely reported in forensic literature. We report death of a 16-year old male, who was allegedly assaulted on chest, back and thigh by his school-mate, with an ice pick. The accused had got the ice pick from his father's ice shop to attack the victim. The multiple stabs to the chest region had perforated the lung and penetrated the heart chambers. The victim succumbed to death on the way to hospital and medico-legal autopsy was conducted. The injuries inflicted by the ice pick are highlighted and its pattern is discussed in this article, owing to the peculiar nature of the wounds produced by the ice-pick....

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The Length Of Interrogation – How Many Hours Are Too Many?

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Length of interrogation is one factor to consider in the totality of circumstances

In this case, Moore v. Curtin (November 2010) the defendant claimed that his confession was not voluntarily made because he was subjected to three days of intensive interrogations which drove him to the point of emotional and physical exhaustion, and that he suffers from mental illness, which made him vulnerable to psychological coercion. The US District Court, E.D. Michigan, Southern Division, disagreed, stating:

"The state courts' findings and conclusions are supported by the record. Petitioner was thirty-six years old at the time of his interrogation, and he had earned the equivalent of a high school diploma. He had three prior convictions, and he was advised of his constitutional rights before each interview. He waived his rights according to the undisputed testimony of the officers, and he was not physically punished, nor deprived of food or sleep....

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Intimate Partner Homicide Methods In Heterosexual, Gay, And Lesbian Relationships

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Abstract

Previous research indicates that the killing method used in homicides may reflect the motivation of the offender and qualities of the victim-offender relationship. The effect of gender and sexual orientation of intimate partner homicide offenders (N = 51,007) was examined with respect to the brutality of killing methods. Guided by previous research and theory, it was hypothesized that homicide brutality will vary with the offender's sexual orientation and gender, such that the percentage of killings coded as brutal will be higher for (a) gay and lesbian relative to heterosexual relations, (b) men relative to women, (c) gay relative to heterosexual men, and (d) lesbian relative to heterosexual women. The rates of intimate partner homicide were also hypothesized to vary with the gender of the partners, such that (a) homicide rates will be higher in gay relative to heterosexual and lesbian couples and (b) homicide rates will be lowest in lesbian couples....

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