NCJ Number
234864
Date Published
1988
Length
250 pages
Annotation
This book examines sexual killers.
Abstract
This book examines two aspects of sexual murderers: characteristics of this group and of the subgroups within it, and responses to sexual killers by the groups within society affected by them, such as law enforcement investigators, forensic pathologists, mental health clinicians, the legal system, and surviving victims and their families. This book includes 15 chapters. The first six chapters present a review of the literature on murder along with a conceptual framework for the book, while explaining the motivational basis for sexual homicide. Within the framework, the murderer is described through his childhood and family background, his preoccupation with murder and development of deviant fantasies for murder, his decision to kill, his commission of the murder, and his escalation to increased or repeated violence. Chapter 7 describes the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Chapter 8 reports the research results of a law enforcement typology of organized and disorganized murderers. Chapter 9 describes criminal profiling. Chapter 10 outlines the role of forensic pathology in criminal profiling. Chapter 11 includes interviews of convicted murderers. Chapter 12 discusses the police artist and composite drawings. Chapters 13 and 14 discuss the victim's perspective and implications for defensive strategies in confronting sexual assault. Chapter 15 reports on the murderers' prison status and presents implications from the study. Tables, figures, appendix, and index