NCJ Number
97316
Date Published
1985
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This analysis of the case of an adolescent who raped 12 women, murdering 5 of them, during a period when he was seeing both a probation officer and a psychiatrist demonstrates the interpersonal factors that influenced his violent behavior and the need for psychiatrists to be attentive to interviewing techniques used with offenders.
Abstract
This case came from a larger study of sexual homicide. The offender's first recorded antisocial behavior occurred at age 9. At age 14, he was sent to a psychiatric residential facility following his first felony of rape and burglary. He stayed at the facility for 19 months. Three weeks after returning home, he was charged with attempted armed robbery, an act intended to be rape. His sentence was probation and outpatient psychotherapy. He had already committed a rape and murder but had not been charged. Eight months after sentencing, he was apprehended for the five murders. After incarceration he admitted to six additional rapes. The victims were all older than the offender, and most were strangers. Interviews and official records show that the offender's behavior escalated both in the degree of aggression and the frequency of offending. Four of the homicides and six of the rapes were committed while the offender was under psychiatric supervision and probationary regulation. The offender's narrative descriptions of the interactions with the victims prior to his murdering them showed that the victims' questions, resistance, and attempts to escape fueled his intent to kill them. Increased to escape fueled his intent to kill them. Increased anger and fear triggered the aggression. The analysis draws implications for the development of offender psychological profiles, the view of rape as repetitive behavior, and the use of multidisciplinary resources in interpreting a criminal act. Twenty references are listed.