SERIAL MURDER (police)

 

Working Definition

Only a few attempts have been made to define serial murder. Frequent references to serial murder are made using the term “mass” to depict a number of victims. This misuse of the term has resulted in general confusion as to what is meant by serial murder. The following working definition by Egger (1984) provides the most extensive definition available:

Serial murder occurs when one or more individuals (males in most known cases) commit a second murder and/or subsequent murder; is relationshipless (victim and attacker are strangers); is at a different time and has no apparent connection to the initial (and subsequent) murder; and is usually committed in a different geographical location. Further, the motive is not for material gain and is believed to be for the murderer’s desire to have power over his victims. The series of murders which result may not appear to share common elements. Victims are perceived to be prestigeless and, in most instances, are unable to defend themselves, and are powerless given their situation in time, place, or status, within their immediate surrounding (such as vagrants, prostitutes, migrant workers, homosexuals, missing children, and single and often elderly women).

Some better known examples of serial murderers are Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Henry Lee Lucas, and Ken Bianchi and Angelo Buono, the Hillside Stranglers.

Extent and Prevalence

There have been numerous estimates regarding the incidence of serial murder and the number of serial murderers at large. However, these estimates are based on extrapolations from total reported homicides in a given year or from identified serial murderers. Most of the serial murders are believed to be encompassed within the total number of reported stranger-to-stranger homicides for which the relationship of victim to offender is unknown or that of a stranger, as presented in the Uniform Crime Reports. Estimates of the number of serial murder victims are based only upon the confessions of serial murderers or when a pattern of serial murders is identified.

Whether the phenomenon is on the increase in this country has not been empirically determined. Many references are made by the mass media to such an increase, but research is limited by the fact that the serial murder, per se, is not reported in official crime or mortality statistics. Media reports are currently the only source from which to determine increase as well as the actual incidence of the phenomenon. Such information lacks reliability and validity. Historical research by Eric Hickey and others reveals numerous reports of serial murder and refutes the notion that serial murder is a contemporary phenomenon. Cross-national comparisons, although limited, indicate that serial murder is not strictly an American phenomenon either.

People Who Kill Serially

Research on serial murder, although limited, shows it to be a stranger-to-stranger crime. Practically all of the psychological research attempting to explain the causes of the serial murderer’s acts is conducted from a case-study-specific approach. There has been little or no effort to combine this research into an aggregate description so that etiological theories can be derived or to facilitate general observations on the serial murderer. Terms most frequently used to describe the serial murderer are “psychopath” or “sociopath”; however, the meaning of these terms is subject to a great deal of disagreement among psychologists and psychiatrists, and the terms are no longer used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. General etiological theories of inadequate socialization are the most frequently cited explanations of the serial murderer’s behavior (that is, child abuse and neglect, broken home, alcoholism, and the like).

Developing Taxonomies

Legal classifications of homicide are not useful in describing or categorizing serial murder or the serial murderer. The range of geographical and chronological patterns identified provide only a few typologies or categories that are limited in nature and scope. Many serial murderers are very mobile and roam across state lines, while others act within a relatively small geographic area. Motive typologies such as “lust,” “sex,” or “sadism” are not unique to serial murder. The “organized nonsocial” and the “disorganized social” dichotomy developed by Robert R. Hazelwood and John E. Douglas is currently being used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its psychological profiling program.

The Victims

There is an even greater paucity of research on the serial murder victim. In almost all cases the victims have been strangers to the serial murderer. Victim selection would appear to be random in nature. Limited research indicates victim selection may be based on the murderer’s perception of the victim as vulnerable or as a symbolic representation.

Current Investigative Strategies

There are currently six general responses by law enforcement to the serial murderer: conferences, information clearinghouses, task forces, investigative consultant teams, psychological profiling, and the centralized investigative networks. Conferences, information clearinghouses, and task forces require coordination and cooperation among law enforcement officers on an intraagency or interagency basis within a relatively limited geographical area. Conferences have, at times, been provided on a national as well as a regional basis. The investigative consultant team is a somewhat unique response, found only in response to the Atlanta, Georgia, child murders. Psychological profiling is a recent development to assist criminal investigators. The most active research and development of this investigative tool has been conducted by the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. A centralized investigative network is the most recent response to serial murder.

On a national level, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP), a component of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, is collecting information on unsolved homicides, persons missing under suspicious circumstances, and unidentified dead bodies in order to search for patterns and alert the appropriate police agencies regarding these patterns. On a state level, New York State is currently developing the Homicide Assessment and Lead Tracking System, which will be compatible with VICAP and operate in a similar fashion on a state level. In each instance, state-of-the-art computer software is being developed for use by crime analysts.

The Problem of Serial Murder: Linkage Blindness

With the exception of psychological profiling, a specific investigative tool, the above law enforcement responses to serial murder have all been attempts to increase common linkages or networks among law enforcement agencies or officers regarding unsolved homicides or in instances when a serial murderer has been apprehended. For the latter, the focus is not on pattern similarity but on the identification, documentation, and verification of the serial murderer’s trail of victims across numerous jurisdictions. By definition, all of the responses involve stranger-to-stranger homicides, which greatly increases the investigator’s need for information not readily available. Thus, the lack of any prior relationship between the serial murderer and his victim and the high rate at which multiple jurisdictions are involved in a serial murder mean that the central problem of serial murder investigation in this country is the lack of information.

Information is necessary to establish that a single homicide event is part of a series of events. Second, information is necessary to establish modus operandi patterns. Information is also necessary to evaluate the physical evidence from identified series. To obtain access to this kind of information, an investigator or agency must expand and develop new sources of information beyond jurisdictional boundaries. The obvious sources of this information are law enforcement counterparts in other jurisdictions that encompass the series of common homicide events.

The lack of law enforcement efforts to expand sources of information to other jurisdictions has been characteristic of most of the incidents of serial murder in this country. The nation’s law enforcement community very infrequently makes the necessary effort to seek sources of information outside their respective jurisdictional boundaries because of blindness, forced or intentional, to the information linkages necessary to respond effectively to the serial murderer. This does not mean that law enforcement agencies intentionally keep valuable information on unsolved homicides from other agencies.

However, this ”linkage blindness” means that the police in this country do not seek such information beyond the structural purview of their work environments.

Simply stated, there is a lack of sharing or coordination of investigative information relating to unsolved murders and a lack of networking among law enforcement agencies in the United States. The greatest cause of this linkage blindness is the fact that American policing is very decentralized and fragmented. Other critics would attribute such blindness to a jealousy and competitiveness among law enforcement officers and agencies. The point is that no structure or formal network currently exists to allow officers in different agencies and in different states to share information on criminal investigations.

The Future: Expanded Research and Correcting Police ”Vision”

There has been precious little money, talent, or time devoted to research of the serial murder phenomenon. In addition to increased communication, coordination, and cooperation to reduce linkage blindness and increase police ”vision,” research and systematic study of this phenomenon must occur so that we can better understand it and develop more effective tactics and strategies for reducing its prevalence and for increasing the identification and apprehension of serial murderers.

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