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The Aetiology of Serial Murder: Towards an Integrated Model
Edward W. Mitchell MA MPHIL PhD, Phil. in Criminology 1996/97 : University of Cambridge, UK
In spite of considerable media and public interest, as well as a recent increase in offences and disproportionate social effects, serial murder is a crime that has failed to secure a much needed multi-disciplinary research programme. Various theses of the aetiology of serial murder exist, most of which choose to align with a psychiatric, sociological or biological explanation. Rarely has connection been made between theories in unrelated academic areas, and thus no coherent multi-disciplinary model to drive research into serial murder has been forthcoming.
Most studies on serial murder have been based on second-hand material (court and newspaper reports etc.), are characterised by a journalistic style, and where direct access to subjects has been possible, studies have suffered from a lack of detail and tend to exist in isolation of any model. The original contribution of the present study is to examine and criticise various theories that directly and indirectly pertain to serial murder (and in particular to serial sexual murder), and integrate them into a multi-disciplinary aetiological model. Such a model should include sociological, psychiatric, psychological/developmental and biological elements. It is hoped that the model may focus research efforts into serial murderers and their offences. Abstract
Chapter 1
Introduction
"What man was ever content with one crime?"
Juvenal, Satires
Rationale and aims of the present study
Serial murder is a crime characterised by a paucity of rigorous aetiological research and an excess of popular and journalistic theorising. It is a crime that has peculiarly engaged public interest and concern, yet failed to secure a much-needed multi-disciplinary research programme.
Early studies of multiple killers tend to consist of post-hoc case studies based upon tenuous paradigms such as psychoanalysis (e.g. Arieti & Shreiber, 1981), or accounts of clinical experience (e.g. Brittain, 1967), both of which do not submit easily to detailed analysis. Contemporary studies have relied upon data sets compiled from secondary (and often unreliable) sources such as newspaper accounts, trial transcripts and criminal records (e.g. Levin & Fox, 1985). Primary studies involving interviews with offenders have necessarily been carried out by those able to obtain access (e.g. police officers), and this tends to be reflected in the information obtained and the manner of data analysis and presentation (i.e. related to policy rather than any coherent theory e.g. Ressler et al., 1988). Such studies further tend to suffer from major methodological and sampling problems, and in generalisability to a non-American population.
Studies on serial murder tend to exist in academic isolation. Most choose to align with psychiatry (e.g. Abrahamsen, 1973) or a peculiar pseudo-biology which incorporates whatever biological theories of crime are currently fashionable such as genetics, diet or brain temperature (Leyton, 1983). Sociological insight tends to be represented only in the sometimes excellent case-studies written for popular consumption (e.g. Masters, 1993). Academic researchers are guilty of dismissing such lay accounts but themselves provide no alternative methodology for rigorous study. Other journalistic studies become too preoccupied with public fascination for morbidity to be of any use (e.g. Douglas & Olshaker, 1996).
A further difficulty is the way in which serial murder is perceived. Some believe that a subject so much the focus of popular and media fascination is not "worthy" of rigorous academic research. Others believe that a crime so heinous and immediately repulsive stands by itself, and is not subject to the type of criminological investigation afforded (often with success) to other forms of crime, or that it could be elucidated by any "peripheral" literature (i.e. that which does not pertain directly to serial murder). I subscribe to neither of these views. As we shall see below, the criminal careers of offenders practising serial murder are often characterised by other previous and concurrent offences (e.g. sexual assault, or "nuisance" crimes such as indecent exposure). The crime is one which lends itself well to phenomenological analysis.
The aims of the present study are to transcend such problems by drawing together multidisciplinary research into a coherent aetiological model of serial murder. Such a model will incorporate psychological, psychiatric, socio-cultural-economic, biological and legal/criminological research. It is hoped that such a model might provide a stimulus for a multi-disciplinary research effort by making explicit a suitable research agenda.
Before we can analyse the literature pertaining to such a model, it is first necessary to examine a comprehensive typology of serial murder and estimate its prevalence.
What is serial murder?
Definitions of serial murder/homicide differ between authors, but most agree that to qualify as a serial killer/murderer[i] an offender must kill at least two victims in temporally unrelated incidents. This temporal criterion is usually satisfied by a "cooling off" or "refractory" period between killings, ranging from hours to years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines serial murder as the killing of several victims in three or more separate incidents over weeks or an extended period. Others argue for a higher number of victims (Dietz [1986] requires a minimum of 5 victims), but such a distinction is rarely useful and merely serves to further a "body-count" mentality. Indeed, the only difference between an offender who kills 1 victim (but who might have killed 100 if he had been able) and another who kills 30 may be the latter’s good fortune in evading detection. Therefore, distinguishing motive from opportunity may be difficult.
For the purposes of this thesis, a serial murderer will be defined as a person who kills two or more victims in incidents that are geographically and temporally unrelated. The key element in serial murder is that the series of murders do not share in the events surrounding one another. Such a distinction is represented in Egger’s (1984) definition:
Serial murder occurs when one or more individuals commits a second murder and/or subsequent murder; is relationshipless (victim and attackers are strangers); occurs at a different time and has no connection to the initial (and subsequent) murder; and is frequently committed in a different geographic location.
Egger’s definition, whilst comprehensive, should not exclude those murders that do not meet various criteria if they are "symptomatic" of serial murder. For example, E. Kemper killed his mother and her friend (not strangers to him), in the same incident (thus not meeting the criteria of temporal or geographical separation). However, E. Kemper is clearly a serial murderer (he also killed 8 others).
If the term "serial killer" is a recent one (first used in the early 1980s - Hazlewood & Douglas, 1980), the crime is not. There are few acts portrayed in modern literature on serial murder that were not reflected in the lives of historical figures such as Tiberius, Caligula, Tamerlaine, Vlad Tepes and Gilles de Rais (who supposedly tortured, raped and killed hundreds of children). "Modern" serial murder has its origins in the late nineteenth century ("Jack the Ripper" murders [London], Joseph Vacher [France], and Fritz Haarman [Germany]). Media attention and public curiosity, as well as the reduction of "linkage blindness" (the inability of geographically distinct police forces to link serial crimes to a geographically transient offender) by modern policing techniques (Egger, 1984) have brought the crime to popular and academic attention, although evidence also suggests that incidents of serial murder are increasing (Holmes & Holmes, 1996). Table 1 summarises some important cases of more recent serial murderers[ii]:
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