Forensic Investigation of Sex Crimes and Sexual Offenders

Chris Rush Burkey, Tusty ten Bensel, Jeffery T. Walker

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317522515
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Law
• Categoría: Forensic Science

The investigation of sex crimes is a specific function for many law enforcement agencies, requiring an understanding of how to investigate, process crime scenes, interact with victims and offenders, and prepare for court. Drawing on new methods of investigation and the effects of such crimes on victims, Forensic Investigation of Sex Crimes and Sexual Offenders provides in-depth coverage in these areas, offering a valuable supplement for criminal justice courses and an accessible guide for law enforcement.

Chapter 1

Sex Crimes and Offenders

1.1 INTRODUCTION

1.2 WHAT IS SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIMIZATION?

1.3 NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

1.3.1 National Data Sources on Sex Crimes

1.4 THEORIES OF SEX CRIMES

1.4.1 Single Factor Theories

1.4.2 Multifactor Theories

1.5 HOW SEX CRIMES ARE TYPICALLY DISCOVERED

REFERENCES

On January 4, 1974, an eighteen-year-old freshman studying at the University of Washington was assaulted in her basement apartment. The perpetrator entered her bedroom through a window, struck the sleeping victim in the head with a metal rod from the bed frame, and sexually assaulted her with a foreign object. As a result, the victim suffered extensive internal injuries, permanent brain damage, and remained unconscious for approximately ten days. About a month later, the perpetrator broke into another victim’s home, beat her unconscious, removed her night gown and hung it in the closet, dressed her in another outfit, made her bed, and wrapped the victim in sheets before carrying her out of the house. The victim’s skull and mandibles were recovered months later, along with partial remains of three other victims, who also exhibited extensive physical injuries from a blunt object. These assaults were a few of the first documented string of victims for serial killer, rapist, and kidnapper, Theodore Robert Cowell— also known as Ted Bundy.

Figure 1.1 Ted Bundy mug shot.

Bundy was characterized as a handsome, charming, confident man who used his friendly demeanor to gain the trust of his young victims. His female victims had striking similarities—they were typically white, slim, single females with long hair, parted in the middle. At times, Bundy would approach his victims in public places, faking an injury, and take them to more secluded locations. Other times, like the cases discussed above, Bundy would break into homes/apartments and bludgeon the victims to death while they were sleeping. There is no official consensus on when Bundy began kidnapping, raping, and killing his victims or how many fell prey to his crimes over the years. He told varying accounts of his criminal career when authorities pressed for information.

Figure 1.2 Ted Bundy as he appeared in court.

The attacks committed by this perpetrator culminated in a frenzied spree that began in the early morning hours of January 15, 1978. One of Bundy’s final and notorious crimes was the murder and rape of four female students at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He gained access to their sorority house by jimmying a faulty door lock located at the back entry of the sorority house. Once inside, Bundy maliciously bludgeoned his victims one-by-one as they slept: two were strangled to death, one was also sexually assaulted; the other two received serious head and facial injuries but managed to survive. The attacks occurred within a fifteen-minute time frame and within earshot of dozens of witnesses who were unable to hear the attacks. After leaving the sorority house, the perpetrator traveled eight blocks and assaulted another woman. This victim was also bludgeoned and sustained multiple skull and facial fractures, yet she too survived the attack. On February 9, 1978, a twelve-year-old middle school student was summoned to the school office to retrieve a missing purse. Her remains were found seven weeks later in a pig shed thirty miles from her home in Lake City, Florida. She was to be the final victim of a serial rapist and murderer who, upon his arrest on February 15, 1978, was responsible for the murders of at least thirty-five women and girls, although circumstantially linked to as many as 115 victims. In 1978, Bundy was executed for the murder of several victims across as many as seven states in four years.

Only a few years earlier, another predator had begun collecting victims in Waterloo, Iowa. Unlike Bundy, this predator targeted adolescents and young adult males. He used his position as a restaurant manager to entice young male employees into his basement “club,” allowing them to drink alcohol before making sexual advances toward them. Two of the victims reported their attacker, who was eventually sentenced to ten years in an Iowa state penitentiary for the crime of sodomy. After serving only eighteen months of his ten-year sentence, he was released on parole and immediately returned to his hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Over the next few years, other adolescent victims reported sexual assaults by the perpetrator, but the charges in each case were dropped for various reasons. Then, on January 2, 1972, a fifteen-year-old youth was picked up at a Greyhound bus terminal and lured to the predator’s home with the offer of a place to sleep until his connecting bus departed the following morning; however, by then the young man was dead.

This was the first confirmed murder committed by the perpetrator who would eventually rape and kill thirty-three more young men between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. On December 20, 1978, the arrogant offender invited two police officers into his home. Upon entering the residence, the officers recognized what they believed to be the smell of decaying flesh. The following day, a search warrant was executed, and human bones were found on the premises. Eventually, twenty-nine victims were found buried on the property of the home owned by the predator, twenty-six of whom were buried in the crawl space beneath the house. The remains of one victim were found beneath the floorboards, between the joists of the dining room; another was buried beneath a barbeque grill in the back garden, and a third was located beneath the concrete floor of the garage. During his confession on December 22, 1978, the perpetrator admitted to having thrown the bodies of his last five victims off of a bridge into the Des Plaines River after having run out of room to bury any more bodies in the crawlspace. Investigation revealed some of the bodies had ligatures still tied in place around the necks, while others had gags in the mouth or throat in a manner similar to that described by previous victims who survived his attacks. It was determined that the cause of death for most of the victims was manual strangulation or asphyxiation that occurred while the victims were being raped—a technique the perpetrator referred to as his “rope trick.”

A decade later, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, another predator surfaced. Although he had committed his first murder in 1978 at the age of eighteen, the true nature of the sexual motivation behind his crimes began to manifest in 1986 when he was arrested for indecent exposure after masturbating in front of two boys. Two years later, in September of 1988, he was arrested for the crime of drugging and sexually assaulting a thirteen-year-old boy. Shortly after being released from a work release camp, he began a string of sexual assaults and murders that continued until his arrest in July of 1991.

On May 27, 1991, a fourteen-year-old boy (coincidentally, the younger brother of the September, 1988 victim) was found naked, heavily drugged, and bleeding from the rectum, wandering the streets of the predator’s neighborhood. The women who found the youngster called police, who arrived to find the perpetrator present at the scene with the young man he had assaulted. He explained to police the youth was his nineteen-year-old boyfriend and they were involved in a drunken domestic dispute. The police did not verify the identity of the youth, nor did they run a background check that would have revealed that the youth was being released into the care of a convicted sex offender on parole. After returning with the boy to his apartment, the perpetrator raped, killed, and dismembered the victim.

Between May and July of 1991, the predator began a quest for the ultimate “sex slave.” He began trolling for victims in gay bars within the community and luring willing partners back to his apartment with the invitation of sex, drugs, and alcohol. After having sex with his victims, he would drug them to the point of unconsciousness. He would then drill holes in the victims’ skulls and inject the frontal lobes with acid or boiling water in an effort to create a wholly complicit, controllable sexual partner. During this period, the perpetrator was killing an average of one victim per week using this method. The string of assaults and murders came to an end on July 22, 1991, but not until he had claimed the lives of seventeen known victims.

Society often leaps to the conclusion that all sex crimes involve similar levels of atrocity. The aforementioned cases briefly discussed the acts of Theodore “Ted” Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer—names that have become synonymous with serial sex crimes. This presumption, however, overlooks the fact that most sex crimes do not involve murder, rarely involve the victimization of a stranger, go undetected by authorities, and are hardly ever sensationalized.

Figure 1.3 John Wayne Gacy in clown costume.

1.1 Introduction

Sex crimes are among the most publicized crimes in our society. High profile cases such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer reinforce the public’s fear of sex offenders. When these crimes are exposed in the media, it shocks our moral consciousness and we immediately become concerned about the safety of our families, friends, and loved ones. This book focuses on understanding the nature of sex crimes and those who commit these crimes. Many questions arise when we think about sex offenders. Are sex offenders really as dangerous as the media portrays? How prevalent are these types of offenders? Do they run rampant throughout our communities? Do they hide in alleyways and behind bushes awaiting their next target? In this chapter, we answer some these questions by addressing the nature of sex crimes, statistics related to these offenses, theories of sex crimes, and how these crimes are discovered. We conclude the chapter by discussing the various types of sex offenses and their definitions.

Figure 1.4 Gacy mug shot.

Figure 1.5 Jeffrey Dahmer yearbook photo.

Figure 1.6 Jeffrey Dahmer mug shot.

1.2 What is Sexual Assault Victimization?

Sex crimes can be broken down into several forms such as forcible rape, attempted rape, statutory rape, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, incest, and child pornography. In many states’ statutes, the term rape has been replaced with sexual assault, complying with the recent trends of a gender-neutral approach. Originally under common law, rape was defined as the unlawful carnal knowledge (i.e., vaginal penetration) by force or threat of a woman by an offender who is not the victim’s husband. Rape is now considered to be sexual intercourse and/or contact without the consent of the alleged victim, wherein the act involves violence or force, duress, or fear of harm. This definition now includes penetration against both males and females, and also includes other types of penetration such as oral, digital, and anal. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) defines rape as the:

…unlawful penetration of a person against the will of the victim, with use or threatened use of force, or attempting such an act. Rape includes psychological coercion and physical force, and forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by the offender. Rape also includes incidents where penetration is from a foreign object (e.g., a bottle), victimizations against male and female victims, and both heterosexual and homosexual rape.

States may differ in their legal definitions of rape; however, most states will share commonalities of what constitutes this behavior. First, rape occurs when there is nonconsensual contact or penetration between the penis and the mouth, vulva, or anus. This could also include nonconsensual contact or penetration with a finger, hand, or foreign object. Second, most laws will include that force or the threat of force must have occurred to be considered a rape. Third, contact and/or penetration must have occurred without the consent of the victim or when the victim was unable to give consent (i.e., under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or asleep).

Rape may come in a variety of forms such as attempted rape, sexual assault, statutory rape, and date rape. Attempted rape includes both the physical attempt of a sexual act and verbal threats of rape. Sexual assault typically occurs when someone touches any part of another person’s body in a sexual manner without the person’s consent. The NCVS defines sexual assault as:

a wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between a victim and offender. Sexual assault may or may not involve force and includes grabbing or fondling. Sexual assault also includes verbal threats.

Statutory Rape, or unlawful sexual intercourse, refers to sexual intercourse with a person below the legal age of consent, which is typically between the ages of 14 and 17. Regardless of whether or not an underage person knowingly, willingly, and with mutual consent, participated in sexual intercourse with an adult, and refuses to cooperate with the state, charges can still be filed against the adult involved. There are additional laws and penalties imposed when a person of authority such as a teacher, priest, or member of the community held in high esteem engages in sexual relations with any person under the age of 18. Another form of rape, which typically occurs among acquaintances, is date rape. Date rape is considered a sexual assault by an individual with whom the victim carries on a dating relationship and the assault takes place within the context of the relationship.

While all sex crimes are egregious in nature, when these crimes are committed against children, it provokes a different type of outrage among the public. Child sexual abuse encompasses various types of sexual activity involving a child, including acts such as voyeurism, sexual dialogue, fondling, touching of genitals, rape (vaginal, anal, and/or oral) and forcing a child to participate in prostitution or pornography. Some of the most common acts of child abuse include molestation, incest, and child pornography. Molestation is considered sexual acts with individuals under the age of 18. This includes such acts as touching and or exposure of private parts, pornographic pictures, and rape. In over half of the molestation cases reported to law enforcement officials, t...