Sexual Homicide

While a consensus definition of “sexual homicide” is difficult to establish, the individual components are readily understood—“homicide” or death at the hand of another and “sexual” or relating to the act of sex. In combination, the term as used here relates to the overlap of real or implicit act or symbolism linking sexual relations, fantasies, and/or desires with the act of killing another. This can be further partially separated into the purposeful sexual killer and the rapist sexual killer. That the euphoria inherent in climactic intercourse is juxtaposed with the profound grief and shock of sudden death is incongruous. Even more unusual, the study of this crime is perhaps the classification of homicide, which typically does not include sexual homicide as a subcategory. In addition, the sexual element may be effectively concealed or missed by on scene investigators and detectives. Fortunately, the overall incidence is less than 1#x0025; of all homicides. This entry addresses issues relating to the victims of sexual homicide and perpetrator profiles and motives. Issues relating to the investigation and research of sexual homicide also are presented.

Characteristics of Sexual Homicide

In general, the victim of sexual homicide is female and the assailant male, with same-race-on-samerace instances the most typical. The demographic data continue to evolve and contra-race attacks, intergender assaults, and even occasional femaleon-male crimes are becoming more common. In slightly more than half of the cases, the victim is known to their attacker.

The killer's motivation may range from opportunity to sadism. The seemingly most obvious is the erotophonophile who achieves orgasm coincidental with his victim's death. This may be suggested by the nature of the assault and the extent of the victim's wounds. Often, the victim sustains extensive overkill wounds during the course of more targeted assaults. In the extreme, sex-related homicide, known as lust murder, of which sadism is a significant component, the victim's body also may be mutilated preor, more commonly, postmortem. The crime scene tends to vary significantly, depending upon the killer's underlying motivation, represented by two extremes, the organized and disorganized scenes.

Motives for Sexual Homocide

Understanding the motivation that underscores sexual homicide is essential to understanding the crime. As undesired intercourse or rape (real, attempted, or imagined) is integral to sexual homicide, recognizing the driving forces behind the act and hence the type of perpetrator may facilitate the investigation. The difference between rape and sexual homicide is that the assailant-victim interaction varies in the degree of force employed. Rape tends to be part of an overall criminal act. In sexual homicide, a dichotomy exists between the “rape gone bad,” ending in an initially unplanned death, and the more disturbing purposeful sexual homicide, where killing tends to be the crime proper. It is important to bear in mind that not all rapists are murderers, but all sexual killers perpetrate homicide.