Sexual Murder - Justicia Forense

Finally, the authors found it significant that three of the four murderersconveyed a fear of losing control to either legal officials or psychiatrists priorto the homicides. Unfortunately, all of the warnings either were disregardedentirely or were not taken seriously.5.1.2 The Role of InadequacyLamberti, Blackman, and Weiss (1958) conducted a descriptive study of 13sudden murderers in order to gain insight into the profile and motivationsof such offenders. Typical of their sample was a 22-year-old who killed a 30-year-old woman (the cousin of his first wife) in a rather brutal fashion. Hecarried the remains in a laundry bag in the trunk of his car for several weeksbefore dumping the body in a creek. Following the homicide, and whenevaluated, his affect was flat and bland even when discussing disturbingtopics. The authors found underlying conflicts involving inadequacy andextreme dependence on and fear of women to be central in understandingthis person’s dynamics.Surprisingly, Lamberti et al. found that their subjects’ families of originwere overtly cohesive, in that they were intact and included both parents.However, further observations revealed that the fathers were generally hostile,rejecting, or indifferent, while the mothers were overprotective. Only in onecase was the mother warm or accepting. In fact, only one out of the 13offenders made a complete break from home; the researchers believed thisdemonstrated the subjects’ closeness and abnormal emotional ties to theirmothers. The offenders also evidenced ambivalent feelings and bad attitudestoward authority and a concomitant feeling of not being wanted, loved,recognized, or appreciated. Most also showed a fear of failure and defeat,with accompanying resentment toward successful people. But, most importantly,all offenders expressed “marked feelings of sexual inadequacy” (p. 9),a finding that was confirmed in a follow-up study (Blackman, Lum, andVanderpearl, 1974).These sudden murders and assaults were precipitated by some sort of“insult” that seemed to threaten the subjects’ sense of adequacy and stabilityin an important relationship — for example, belittling rejection by a sexuallyprovocative paramour, a sadistic threat by a sexual partner, or “teasing” andprovocative, hostile remarks. Eleven of the 13 offenders (85%) admitted orexpressed a definite sense of relief after committing the crime. The investigatorsconcluded that some type of insult “may trigger a sudden dischargeof tension into a wish fulfilling, furious, violent, hostile lashing out — thesudden murder — which may be directed against a clearly significant personor against a stranger or a passer-by” (Lamberti et al., 1958, p. 12).In a subsequent publication, Blackman, Weiss, and Lamberti (1963) analyzeda sample of 43 sudden murderers with a focus on detection, prevention,