Sexual Murder - Justicia Forense

minor infractions or sometimes for no reason at all. He is also reported tohave had incestuous relations with three of his sisters. Caligula’s grandiositywas displayed by his having a temple built in his name; there, sacrifices andprayers were directed to him as if he were one of the ancient gods. As a child,Caligula displayed sadistic tendencies exemplified by his enjoyment in watchingexecutions. His physical smallness and frailty probably contributed tounderlying feelings of inadequacy that he compensated for in a dramaticmanner. In fact, Caligula, which means “Little Boot,” was a nickname heearned as a youth.The 15th century French nobleman Gilles de Rais was one of the wealthiestmen in France during the Hundred Years’ War, in which he fought theEnglish alongside Joan of Arc (Benedetti, 1972). With the help of subordinates,he managed to kidnap, torture, sexually molest, and kill at least 150(according to some estimates, as many as 800) children. He was executed in1414 after an 8-year period of murder. Rais killed the children after torturingthem, using such methods as decapitation, dismembering, and breaking theirnecks. Often he would dress the victims in fine clothes, get them drunk, thensodomize them, hang them, and have intercourse with them while they weredying. He preferred to ejaculate on their corpses. It was disclosed at his trialthat he kissed the severed heads of the victims’ bodies and sexually violatedthem. The bodies of most of the children were burned, but Rais kept theheads of those he considered “particularly beautiful” as souvenirs. One of hisaccomplices stated in court that Rais had taken more pleasure in seeing thebody parts pulled from the victims and in watching them die than in havingsex with them.Interestingly, this offender is reported to have displayed a combinationof both sadism and some kindness and tenderness. He was eventually apprehendedand admitted his guilt in court. In an allocution prior to his execution,Rais admonished parents to raise their children with discipline andmorality so that they could avoid idleness, laziness, and excesses that wouldresult in “evils.”In 16th century Europe, when a badly mutilated or disemboweled bodyof a woman was discovered, the populace could not imagine that anotherhuman being was capable of having killed someone in such a manner. Thesepremodern individuals concluded that only some type of supernatural force,such as a vampire or werewolf, could have killed the woman with suchsavageness. Many times a humanlike figure was observed fleeing the crimescene, which led observers to conclude that a man must have turned into awolf, killed and dismembered the victim, and then turned back into a man.The belief in lycanthropy — the notion that humans have the capacity toturn into wolves — was fairly widespread at the time (Hill and Williams,1967). (Lycanthropy comes from the Greek words lykos, meaning wolf, and