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Salfati, C. G. (under review)

Offender Interaction with Victims in Homicide: A Multidimensional Analysis of Frequencies in Crime Scene Behaviours. Journal of Interpersonal Violence.


Abstract:
Homicide grows out of a transaction between individuals. This transaction is a product of the individuals and their relationship. More may therefore be understood about the nature of homicide, by examining how the offender acts towards the victim during the crime. It is proposed that different forms of interpersonal transactions, and thus variations in homicide 'styles', will be reflected in the murder crime scene itself, through the victim the offender chooses and the behaviors they do onto the victim.

The literature stresses the importance of impulsivity and control in the exhibition of aggression. The literature also emphasizes that the nature of the previous interpersonal relationship between offender and victim will influence how this impulsivity is exhibited and how it affects the extreme violence of the crime. This leaves the questions hanging however, of just how these aggressive strategies and actions are exhibited, and how individuals differ in their use of these strategies within extreme violent crimes such as homicide.

Through the analysis of the co-occurrences of the actual behaviors used by offenders at 247 single offender-single victim homicide crime scenes, indicated a descending structure moving from high-frequency impulsive behaviors to low-frequency behaviors. The high-frequency impulsive behaviors show behaviors related to the actual actions involved in killing the victim. The low-frequency behaviors on the other hand, are less to do with killing the victim, and more to do with offenders using actions that are controlling and that suggest their psychologically distancing themselves from the victim. The frequency structure of behavior can thus be seen to follow a continuum from where the offender reacts in an impulsive way towards the emotions engendered through the conflictful inter-personal relationship with the victim, to where the offender interacts with the victim much more at a removed level, both physically and emotionally.

By understanding the thematic structure underlying the frequencies of homicide actions, this paper establishes that the behaviors of an offender at the crime scene go beyond just engaging in a number of actions. Instead it can be seen to follow a pattern that can be related to underlying psychological principles such as impulsiveness, which closely relate to how an offender interacts with the victim at the crime scene.

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