Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind by Roy Hazelwood, Stephen G. Michaud
Authors: Roy Hazelwood, Stephen G. Michaud
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wife, a girlfriend, or a street prostitute. He is not a discriminating criminal. Women, to him, serve a single function: They are disposable vessels for gratification. This one-dimensional attitude toward the opposite sex ties in with his view of his role in the crime, a perspective of entitlement: “I want to do it, so I will.”
I have interviewed a large number of impulsive offenders over the years, and among them one trait stands out: These men report giving little or no thought to their crimes until they actually encounter their victims. An impulsive offender may decide to commit a crime before leaving home but no further planning takes place until he actually sees the potential victim.
For example, I was called to consult on the case of a serial rapist in Texas who was known to be responsible for at least six assaults. Representative of his modus operandi was a crime he carried out early one Saturday morning.
He had been roaming through a neighborhood, armed with a handgun and intending to burglarize an apartment. He suddenly decided to target a particular second-story apartment, even though it would have been much simpler to enter one on the first floor. He had no idea who or how many people resided inside the apartment or even if anyone was home. He wore no mask, disguise, or gloves. He simply decided that was where he would commit his crime, and he wanted to do it, so he did.
He climbed the patio fence of the occupied downstairs apartment, swung up to the second-floor balcony, and put his shoulder to the locked French doors, tearing them from their hinges as he knocked the door frame loose, creating quite a disturbance.
A woman and her male companion were sleeping together inside. The man got up to check on the noise and was confronted by our impulsive offender, who, until that moment, had thought only of burglarizing the residence. But after discovering the woman, he decided to exploit her availability and vulnerability. Producing his handgun, he ordered the man into a closet with a warning not to interfere or he and the woman would both be killed.
Every phase of the sexual assault was brutal. He forced the woman to perform fellatio and then raped her anally. He was liberally profane, threatening, and demanding as he spoke to her. If the victim was slow to comply, he struck her repeatedly until she did as she was ordered. Before fleeing out the front door, he placed the woman in her bathroom shower and ransacked the apartment.
From beginning to end, his attack showed the recklessness that is so characteristic of the impulsive sex offender. He randomly selected his target with no concern for potential risk and then impulsively seized the chance to sexually assault an available victim, taking no precautions to protect his identity.
The Ritualistic Offender
If the impulsive offender is a glutton, then the ritualistic offender is a connoisseur of his crime.
He is the thinking criminal, a virtuoso of his own aberrant urges. He spends enormous amounts of time in fantasy, carefully working out the details before acting out the mechanics of his ritualized sexual offense. This offender is not as frequently encountered as the impulsive criminal, perhaps because he is more successful in evading detection. The ritualistic offender is cunning, methodical, and usually invisible. He’s Ted Bundy, Leonard Lake, Christopher Wilder. Unfortunately, he can also be your neighbor, coworker, or some anonymous employee behind a counter at your local mall. Neither his appearance nor his behavior provides a clue to his dark desires.
Depending on the amount of information available, it is generally a simple task for the trained analyst to determine whether a given criminal is ritualistic or impulsive. Yet even after I establish to my satisfaction that a sexual criminal is indeed ritualistic, I still have a lot of work to do. All ritualistic offenders bring different, individual perspectives to a crime.
By way of analogy,
I have interviewed a large number of impulsive offenders over the years, and among them one trait stands out: These men report giving little or no thought to their crimes until they actually encounter their victims. An impulsive offender may decide to commit a crime before leaving home but no further planning takes place until he actually sees the potential victim.
For example, I was called to consult on the case of a serial rapist in Texas who was known to be responsible for at least six assaults. Representative of his modus operandi was a crime he carried out early one Saturday morning.
He had been roaming through a neighborhood, armed with a handgun and intending to burglarize an apartment. He suddenly decided to target a particular second-story apartment, even though it would have been much simpler to enter one on the first floor. He had no idea who or how many people resided inside the apartment or even if anyone was home. He wore no mask, disguise, or gloves. He simply decided that was where he would commit his crime, and he wanted to do it, so he did.
He climbed the patio fence of the occupied downstairs apartment, swung up to the second-floor balcony, and put his shoulder to the locked French doors, tearing them from their hinges as he knocked the door frame loose, creating quite a disturbance.
A woman and her male companion were sleeping together inside. The man got up to check on the noise and was confronted by our impulsive offender, who, until that moment, had thought only of burglarizing the residence. But after discovering the woman, he decided to exploit her availability and vulnerability. Producing his handgun, he ordered the man into a closet with a warning not to interfere or he and the woman would both be killed.
Every phase of the sexual assault was brutal. He forced the woman to perform fellatio and then raped her anally. He was liberally profane, threatening, and demanding as he spoke to her. If the victim was slow to comply, he struck her repeatedly until she did as she was ordered. Before fleeing out the front door, he placed the woman in her bathroom shower and ransacked the apartment.
From beginning to end, his attack showed the recklessness that is so characteristic of the impulsive sex offender. He randomly selected his target with no concern for potential risk and then impulsively seized the chance to sexually assault an available victim, taking no precautions to protect his identity.
The Ritualistic Offender
If the impulsive offender is a glutton, then the ritualistic offender is a connoisseur of his crime.
He is the thinking criminal, a virtuoso of his own aberrant urges. He spends enormous amounts of time in fantasy, carefully working out the details before acting out the mechanics of his ritualized sexual offense. This offender is not as frequently encountered as the impulsive criminal, perhaps because he is more successful in evading detection. The ritualistic offender is cunning, methodical, and usually invisible. He’s Ted Bundy, Leonard Lake, Christopher Wilder. Unfortunately, he can also be your neighbor, coworker, or some anonymous employee behind a counter at your local mall. Neither his appearance nor his behavior provides a clue to his dark desires.
Depending on the amount of information available, it is generally a simple task for the trained analyst to determine whether a given criminal is ritualistic or impulsive. Yet even after I establish to my satisfaction that a sexual criminal is indeed ritualistic, I still have a lot of work to do. All ritualistic offenders bring different, individual perspectives to a crime.
By way of analogy,
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