The Unusual Victim: Understanding the Specific Crime Processes and Motivations for Elderly Sexual Homicide

Abstract

Sexual homicides involving elderly victims are rare and unusual crimes, and research specifically focusing on these homicides is almost inexistent. The current study investigates the crime commission process as well as the motivations underlying elderly sexual homicides. The sample comes from the Sexual Homicide International Database (SHIelD) including sexual homicide cases from Canada and France. A total of 56 cases involving victims aged 65 years or more were compared with 513 cases involving victims aged between 16 and 45 years old. Bivariate analyses and two‐step cluster analysis are performed. Findings show major differences in the crime commission process of the two groups of offenders. We also identified a four‐cluster typology of elderly sexual homicide offenders based on their motivations (sexual, robber, sadistic, experimental). Although sexual homicides involving elderly victims are rare, these crimes are different, presenting specificities and should be studied as a group on its own.

Patterns of Necrophilic Behaviors in Sexual Homicide: A Criminological Perspective

“…Preferential offenders are mostly single, report sexual dysfunctions, and have a loner lifestyle. These characteristics are congruent with several studies which identified a marginal lifestyle in some necrophilic offenders (Chopin & Beauregard, 2020d;Hirschfeld, 1944;Rosman & Resnick, 1989;Stein and colleagues, 2010). These characteristics suggest that these individuals present relational difficulties and fail to achieve normal relationships (i.e., social, sexual).…”

“…Main Model. Previous studies have found that marital status and sexual dysfunctions are important information to understand the presence of necrophilic behaviors in sexual homicide (Chopin & Beauregard, 2020d;Hirschfeld, 1944;Rosman & Resnick, 1989;Stein and colleagues, 2010). They also identified that the analysis of ante-mortem and post-mortem sexual and non-sexual behaviors were important to determine the level of necrophilic motivations (Aggrawal, 2010;Rosman & Resnick, 1989;Stein and colleagues, 2010).…”

“…Second, our findings indicated that these offenders did not engage in ante-mortem and post-mortem sadistic acts. The experimental offenders class is congruent with sexually-motivated SHOs characterized by the diversity of sexual acts they perpetrate (see e.g., Chopin & Beauregard, 2020d;Stefanska, Carter, Higgs, Bishopp, & Beech, 2015). Based on the diversity of ante-mortem sexual acts perpetrated by experimental offenders, we can assume that they were primarily motivated to have sexual intercourse with a living victim.…”

“…Studies focusing on specific types of victims found that elderly victims (Chopin & Beauregard, 2020d;Safarik, Jarvis, & Nussbaum, 2002) and female victims (Chopin & Beauregard, 2020c) are more likely to be targeted by nSHOs.…”

“…Based on previous studies, two interpretations are possible. On one hand, taking items belonging to the victim can happen after the sexual assault and the homicide (see e.g., Chopin & Beauregard, 2020d;Safarik and colleagues, 2002). On the other hand, taking items from the victim may be the primary motivation, while the sexual acts and the homicide are occurring as an afterthought (see e.g., Beauregard, Chopin, & Winter, 2020;Chan, Li, Liu, & Lu, 2019;Chopin & Beauregard, 2020c, 2020dPedneault, Beauregard, Harris, & Knight, 2015).…”