The average age of a killer who abducts a child is
27.8 years old. Two-thirds of these types of killers are younger than 30. In 70 percent of child abduction murders, the killer is a
white male. (Men account for 98.5 percent of child abduction murders.) Four out of five killers in this study were either divorced or had never married; yet, three-quarters of them were
living with someone (usually their parents) at the time they committed the crime. Half were
unemployed at the time they committed the crime; and the other half held primarily unskilled and semi-skilled positions, with the most common occupation of convicted child abduction murderers being
construction workers (26.4 percent), followed respectively by food industry workers, service industry employees, students, truck drivers, and automobile mechanics.
Thirty percent of these individuals were considered to be
strange by those who knew them, and a significant number were alcohol or
drug abusers, reclusive, overly friendly toward children, and sexually promiscuous. Among all murders, 3 percent of killers have a sexual problem, but in child abduction murders, 30.4 percent do. Prior crimes against children, such as sexual assault, rape, attempted (or actual) murder, kidnapping, and assault, were identified in 46.6 percent of the cases evaluated here. The modus operandi of their previous crimes against children were, more often than not, similar to the MO they used during the abduction, assault, and murder of the victim in the study. For example, if a child abductor lured victims to his vehicle by asking them to hold a white cat and that method worked well for him, he was likely to use the same technique the next time. More than two-thirds of child abduction slayings
involve sex as the impetus to kill, as is also the case with classic serial killers. In contrast, only 7 percent of murder victims nationwide are sexually assaulted by their killer.
Of girls in the 10-12 age bracketpreadolescent like Carmen, Wanda, and Michelle41.6 percent were abducted and killed by a complete stranger; 32.7 percent were killed by a family friend or acquaintance; and 11.9 percent were killed by a male family member. Other than age and sex, the appearance of the victim (hair color, weight, etc.) was important to only 9.7 percent. The killers primary reason for choosing whom he chose to abduct and kill was overwhelmingly
opportunity. More than 40 percent of the children snatched from their families each year were simply easy targetsnothing more to the killer than victims of opportunity. Half of the killers initiated contact using deceptive measures (i.e.
Can you help me find my lost puppy?) or through routine activity (they happened to live or work in the immediate area at the time the child appeared unsupervised). The distance between the last place the victim was seen and where she encountered her abductor was less than 200 feet in 64.2 percent of the cases, but the distance between the last seen location and where her body was found was more than a quarter mile in 67.3 percent of the abduction-slayings and from 1.5 to 12 plus miles in 53.9 percent of the casessuch as the Double Initial murders.
Nearly half of the victims (the vast majority) are immediately controlled by Direct Physical Assault. One-quarter of the victims are found bound. Whether its to control an uncooperative, hysterical child or to fulfill [the killers] sexual fantasies. Thats six to twelve times more often than other types of killers use binding. The leading cause of death in the 800 cases reviewed was either manual or ligature strangulation (in one-third of the cases), followed by blunt force trauma, stabbing, asphyxia by unknown means, shooting, and drowning, in that order. Whereas killers generally dispose of homicide victims in suburban areas more than half the time, child abduction killers prefer to dispose of bodies in rural areas 52.6 percent of the time. Child abduction killers attempted to carefully conceal the victims body in 55.4 percent of the cases studied; while 36.4 percent of the killers were not concerned with whether the body was hidden from view or not.
A good 36 percent of killers deliberately left the body in another jurisdiction (or county) from where the child was abducted, perhaps to hinder the investigation by creating a scenario in which coordination of services between counties would be required.
Nearly one-fourth of the killers
returned to, or drove past, the spot where they left the bodyand 83.3 percent of those continued to do so until the body was discovered. Sixteen percent confessed to someone about their involvement in the crime, and another sixteen percent left town right after the murder. Of particular interest is the fact that one in ten killers played the role of a
Good Samaritan by interjecting themselves into the murder investigation under the guise of wanting to offer assistance. The people most often attributed with finding the childrens bodies are passersby (55.3 percent of the time), as in Carmens and Michelles case; police, like in Wandas case (25.4 percent of the time); a member of the search party (5.9 percent of all cases), relative or acquaintance of victim (4.4 percent of victims), the killer (2.8 percent of cases), a member of the fire department or aid crew, also as in Michelles case (2.2 percent of the time) or a witness to the death (1.7 percent of all cases studied).
Three out of every 100 child abductors pretend to discover the body of the child they killed. Ten percent had the gall to contact the victims family, and ten percent contacted the police or the media. Another interesting point the study found is that the name of the killer is
likely to be in the investigative file within the first week of the murder investigationoften during the neighborhood canvassing stageand that half the time, police had contact with the killer well before they first suspected him of being involved. One of the more sobering statistics was the fact that in 34.7 percent of these child abduction murders, the police still had no primary suspect a month later. In a quarter of the cases, police found evidence deliberately discarded by the killer. It was found along a road within a mile of the body recovery site in 56.5 percent of the cases (like Carmens and Michelles coats).
This study was written by Americans few years ago. Bang on.
http://thealphabetkiller.com/portrait-of-a-child-abduction-murder/