I was reading an article called “Criminal Profiling from Crime Scene Analysis” by John Douglas, Robert Ressler, Ann Burgess, and Carol Hartman, and I came across this excerpt:
(Note: in this analysis, they are discussing a crime in which a woman was found murdered. She had been raped and strangled and left in a humiliating position. She had sustained a massive blunt force trauma to the face that would have rendered her unconscious, or most likely, killed her.)
Although the offender might have preferred his victim conscious, he had to render her unconscious because he did not want to get caught. He did not want to the woman screaming for help.
The murderer’s infliction of sexual, sadistic acts on an inanimate body suggests he was disorganized. He probably would be a very confused person, possibly with previous mental problems. If he had carried out such acts on a living victim, he would have a different type of personality. The fact that he inflicted acts on a dead or unconscious person indicated his inability to function with a live or conscious person.
The crime scene reflected that the killer felt justified in his actions and that he felt no remorse. He was not subtle. He left the victim in a provocative, humiliating position, exactly the way he wanted her to be found.
Reading this made me think of this detail from C’s second autopsy:
A “massive fracture radiating out from the nasal bones and encompassing most of the facial structure” – this was severe enough to have brought on unconsciousness and perhaps death.
Apply what the authors said in their case to this one (I know this has been brought up before in other places but we haven’t discussed this issue here). The issue that the perpetrator rendered C unconscious, or even killed her with this severe facial injury first, before taking her somewhere to do what he needed to do.
Notice how our picture of this guy changes radically if this was his M.O. -- to render her an “inanimate body” first, in order to minimize getting caught while trying to abduct her. If C was unconscious, or dead, he was free to indulge in whatever sick fantasy he had in mind once he got her to a safe location.
That puts all of the other injuries in a new (and disturbing) light.
I also bring up the idea of fantasy here, because in reading through this stuff, the issue of “sick fantasy” kept coming up. I remember reading elsewhere that “acting out a fantasy” was a primary goal for both Russell Williams and Dennis Rader (BTK). These kinds of perpetrators fantasize about a specific sick scenario and it repeats in their mind and gets so powerful they eventually succumb to it and have to “live it”.
Did that happen here?
Another section from another article (“Murderers Who Rape and Mutilate” by Robert Ressler, Ann Burgess, Carol Hartman, John Douglas, Arlene McCormack) that resounded with me - regarding murder behavior:
One murderer said the mutilation was a way of disposing of the body, implying he had a pragmatic reason for the mutilation. However, the autopsy report revealed that in addition to cutting up the body, he also pulled out the victim’s fingernails after death, something he claimed not to remember.
In other words – the mutilation was part of his fantasy – just like removing the fingernails.
The implication here, for us, is that if C was killed seconds before the abduction with the blunt force trauma to her face, then all of the other injuries she sustained were post mortem.
That means the cutting of the throat, the stabbing, the attempted decapitation (if that’s what it was) and the “phenomenal injury” of half the breastbone missing, sheared off in a straight, vertical line – an attempt to open up the chest” were all part of the perpetrator’s fantasy.
He was enacting or "living" what was in his mind in order to get himself off.
