Post by jenn on Dec 15, 2019 0:00:50 GMT -8
Posted on Reddit 2 years ago
Sexually-motivated Burglaries
One of the most tragic things about the VR case, according to the information given on the 12-26-75 website, is that the crimes did not receive a lot of attention in the early part of the spree. Because the thefts did not involve much in the way of monetary loss, there was almost no coverage in the local paper despite the large volume of incidents. Some of the police reports indicated that the burglaries were likely the work of kids (similar to what EAR victim #5 was told by a Sac County sheriff). Of course, these were actually the work of a very disturbed and compulsive individual who was engaging in not just sexually-motivated burglaries, but who also was stalking, attempted a kidnapping and murdered a man. And not even the killing slowed his campaign.
Obviously, the VR may not be EAR, but a lot of the same characteristics show up in both. Searching on The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, I found a couple of interesting articles here jaapl.org/content/jaapl/6/3/277.full.pdf and here jaapl.org/content/jaapl/27/2/227.full.pdf which go into details about sexually-motivated burglaries. This is not hard science, but I still think they are good reads. There are several offenders included as examples who might shed some insight into how such burglars operate. The overall content shows how dangerous these guys are, and yet aren't necessarily treated as such under the law.
One of the findings in a study postulated that in about three quarters of cases where a woman was murdered in her home, the killer had a history of sexual burglaries. It was clear in both the VR and EAR cases, incidents of low value thefts were under reported and underestimated as far as the level of danger present. These articles peek at the horrid nature of these incidents, despite them often being passed over by some burglary victims and law enforcement alike.
This article jaapl.org/content/jaapl/38/2/239.full.pdf has some data about rituals and signatures in sexual murders, and mentions both binding and eating food in the victims' homes. One of the takeaways here is that offenders may experiment with their behavior or not consistently perform the same rituals at each crime scene. Therefore, LE might not be able to link a single offender to separate crimes or mistakenly point to another offender because of a similarity. It might be one possibility when we see the five-year gap in ONS murders and the subsequent full stop- perhaps he did not stop at all. This isn't a new theory, but the study is still interesting, imo.
Response posted by Winters:
Nice post. You're right that some of these things are not new ideas but you've certainly done your research, and it's one thing for us to muse over things but it's something else to see it in peer-reviewed articles.
I'm glad to see more and more research being done on these types of offenders. The reason that a lot of us follow this case is not just because we want to know "who" but we want to know "why". The offender may not be able to tell us, but studying him and people like him is a worthwhile pursuit that tells us a lot about the dark side of human behavior and how to protect ourselves from it.
Sexually-motivated Burglaries
One of the most tragic things about the VR case, according to the information given on the 12-26-75 website, is that the crimes did not receive a lot of attention in the early part of the spree. Because the thefts did not involve much in the way of monetary loss, there was almost no coverage in the local paper despite the large volume of incidents. Some of the police reports indicated that the burglaries were likely the work of kids (similar to what EAR victim #5 was told by a Sac County sheriff). Of course, these were actually the work of a very disturbed and compulsive individual who was engaging in not just sexually-motivated burglaries, but who also was stalking, attempted a kidnapping and murdered a man. And not even the killing slowed his campaign.
Obviously, the VR may not be EAR, but a lot of the same characteristics show up in both. Searching on The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, I found a couple of interesting articles here jaapl.org/content/jaapl/6/3/277.full.pdf and here jaapl.org/content/jaapl/27/2/227.full.pdf which go into details about sexually-motivated burglaries. This is not hard science, but I still think they are good reads. There are several offenders included as examples who might shed some insight into how such burglars operate. The overall content shows how dangerous these guys are, and yet aren't necessarily treated as such under the law.
One of the findings in a study postulated that in about three quarters of cases where a woman was murdered in her home, the killer had a history of sexual burglaries. It was clear in both the VR and EAR cases, incidents of low value thefts were under reported and underestimated as far as the level of danger present. These articles peek at the horrid nature of these incidents, despite them often being passed over by some burglary victims and law enforcement alike.
This article jaapl.org/content/jaapl/38/2/239.full.pdf has some data about rituals and signatures in sexual murders, and mentions both binding and eating food in the victims' homes. One of the takeaways here is that offenders may experiment with their behavior or not consistently perform the same rituals at each crime scene. Therefore, LE might not be able to link a single offender to separate crimes or mistakenly point to another offender because of a similarity. It might be one possibility when we see the five-year gap in ONS murders and the subsequent full stop- perhaps he did not stop at all. This isn't a new theory, but the study is still interesting, imo.
Response posted by Winters:
Nice post. You're right that some of these things are not new ideas but you've certainly done your research, and it's one thing for us to muse over things but it's something else to see it in peer-reviewed articles.
I'm glad to see more and more research being done on these types of offenders. The reason that a lot of us follow this case is not just because we want to know "who" but we want to know "why". The offender may not be able to tell us, but studying him and people like him is a worthwhile pursuit that tells us a lot about the dark side of human behavior and how to protect ourselves from it.