Erotophonophilia: Investigating Lust Murder By Janet McClellan

Chapter 2

Characterizations
in Murder

Introduction

James (2003) stated that the need for a variety of scientific inquiries in the attempt to understand the causes and outcomes of human actions is central to the formulation of “relatively simple explanatory principles laying beneath immediate appearances, and behind what people say…are the reasons for their actions” (p. 18). Because humans engage in a constant state of “building and sustaining [of] mental models of reality…[the] regulator and arbitrator” (Donald, 2001, pp. 75–76) of the violence committed against the victim are based on the reality constructed by the offender that includes victim suitability or offender victim preference. The regulators and arbitrators of behavior in the mental models of offenders are then assumed to be detectable in violent sexualized-murder offences and to depict or represent the operational realities of the offender, making them subject to identification and analysis by the investigator.