Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind (23 page)

Within the next hour, she was visited there by another onetime lover, Diedre Lane,
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who found Maggie depressed over her estrangement from her mother. Maggie told Lane she was tired of people hurting her and said “I love you” and “good-bye.” Lane did not, however, think Maggie actually was going to harm herself.

Approximately a half hour later, Maggie Thomas was discovered hanging from a knotted bedsheet, suspended from a clothes rod inside her wardrobe. The door to her room had been closed but left unlocked. The door to the wardrobe was open.

She was fully clothed, although her pants were unbuttoned. Her chin rested on the loose loop she had tied in the knot. Her knees were bent slightly, and her feet brushed the floor. Her arms hung straight at her sides.

Maggie was rushed to the hospital where she died late the next day.

Although some evidence at the scene superficially suggested that the victim had accidentally died in the midst of dangerous autoeroticism, I believed otherwise. Three major factors were inconsistent with autoeroticism.

First, Maggie made almost no effort to avoid being interrupted or discovered. She was in a room anyone could enter and often did. The practitioner of dangerous autoeroticism habitually seeks a private, secluded location.

Second, Maggie had a lengthy history of depression and reportedly was feeling low on the day of her death. Victims of dangerous autoeroticism typically are in good spirits just prior to their death and have no history of depression.

Third, victims of dangerous autoeroticism have no known history of sexual or mental problems. Maggie had become a prostitute at a very early age and was engaged in at least two lesbian relationships. Later, she was diagnosed with histrionic personality disorder.

Factors weakly consistent with autoeroticism were: the fact that Maggie was not totally suspended; her use of a wide, soft ligature; and her unbuttoned pants. However, the clear preponderance of the evidence pointed away from dangerous autoeroticism.

Did she die on purpose or by accident? In my opinion, Maggie’s death was accidental but not related to autoeroticism. Here’s why.

First, threats of suicide and pseudoattempts at suicide are not uncommon among institutionalized juveniles who seek attention and sympathy from both the authorities and their peers.

In addition, her grandmother’s report of a suicide attempt the preceding spring was accompanied by the opinion that Maggie was seeking sympathy not death. If so, this indicates that her December 14 demise resulted from accident not intent.

Third, Maggie’s histrionic personality disorder predisposed her to “self-dramatization, theatricality, and an exaggerated expression of emotion.” (DSM IV) The following information provided by her counselor tends to substantiate that diagnosis:

Fourth, her choice of ligature was inconsistent with suicide. In my experience, those seriously intending to take their own lives by hanging do so with a ligature tied tightly around the neck and secured with a knot. Thomas had access to belts, shoestrings, and rope.

I believe that she fashioned a loose sheet knot in the belief that if she lost consciousness, her head would slip and she would fall to the floor before she died.

Fifth, she had made several suicide threats in the past, which apparently no one took seriously. The reason was that her penchant for dramatic gestures made others discount the seriousness of her threats.

Sixth, her choice of time and place called into question her intent. The supervisor of her living unit made room checks every fifteen to twenty minutes. Maggie Thomas had reason to expect she would be discovered.

Seventh, Maggie told Diedre Lane “good-bye” approximately thirty minutes before she was found in her wardrobe. The victim had reason to believe Lane would report this conversation at once, and that someone would soon come by to check on her. As it turned out, that is exactly what occurred. Unfortunately, not in time.

Maggie clearly did not recognize the dangers of feigning a suicide attempt via neck compression. Obviously, she thought that if she remained on her feet and used a soft, loosely tied loop, she was in no peril. However, as little as 4.4 pounds of pressure may interrupt the flow of oxygen to the brain. Once that occurs, unconsciousness rapidly follows.

After she lost consciousness, Maggie Thomas’s entire body weight was totally suspended from the loop, and she died by accident. She was not a victim of dangerous autoeroticism. Still, in her case, the theory was worthy of exploration. Sadly, this sexual practice claims victims of every age, gender, and social status.

The Misfit

The death of a loved one is always hard to bear. But sometimes the motive behind that death can be even more difficult to accept. Both dangerous autoeroticism and suicide carry social stigma, and the victims’ families often go to great lengths to avoid facing the facts. Ironically, many people would rather believe that their loved one’s death was intentionally caused by a fellow human being than accept another explanation.

In the following case, a family’s insistence that their son had been murdered led directly to my involvement. Coincidentally, the analysis and adjudication of this equivocal death made a bit of legal history.

I first learned about the death of James Stanley Harrison in mid-April 1992 while attending a violent crime conference at the University of Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit. Among the other speakers at the conference were Sgt. Kate Lines of the Ontario Provincial Police and Insp. Ron Mackay of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Violent Crime Analysis Branch. Lines and Mackay are the only two FBI-trained profilers in all of Canada. I’m proud to say that I helped train them both.

Kate Lines approached Ron and me with a request for professional assistance. Sixteen months earlier, a second-year student at the University of Guelph, near Toronto, had plummeted to his death down a dormitory stairwell. The initial investigation quickly concluded that a despondent Jamie Harrison had taken his own life, but the boy’s family strongly disagreed. As a result of the controversy, a coroner’s jury was to be held on April 30. Kate Lines asked if I would undertake an equivocal death analysis with her and Ron Mackay.

The documentation in the case was extensive. Four hundred pages of single-spaced reports and interviews, plus photos. I could tell right away that the biggest challenge would be to master all that detail in such a short period of time. I have rarely worked harder on an analysis than we did on Jamie Harrison’s death. By the time I took the witness chair, the three of us had devoted a collective 150 hours to the case. My thirty-page report took three hours to present to the five-person jury.

First, I covered what was known generally about Jamie Harrison. He was six-one, 195 pounds, and wore glasses. He and his sister, Marnie, had been adopted as infants by the Harrison family of Peterborough, Ontario. One grandmother described him as a careful boy. For example, she said that after Jamie got his driver’s license, the teenager was ever alert to other motorists’ mistakes and made a habit of pointing them out. Jamie also told his grandmother that he was thinking of studying German because he believed his natural father might have been German.

Marnie Harrison said her brother shunned physical confrontation. “He would go to his room rather than take a verbal argument to a physical conclusion,” she said.

Elizabeth Davies, a Guelph coed for whom Jamie conceived an unrequited romance, was a member of the College Games Club with him. She described Harrison as the friendliest, most outgoing member of the group. But Davies, who was seeing another student, Paul Garster, liked Jamie Harrison as a brother not a boyfriend.

One male student at Guelph recalled that the victim had trouble talking to girls and even to other males. “It was like he didn’t know how to talk to people,” he said. “He told me he was adopted. It kind of made me realize why he felt unsure of himself.” Jamie’s two roommates from his first year at Guelph told investigators he was a loner, very bright and arrogant about his intellect. He had no friends outside the games club, they said.

These two disliked Jamie and harassed him. They put Jell-O powder in his bed and locked him out of the room. Just before Christmas of his first year, Harrison abruptly transferred to a single room in the dorm.

Some students recalled that Jamie spent a lot of time alone: in his room, at meals, and late at night, watching television. He was a fan of
Star Trek
and read tarot (fortune-telling) cards. Several people mentioned that he was fascinated with a particular card, the one bearing the figure of Death.

A fellow student named Herminda Peeling-Dykman said Harrison was friendly, laughed a lot, and made her welcome to the games club in 1989. “But he was an introvert, like most of the games club,” she said. “Being with others would be an effort to him.”

“He was what is generally referred to as a square, or geek,” remarked another acquaintance.

I next addressed what the witnesses recalled of Jamie Harrison’s final days.

Student Fiona Beatlestone remembered Jamie joined in a snowball fight three days before his death. “It was odd because he usually didn’t participate in them,” she said.

“Jamie,” said Thomas Cook, “was very prone to mood swings. When he was at the games club office he was very upbeat. Once outside he would act in a more depressed way. In the week prior to the day he died, I felt he was more involved in pronounced ups and downs. The day prior to his death, I was in the office during the afternoon with Jamie and several others. He was in a good mood. We threw a Frisbee back and forth.”

Elizabeth Davies saw the victim at the games club the night of his death. She beat him in a game of Uno. “Jamie seemed angry that I won,” she said. “I had a nickname, ‘the superbitch from hell.’ When he called me that this time, he seemed really angry.” Harrison also told Liz that he had just taken an exam and feared that he had failed it. “I think my beating him in Uno just added to him being upset,” she said.

Jamie Harrison went to dinner and a movie that night with Liz Davies and others. Student Michael Porter recalled that during the movie Liz kissed Paul Garster. “Jamie was there to see this,” Porter said. “[He] might have realized at that point he had no further chance with Liz.”

After the movie and back in the dorm, Davies and Garster said they were going for a drink of water. “I guess I know what you guys want,” Harrison said, as he walked away. Davies called, “Wait,” but he didn’t respond. It was the last either of them saw of Jamie Harrison.

Shortly thereafter he appeared alone in the student lounge, where he sat on a couch, his feet propped on a table, for fifteen to twenty minutes, saying nothing. Then he stood up and walked off in the direction of his room.

Next, I listed for the jurors all the things that Kate, Ron, and I had determined Jamie Harrison was looking forward to in the future. The more positively focused on the future a person is, the less likely he is to be overcome by a momentary depression. We could document only four anticipated events. According to his grandmother, Jamie was looking forward to Christmas shopping with his mother. Fellow members of the games club described him as deeply involved in preparations for an upcoming games tournament called Gryphcon, which was to be held the following March. He had a game date for the following morning, and he had paid his tuition for the next semester.

When preparing an equivocal death analysis, I try to establish whether anyone had a motive for murdering the deceased. I told the jurors that apparently there was no deep ill will between Harrison and any of his fellow students. “I can’t really think of anyone who hated him,” said Thomas Clarke.

Everyone in the dorm agreed on one significant fact: Jamie Harrison was afraid of heights. Fourteen out of fourteen people interviewed said they knew, or had heard, about his phobia. However, both his grandmother and his sister denied it.

Then I detailed for the court a list of reasons why Jamie Harrison’s death appeared not to have been an accident.

His reported fear of heights was first. Harrison would have been extra cautious not to trip or stumble at the top of a stairwell, especially this one, which had a low guard rail.

Second, his glasses were discovered upside down on the top-floor landing. Lab tests indicated they were unscratched. It appeared that they had been carefully placed where they later were found. They weren’t dropped. And they didn’t fall.

Suicides, especially jumpers, often leave a personal possession such as glasses, a billfold, or watch at the place from which they leap.

It was cold that night and the concrete dorm stairwell, although enclosed, was not heated. Jamie Harrison, who had no known reason for being on the top-floor landing that night, was not dressed for the cold.

The lighting was adequate, if dim, and Harrison was wearing sneakers. He was unlikely to have slipped on the concrete floor. Jamie showed no evidence of mental impairment from drinking, drugs, or illness.

Six students lived close enough to the stairwell to have heard Harrison if he had made a sound that night. None of them reported hearing any noise at all.