Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind (28 page)

Sexual Sadism

DiStefano’s photo collection definitely included some sexually sadistic elements, as did many of his writings about bindings, gags, and suffocation. Strong sadistic overtones were also clear in the nude pictures of his ex-girlfriend in bondage.

His letters were sometimes graphically abusive. He wrote one girl: “The only thing that bothers me is when you stand on a street corner and spread your legs…. You act like a slut.” A month later, he wrote the same girl: “If you don’t believe me I’ll rape you! You do believe me? Well, I’ll rape you anyway! RAPE!!”

He also clipped and saved a letter published in Ann Landers’s newspaper column in which a woman wrote of being robbed by two youths who bound her hands, feet, and mouth during their crime.

The most extraordinary feature of this decidedly unusual case was the variety of postoffense behaviors DiStefano evinced. It truly seemed that he had immersed himself in the literature of sexual murder and then patterned his actions on what he had read. Put another way, it was as if he’d written a checklist of behaviors that we look for, and then went down the list, marking off the items as he accomplished them.

One point of my oral testimony at the preliminary hearing was to explain these postoffense behaviors and then let Judge O’Malley draw his own conclusions.

I began with a well-known fact of crime detection:
Killers often return to the scene of their crimes
. We know from the police report that Christopher DiStefano went to the disposal site and requested access to the precise location where the victim’s body was found. Also, in his confession, he said he did so.

Quoting from Bob Ressler, Ann Burgess, and John Douglas’s study of killers in the book
Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives
, I told the court that in 32 of the 118 murders the authors surveyed, the killers said they had returned to the scenes of their crimes.

I listed several possible reasons for this behavior:

1. The subject may have been mentally impaired, drunk, or high at the time of the killing and returns to see if he actually committed the crime. In such cases he rarely removes the body.
   
2. The offender may return to sanitize the site, i.e., clean up any possible physical or trace evidence and/or move the body if he hasn’t already done so.
   
3. He may return to be near the victim and to relive the crime.
   
4. He may be curious to see if the murder has been discovered and whether the police are involved yet.
   
5. He may return to determine the progress of the investigation.
   
6. He may return to dispose of additional victims he has killed.
   

I told the court that included among the sexual killers known to have returned to the scenes of their crimes were Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, David Sutcliff (the Yorkshire Ripper), and David Berkowicz, New York’s Son of Sam.

Next, I noted that
killers often try to insert themselves into the police investigations
of their homicides, as Christopher DiStefano did. Again testifying from Bob, Ann, and John’s data, I told the court that in 24 of their 118 cases, the killer had intentionally become involved in the investigations.

For some killers involving themselves helps to sustain the excitement generated by the crime. This is most often true of narcissistic offenders. It’s thrilling for them to be close to the action. They can see that their crime has provoked attention. They also may glean useful information unavailable to them in any other way. Famous killers who have involved themselves in the investigations of their crimes include Bundy, as well as Wayne Williams, the Atlanta child killer, and Edmund Emil Kemper III, the California giant who murdered his grandparents and his mother, along with seven hitchhikers.

More rare are sexual killers
who provide police with third-person accounts of their crimes
or “speculations” as DiStefano did. These offenders are motivated by a hunger for the attention such “cooperation” nets them. They can relive their crimes more or less openly. And it is a means for such killers to tease investigators with guilty knowledge without actually confessing to anything. In this regard, the third-person account can be seen as a form of bragging—more narcissism.

“The piece of literature that’s most famous in this case is
The Only Living Witness,”
I told the court, “by Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. They induced Ted Bundy to discuss himself—or his ‘entity,’ as Bundy called it—over hundreds of hours of conversation on death row.”

Besides Bundy, criminals who have given third-person accounts of their crimes include Gerard John Schaefer, the rogue sheriff’s deputy in Florida, and Arthur Goode, a homicidal pedophile from Maryland. Interestingly, all three ended up at the Florida State Prison in Starke, where they met each other and all three eventually died in prison.

Bundy and Goode were executed in the electric chair. Schaefer was murdered by other inmates.

Next I considered
the collection of photographs of victims
and the taking of “trophies.” These behaviors are fairly common among sexual criminals. Items they may keep range from clothing (especially lingerie) to jewelry, driver’s licenses, and even body parts. Any of the victim’s possessions serves the killer as evidence of a successfully completed crime.

The photographs or other items might also be used to help the killer relive his crime. If displayed publicly, photos of the victim can bring such offenders the attention they desire or reinforce their assumed identity of a sensitive and caring individual.

Mike DeBardeleben, the sexual sadist discussed in earlier chapters, kept extensive photographic records of his victims. Other photo and trophy keepers include John Wayne Gacy, Robert Leroy Anderson in South Dakota, and Harvey Glatman, Los Angeles’s Lonely Hearts Killer of the 1950s.

Scrapbooks and collections of news accounts of their crimes
may also serve as trophies, and press attention serves to validate the sexual criminal’s narcissistic belief that he is shaping events around him. It is another way of secretly basking in attention. The news accounts can also serve as erotica, helping the killer relive the crimes.

Finally, I discussed the fact that, though uncommon,
killers may contact the victim’s family
, as DiStefano did with the Negveskys. This gesture combines some of the motives for injecting themselves into the investigation (thrills and information gathering) with the attention seeking common to most of these postoffense behaviors.

Arthur Goode wrote letters to two of his victims’ parents. Mike DeBardeleben made harassing phone calls to at least one intended victim. Thomas Dillon, a serial killer in Ohio, communicated by letter with one victim’s mother, and his continued letters were the evidence that ultimately led to his capture.

Christopher DiStefano reportedly intended to testify at his trial but ultimately did not. After his confession in April 1996, he has offered no further public explanation for his actions.

A jail informant did come forward and said that DiStefano had confessed to him. But a more reliable source was Cathy Biasotto. In September 1997, she visited DiStefano at the Lackawanna County Jail. She later discussed her visit with PSP investigators and Asst. DA Eugene Talerico, who would help prosecute the case. Biasotto told the group that she had visited DiStefano in search of the truth.

“Christopher and I were really good friends,” she explained, “and I couldn’t comprehend that he was the murderer. In my heart he seemed like an extremely generous person… I also went to see what he was like—was he crazy?”

“Did you ask him if he killed Christine Burgerhof?” she was asked.

“Yes. I asked him why he did it,” Cathy replied.

“Do you remember the exact words that you used?”

“Yes.”

“What were they?”

“Why did you kill her?”

“What was his response?”

“He said I should know why. He asked me, ‘Do you know what she did?’ I said, ‘Yes. I just found out she was a prostitute.’ Then he said, ‘I had to do it… She was not a very nice girl.’”

“What was his demeanor?”

“A smirk on his face. Like he was justified… Christine deserved to be killed for doing what she was doing.”

“Did he talk about the case at all?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“The evidence was really weak. And [that] he was going to get out soon… Through his mannerisms, he also gave me the impression he was very proud of his accomplishment.”

“What accomplishment was that?”

“That he murdered Christine and he destroyed the evidence, which showed that he got one up over the police.”

“What mannerisms?”

“Cold and calculating stare. The smirk on his face. Not once did he ever flinch. Even when I started crying, he still had this cold and calculating stare.”

Christopher DiStefano went to trial in February 2000. Judge O’Malley found him guilty of third-degree murder and sentenced him to fifteen to forty years in state prison. O’Malley’s verdict is on appeal.

The cases in this book are drawn from the extreme end of the crime spectrum. They are as strange as they are violent, but unfortunately they are not rare. Will the type of criminal behavior characterized in the preceding chapters become more common as even more brutal and bizarre crimes are committed in the future?

The short answer is yes. In my opinion aberrant crime is accelerating today, both in frequency and depravity. This has been the case for decades, and it will continue to be the case.

My pessimism is based on more than twenty-five years of experience with sexual offenders such as those discussed in this book, the first of which was Harvey Glatman, the “Lonely Hearts Killer.” I became aware of Glatman’s case while in training as a military police officer. At
that
time, Glatman was a unique offender. His case involved sexual sadism, fetishism, sexual bondage, dangerous autoeroticism, trophy taking, masochism, and finally serial murder—a term that had not even been coined yet.

I was confounded by Glatman’s behavior. For example, he was one of the first offenders known to photograph his victims, but no one seemed to know why he did so. I couldn’t make any sense of it, nor could I find much of anything that had been written for law enforcement about his deviant impulses or practices.

Since that time I have seen hundreds of cases that rival or exceed Glatman’s for deviance and violence. Why are there more such criminals today than a decade ago?

In my view a major reason for the increase has been a gradual relaxation of what was once a fairly strict behavioral code in this country. Experience has taught me that criminal behavior tends to reflect what society at large considers normal or acceptable. Ease the restrictions for society at large, and you will see those on the fringe immediately pushing at the new boundaries.

For example, four decades ago a complaint of rape implied that the victim had been vaginally assaulted. Rarely was the victim forced to perform oral sex on her attacker. Today a rape frequently involves anal sex, fellatio, and foreign object penetration. It is not a coincidence that such behaviors are also now more common in the movies and in popular music where
it is treated in a favorable light or at least not condemned
.

Body piercing is another example of the easing of societal restrictions. Today it’s a fashion (or culture) statement. Not long ago, body piercing was considered to be sexually deviant, masochistic—
perverse
. Likewise, to physically injure another person for sexual excitement was once a crime. Today attorneys in court refer to it as “rough sex.” In the past tying another person up for sexual arousal was considered aberrant. Today bondage is called “sex play.”

Objects and instruments put to sexual use have been elevated from “foreign objects” to “toys.” Violent pornography in almost any format is easily accessible to consumers of all ages and is frequently called “art.”

Our society has grown used to behavior that was once frowned upon and discouraged, and those with criminal intent have taken notice.

A second reason for the increase in bizarre and violent sexual crime is technological. We can now capture in color and sound those acts that could once only be imagined. How does this change behavior? The knowledge that one is “performing” for a microphone or camera tends to intensify the action. Sexual offenders are no different in that respect. In my experience the most heinous and outrageous sexual crimes tend to be committed in the presence of recording devices.

I remember telling my classes many years ago that the “new” microcassette tape recorders and Polaroid cameras would find a ready market among deviant criminals and that, sooner or later, police would begin to find such recorded evidence of offender’s sexual fantasies and crimes. I was right. The advent of computers, video cameras, and the Internet have only intensified this trend.

Physical mobility is a third reason for the rise and spread of aberrant crime, particularly serial rape and murder. The ability to quickly travel long distances provides the criminal with a distinct advantage in avoiding detection, and the fact that we are now thoroughly accustomed to dealing with strangers in our lives gives these offenders an added cloak of anonymity. As we discussed in earlier chapters, the physically violent and ritualistic sexual offender invariably loves to drive.

Finally, there appears to be much more anger directed toward women today than in the past. This anger is expressed in books, movies, television shows, and rap music. I don’t pretend to know why such anger exists; perhaps it’s a backlash to the long overdue arrival of women as equals in the workplace and elsewhere. Whatever the reason, our society has found it necessary to pass legislation to address these issues, making it easier for women to bring criminal complaints or sue in civil court for sexual offenses. Inevitably, there will be some men who resent this new level of empowerment and feel they can only assert their masculinity via sexual assault.

Unquestionably other forces are at work as well. Whatever the reasons may be, the examples presented in this book make a strong case that we are confronted with a more sophisticated, violent, and aberrant sexual offender than at any time in the past.