Journey into Darkness (23 page)

Clearly, parents can’t be expected to stand as armed
guards over their children as they sleep. In this case, it was the justice system that failed to protect the child. At the time of the abduction and murder, Davis was on parole, having served half of a sixteen-year sentence for an earlier kidnapping. His adult life had largely been spent in prison for one crime after another and, like a lot of offenders, Davis had been growing more and more violent with each crime. Instead of being rehabilitated, after release from prison his crimes escalated. Davis’s record included convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, and robbery. The prosecution in the Klaas case introduced testimony of some of his earlier victims, still suffering from the terror of their attacks, to reinforce that this horrible crime was just one piece of a larger, dangerous pattern of behavior. In closing arguments, prosecutor Greg Jacobs called the abduction and murder “a grievous affront to humanity” and apparently the voting public of California agreed. Polly’s case is considered largely responsible for the state’s passage of one of the nation’s toughest versions of a “three strikes” law, mandating life sentences for repeat offenders.

In addition to a difficult childhood, Davis’s defense team stressed his troubles with alcohol and substance abuse. I can sympathize with a person truly making an effort to overcome these problems and do something positive with his life, but Davis made a conscious choice when he committed his crimes. Fortunately, in Polly’s case, the jury held him accountable. Although his defense team tried to convince jurors that his life should be spared because Davis was remorseful, their client brazenly indicated otherwise, making an obscene gesture for media cameras when he heard the guilty verdict. For his conviction of first-degree murder with special circumstances of kidnapping, burglary, robbery, and attempted lewd act with a child, the jury recommended a sentence of death by lethal injection.

The abduction and murder of nine-year-old Amber Hagerman on January 13, 1996, in Arlington, Texas, snatched off her bicycle on the side of a road with witnesses nearby, wasn’t quite so daring, but also high-risk nonetheless. In that case, if the perpetrator had been a little more skillful and quicker on his feet, he would have been able to allay the
concerns of witnesses who heard the girl’s screams by throwing the bicycle in the back of his truck and saying something to the effect of, “All right, that’s it, young lady! I’m taking you home.” My point here is that if we see conflict in a public place between an adult and a child, we can’t necessarily assume that adult is a parent disciplining his or her son or daughter for a tantrum or other misbehavior.

So why is it that some predators of children are content and able to blend into a community, molest the kids in their neighborhood, and never abduct—let alone kill—any children, while others like Davis steal them away at knifepoint? Keeping in mind that every offender has individual needs and impulses driving him, Ken Lanning and Dr. Ann Burgess of the University of Pennsylvania, who collaborated with us on our extended serial killer study back in the 1970s and 1980s, describe some of the differences between molesters who do and molesters who don’t abduct children as part of their criminal activity. According to their analysis and research, most abductors are social misfits who are less likely to have had a previous relationship with the child they abduct, in part because they have less contact with children than molesters who don’t abduct. With poorly developed social skills, abductors can’t get easy access to children like the seducers can. Their lack of social competence also makes it harder for them to develop relationships with women, even as a cover, so they’re also usually unmarried. Since they can’t manipulate or lure a child away, they often carry weapons which are used more to help them intimidate and control their victims than to physically harm them. And, like other types of offenders, abductors usually showed signs of trouble as a child.

Ken Lanning describes four phases of abduction for the offender: buildup; abduction; post-abduction; and recovery/ release. In the buildup, the subject engages in fantasy that creates some need for sexual activity, although it may not start out child-oriented. He validates and rationalizes his fantasy by talking to others who share or encourage it or by looking at pornographic material that fuels it. There could be a precipitating stressor that prompts the subject to act on his fantasies, and then either an opportunity presents
itself or the offender plans and creates one. When the subject is ready to carry out the abduction, victim selection becomes key.

Choosing a complete stranger that he can’t be linked to is critical to his odds of not getting caught. Ken calls “thought-driven” offenders the ones who plan an MO and stick to it, weighing risks and using opportunities to their advantage, selecting any victim who fits a broad profile. Planning ahead and exercising discipline in victim selection, if he can resist impulsive or sloppy mistakes, gives the abductor a much better chance of getting away clean.

The “fantasy-driven” abductor, on the other hand, is more concerned with his ritual. He might script the abduction with a very specific type of victim in mind and then not be flexible enough to modify or deviate from his plan even if it increases his risks. This compulsiveness, driven by such specific needs, makes it more difficult for him to carry off an abduction successfully.

Post-abduction is where it really starts to get tricky for the offender. If the abduction was motivated by sexual fantasy, the subject has to keep the child alive and hidden long enough to carry out his fantasies. A sadist, for example, needs to keep the child alive, awake, and in a soundproof environment so he can enjoy his power and domination, inflicting pain. A preferential molester might have a “happily ever after” scenario as part of his fantasy, which is impossible in reality and requires extensive planning to attempt: often, the offender sets up a secret room or cage where he can keep his victim.

When the pressure gets too high, either from the media or from the realization that the situation isn’t living up to his fantasies, the abductor needs to get rid of the child dead or alive. Depending on the particulars of the abduction, he might simply let the child go, dropping him off on the side of a road or even close to the victim’s home. In cases where a child has been abducted by someone who’s not a family member, the child often turns up alive. The longer the victim’s been missing, though, the smaller the chances of a positive outcome. In some cases, the abductor also kills himself. Some abductors kill as part of the ritual itself. Or it could be because they can’t think of another
way out. Richard Allen Davis claimed he didn’t plan to kill Polly Klaas, but after driving around with her for a while he felt he had to because he didn’t want to go back to prison. It was the only way he could control the situation.

In profiling a child killer, it’s critical to analyze the crime scene, which in many cases is the body dump site. Where you find the body, and how quickly you find it, tell us a lot about the killer. Organized killers tend to transport the victims (alive and dead) over distance. They dispose of bodies in places that take longer to find and where conditions may help destroy evidence—in water, for example. Or, they go for drama or shock value, placing the body where it will be found, in a place or condition that will create outrage in the community. As with organized perpetrators of other types of crime, these guys are of average or above-average intelligence and do have social skills. They plan their crimes, targeting strangers indiscriminately (the choice of a child victim could be situational or preferential), and kill to avoid detection, for the thrill, to fulfill sadistic urges, or for other reasons. Organized child killers may well be psychopathic serial killers. They are more aggressive in sexual activity with their victims before they kill them. Disorganized offenders are more inadequate sexually and so are more likely to assault the victim after the child is unconscious or dead. Of lower intelligence, they frequently don’t plan the abduction and often kill inadvertently—using excessive force against a small child, for example. Socially inadequate, they tend to choose a victim they know. Rather than transporting the victim, they feel most comfortable abducting and killing close to home. They may not even have the means to transport a body. Their victims are usually left at the crime scene or someplace where they are found more quickly. They will just dump the body somewhere or bury it in a shallow grave.

It’s a sad fact that parents can murder their own children and stage an abduction to divert attention, as happened in the Susan Smith case in South Carolina in 1995. The younger the murdered child, the more likely it is that a family member is responsible, although it is then less likely that they also sexually assaulted the child. A tragically typical scenario would be a lonely and desperate single mother who sees her only chance at happiness coming from a man who claims to
love her but who has no place in his life for her child or children. Or, even more pointedly, he may tell her he wants to marry her and start a family of “their own.”

If the child’s body is found, there’s a very good chance we’ll figure out who did it. Parents aren’t usually as detached about disposing of their children’s bodies as strangers are they may wrap the body in plastic and bury it someplace significant to them. If they feel remorse over the murder, they may try to lead investigators in the right direction so the body will be found and buried in a proper ceremony.

With the complicated living arrangements of many families these days, however, we’re seeing more nonparent adults responsible for the murder of children in their household. The hideous murder of twelve-year-old Valerie Smelser in Clarke County, Virginia, drew national attention when her mother’s live-in boyfriend, Norman Hoverter, was accused of killing the girl after a long history of abusing her and her three siblings.

In January 1995, Hoverter and Valeria’s mother, Wanda Smelser, reported the girl missing from a roadside stop. Her body was found the next day, nude, dumped in a ravine. As word got out of the girl’s emaciated condition, former neighbors and others came forward to talk of the abuse they’d suspected. The family had been reported to child protection services, but as they relocated and child abuse cases tar outpaced growth in budgets and personnel, Valerie and her siblings somehow got lost in the shuffle.

Preparing for trial, prosecutors detailed evidence of the abuse: Hoverter and Smelser made Valerie stay in the basement, sometimes chained, nude, to the door, forced to urinate in an old coffee can and defecate on the floor. She was not allowed to eat with the rest of the family but had to beg for crumbs or steal food at night. She was killed after she accidentally spilled the coffee can on the floor in the kitchen. In the ensuing beating, Hoverter forced her face in the spilled liquid and slammed her head against the wall with enough force to make a hole in the drywall. Although her mother’s defense originally planned to claim that she was a victim of Hoverter’s manipulation—using the defense of battered woman’s syndrome—she eventually pleaded no contest to abduction and second-degree murder. She didn’t
admit her guilt in the torture and murder of her daughter but acknowledged that there was enough evidence to convict her. Hoverter also pleaded no contest and is serving a life sentence for abduction and first-degree murder.

With the exception of cases where children are killed by their parents (not typically sexual molestation cases), or where women acted as accomplices to stronger, dominating males (like the Bernardo and Hoverter cases), all the subjects of child murder and molestation cases described so far have been men. There are female sex offenders and child abductors, but the overwhelming majority of cases reported involve male offenders. I think most of us in the field who work with crimes against children agree that there are more female child molesters out there than the numbers would seem to indicate. There’s a social stigma attached to a male having sex with a young girl (a “dirty old man”), whereas many people still consider sex between a young boy and an adult woman as a “rite of passage.”

Cases have been reported of abuse and fondling of infants and toddlers at day-care settings. Here, women traditionally have greater access to young children and their nurturing role involves bathing, dressing and undressing, examining, and touching them. The child victims can’t express themselves and it may not be obvious to an outside observer that a caregiver is doing anything wrong. When women molest older children, they generally do so with, or as, an accomplice. These women rarely fit the behavioral patterns and characteristics described for male preferential child molesters; they usually have some other psychological needs and problems driving them. They may have been long-term victims of sexual abuse as children themselves, and/or have a history of domestic abuse as an adult. Women who abduct children (not family members) are driven by different needs than those who molest the toddlers in their day-care. They are not acting on sexual urges but out of a desire to fill a void in their lives: they need to have a child. This need manifests itself in an unusual type of crime: infant abduction.

The NCMEC, working in conjunction with the FBI, the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, has launched several studies. The numbers are small—
it is estimated that out of an average 4.2 million births occurring in the United States annually, fewer than twenty infants are abducted—but we call them “high-impact” cases because the effect on parents, nurses, and other health care professionals is tremendous. As with other crimes against children, though, it’s hard to get a handle on reliable figures since reporting is always an issue. We don’t know, for example, how many abduction attempts are thwarted each year. Hospitals, in particular, have a vested interest in not reporting near-misses to authorities. We do know that it happens throughout the country, in large and small hospitals, but it is more prevalent in urban areas.