The Sexual Murderer: Offender Behaviour And Implications For Practice

Editors: Eric Beauregard and Melissa Martineau
Publisher: London; New York: Routledge; 2016. 252p.
Reviewer: Jonathan James | March 2018

Jonathan James is a clinical psychologist specialized in the analysis of violent behavior, and a course lecturer at the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal. He is affiliated with the Behavioral Sciences Unit of the French Gendarmerie and with the International Center for Comparative Criminology (ICCC). His research interests include the study of sexual offending and violent crimes. His work focuses on the analysis of sexual murderers’ developmental history, psychopathological profile, and modus operandi. He established a database of French sexual murderers and is participating in the construction of an international database on sexual homicides.

The Sexual Murderer: Offender Behavior and Implications for Practice is a remarkable book containing up-to-date information on the characteristics of sexual murderers and their homicides. Eric Beauregard and Melissa Martineau avoid the mistake of emphasizing the sensationalism associated with this type of homicide, and instead provide the reader with both scientific evidence that helps them understand the developmental, psychopathological, and situational factors that underlie the processes that culminate in sexual homicide, and parameters that the criminal investigation needs to take into consideration in order to apprehend the criminal (criminal mobility, modus operandi, victimology, and investigation characteristics). Each chapter begins with a case study related to the question examined in the chapter; this provides the reader with a concrete example of the issues discussed. The chapters conclude with a section on the practical implications of their findings; this is priceless, given that few practitioners (both clinicians and investigators) have been confronted with this type of individual or crime.

The scientific study of sexual murderers is often limited by methodological obstacles such as small sample size (because sexual homicide is a rare phenomenon, samples are small) or the nature of the information (clinical or police; the sensitivity of the cases consulted makes it difficult to access both types of information). Nevertheless, the authors used a creative strategy to overcome these difficulties, which contributes to the originality of the book: they used two different Canadian datasets. The first dataset was collected in a prison setting in the province of Québec (n = 85) and is mainly clinical. The second dataset was extracted from a national database operated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (n = 350), and combines sexual, both solved (n = 250) and unsolved (n = 100) sexual homicides. This approach allows the authors to give us unique information about the modus operandi of the unapprehended sexual murderers.

The book comprises nine chapters which are arranged in a way to provide a complete overview of the trajectories of sexual murderers from their childhood, through their adolescence, to adulthood. Thanks to this sequence, the reader obtains numerous keys to understanding the psychological processes of the offender during the months and days before the homicide, the internal and external constraints that shaped his modus operandi, the choice of victim, the behaviours of the offender after the homicide, as well as the difficulties encounter by investigators during the criminal investigation. The book’s concluding chapter— “Can we predict sexual homicide?” complements its opening chapter— “Can we identify sexual murderers early in life?”. Clearly, we don’t yet have the key elements for answering these questions. Sexual homicide is a rare phenomenon and, consequently, is difficult to predict.

Eric Beauregard and Melissa Martineau have written an essential book for practitioners’ intervention and research working with this type of criminal and crime. Moreover, it is necessary reading for students who want to understand extreme forms of sexual violent crimes. By combining their areas of expertise (research for the first author, practice for the second), the authors have done a masterful job of making accessible and comprehensible a complex phenomenon.