Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind

by Hazelwood, Roy

  The caller unexpectedly said nothing more, so Mrs. Smith hung up and forgot about the conversation. However, about six weeks later the man phoned again to announce that he had her bras and wished to bring them over. Mrs. Smith stalled, telling him that she would have to talk to her husband. She asked him to call back in two days.

  When he did, she informed him of her decision not to participate further in the project. “He asked me what I was afraid of,” she later told the police. “Did I think he was going to come over and bite off my tit?”

  Shocked, she hung up.

  The phone rang again a short time later. “It’s a good day for a top down,” the familiar voice said. “How about I come over and take yours down?” Again Mrs. Smith hung up the phone.

  Two months later she received in the mail four crude cartoons that depicted her likeness in various degrading positions. In one, the female figure was bound and gagged as a masked male figure undressed and raped her. The accompanying text listed her bra size, along with several slang expressions for breasts, and made dark mention of Mrs. Smith’s having to earn “her keep” in captivity. Another drawing showed a man holding a knife to her neck as he tore off her bra with his other hand.

  Frightened for her safety, Mrs. Smith went to the local police. Fortunately, they took the complaint seriously, and telephone traps were put on her phones. But the police were never able to pinpoint where the calls came from. The victim’s attempts at tape recording the calls were not much more successful.

  Her anonymous tormentor called once more to say that he knew a brown, unmarked police car had been parked in front of the Smith family residence earlier—which was true. During this call he also delivered an ultimatum. He said he wanted to meet her, and if she didn’t cooperate fully, someday he would be waiting for her when she came home. “He stated that he didn’t want to hurt me,” Mrs. Smith reported, “but his attitude on the phone was threatening.”

  He told her, “If you don’t meet me voluntarily, I’ll have to force you; but then it wouldn’t be as enjoyable for both of us. I don’t want to use force, but I will if I have to.”

  A few days later a second envelope arrived in the mail. This one contained four more violent cartoons, each explicitly portraying her forced abduction, sexual bondage, and rape. Then five months of silence followed.

  When he called again, Mrs. Smith finally got his voice on tape.

  “Remember our last conversation?” he asked. “I gave you a choice. You can meet me voluntarily, or I can do it the hard way.”

  After consulting with detectives, she agreed to meet the man, hoping to lure him into a trap. Three investigators staked out the agreed location, where Mrs. Smith arrived on schedule and waited for forty-five minutes. When the UNSUB failed to make contact, she gave up, conferred briefly with the officers, and then drove home.

  Later that afternoon he called again. He said he had watched her in the parking lot, that he had seen her speaking with three men, and that he knew they were police officers. Then he made a new suggestion. He said he would leave her alone on condition that she place two of her bras in a paper bag and drop them into a Salvation Army clothing bin located in a vacant lot across from a fire station.

  Again Mrs. Smith notified the police, who once more tried to trap him. She deposited the bras in the bin as directed, and officers kept close watch on it throughout the night and into the next morning. They saw nothing.

  Believing the subject had decided not to retrieve the bras, the police went to the bin only to discover they were gone! Unknown to the police, the container had a trapdoor on the back side. Sometime during the night the offender must have crawled through the vacant lot to the bin, opened the trapdoor, and retrieved his prize—Mrs. Smith’s two bras.

  A month passed. Then one day Mrs. Smith received a package postmarked from a distant state. Inside, she found several more bras, including portions of the two she had left in the bin.

  The words, “I want to suck your stiff nipples,” were printed on one cup. “I loved stripping you in my mind, next in person!!” appeared on another. Semen stains discolored the fabrics. Also included in the package was the cover of a detective magazine, depicting a man standing behind a woman with a knife to her throat. Her bra is slipping from her breasts. The word “Me” is printed over the male, and over the female was the name “Evelyn.”

  Another long, ominous silence ensued.

  Then came one last menacing note, written on the stationery of a Holiday Inn in a neighboring community.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t go through with my plans for you, Evelyn,” it read. “I had everything all set. I had a reservation made in your husband’s name, I had tape to tie your hands with, and a Polaroid to take pictures of you tied up and naked. I’m not sure why I let you off this time—maybe next time I won’t. My plans were perfect, had I decided to go through with them you would have been completely at my mercy. In fact you still are.”

  Accompanying the note were Polaroid photographs of a man, presumably the caller himself, nude except for a ski mask.

  The police at last had a solid lead. Reasoning that the subject might actually have stayed at the motel, they arranged to examine each of its rooms, comparing the decor with the background in the photograph. Eventually they found an exact match. It was then a simple matter to determine from the motel records who had stayed in that room on the day the letter was mailed.

  The suspect proved to be Andrew Johnstone,* a businessman in his early thirties with no known criminal history. Authorities arrested Johnstone at the airport as he returned from a business trip. Inside his briefcase they found a three-ring binder containing approximately one hundred detective magazine covers.

  It’s pretty clear that the relational component of Johnstone’s fantasy was hunter-prey. Not surprisingly, he also exhibited multiple paraphilias, or sexually deviant behaviors. Obviously, he had a fetish for bras. He had demonstrated intense interest in them throughout the case, apparently collected them, and he masturbated onto them. He was also sexually fixated on breasts. Such an aberrant attraction to a body part has been called partialism, but that is an old term that has largely fallen out of use.

  It was useful to the investigation to be aware of the subject’s breast fixation. When Johnstone was identified, detectives knew that he probably collected pictures of breasts, magazines featuring them, or other material relating to them.

  Johnstone’s fetish meant he also might try to incorporate bras into his sex life, perhaps by asking partners to model them for his voyeuristic pleasure. From both his written and oral communications, it was apparent that this offender had watched Mrs. Smith over time, and he wrote of wanting to see her tied up, a strong indication of voyeurism.

  In the profile I prepared for the cartoon case, I wrote that the UNSUB was a bondage practitioner. The cartoons he drew had vividly suggested this theme. When he sent the letter on motel stationery to Mrs. Smith, he wrote about her being tied up and helpless. He specifically mentioned captivity, too. Clearly, the situational component of his fantasy was captivity.

  Yet another paraphilia suggested by the evidence was sexual sadism. Consider this fantasy, as he described it to her: “I had a Polaroid to take pictures of you tied up and naked… You would have been completely at my mercy. In fact, you still are.”

  The case information is insufficient to infer Johnstone’s ideal type of victim. We don’t know, for example, why he chose to telephone Mrs. Smith in the first place. We can assume, however, that she fit his criteria, at least in breast size. Otherwise he would not have devoted so much time to her or put so much effort into learning about her.

  The self-perception fantasy was simple to isolate. This offender fantasized himself as being all-knowing and all powerful—godlike. Note that he phoned to tell her about the brown police car and the undercover officers who were watching her at the meeting place. He also warned that if she didn’t cooperate, he would be waiting for her in her home. Finally, he threatene
d harm. “If you don’t meet voluntarily, I’ll have to force you,” he said.

  He wanted her to believe he knew everything that happened, that he could enter her home at will, and that he was prepared to use whatever force necessary to have his way. To reinforce these messages, a short time later he sent her more cartoons depicting forced abduction, sexual bondage, and rape. Thus did he try to put himself in a position of power and reinforce Mrs. Smith’s fear.

  I was particularly interested that Mrs. Smith heard from her tormentor at unpredictable intervals, from a day or so up to five months apart. In many investigations, overworked investigators too quickly assume that if the UNSUB is not acting out, he has moved, died, been hospitalized, institutionalized, or joined the military. This assumption is usually true, but not always.

  The sexual offender is never fully inactive. He may not be acting out against a specific victim, but he will be making plans, selecting new targets, acting out against other victims, or gathering materials. He is never dormant.

  Johnstone chose not to act until he was ready. There are theories of criminal behavior based on statistical data, but don’t expect the criminals to pay attention to them. Offenders are in charge of their fantasies, and they decide how, when, where, and if they’ll act on them. I once consulted on a serial murder case in Florence, Italy, where the killer struck once every seven years! But his behavior was no less dangerous because of its intermittent nature.

  In my opinion Johnstone realized that his lack of predictability made him more difficult to catch. Not following a pattern accorded him an enhanced sense of control, thus feeding his all-powerful self-perception. When months passed with no developments in the case, the police naturally turned their attention to more urgent matters. The delays between incidents were also a way for Johnstone to manipulate Mrs. Smith. She would live in dread of the next call or package, but when nothing occurred for several months, she allowed herself to hope the nightmare was over. Then suddenly, according to his whim, he would be back in her life, as though no time had passed at all.

  Johnstone was an archetypal ritualistic sexual criminal who put considerable creative thought into his work. Successfully retrieving Mrs. Smith’s two bras from the Salvation Army bin not only underscored how deeply he desired to possess them, but also showed the careful planning he devoted to the scheme.

  Thinking criminals are keen students of their own crimes, honing their skills with each offense, learning from their mistakes. But they also reach out for enlightenment wherever it may be found. Like many deviant offenders, Johnstone was an avid consumer of detective magazines. At the time of his arrest, a hundred of them were found in his possession.

  In the Behavioral Science Unit, we called detective magazines “rape and murder manuals.” In fact, it was because detective magazines played such an important role in the cartoon case, that my frequent research partner, the eminent forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz, and I, together with Bruce Harry, another forensic psychiatrist, decided to make a survey of the genre.

  Working with a broad sample of three thousand detective magazines from numerous publishers throughout the United States, we focused on the periodicals’ covers, editorial content, and advertisements.

  Anyone even vaguely familiar with these pulp publications knows the primary theme of their cover art: partially undressed women with frightened expressions, bound by some sort of ligature, and under menace by a weapon-wielding male. The stories tend to be true-crime tales or articles on investigative techniques, interrogation methods, and the forensic capabilities of law enforcement.

  Advertisements almost invariably are directed at the inadequate male. He’s told he can learn how to hypnotize women from across the room; how to increase the size of his penis; how to become a private investigator; how to acquire police paraphernalia and identification. This last offer is more ominous than it may at first seem, as in several cases police badges have been used by serial offenders to capture their victims.

  Ted Bundy was probably the best-known consumer of detective magazines. He studied abduction and murder stories in them to learn what had worked or hadn’t worked for other deviant offenders. In the process he no doubt found material to feed his unique fantasies of possession.

  One staple of the pulp genre is the police-stop story, in which an offender poses as a law officer to bring a potential victim under his control. Bundy used the ploy several times himself. Angelo Buono, murder partner with Ken Bianchi in the infamous Hillside Strangler cases, also used a police badge to abduct women. From his extensive records, we know that the counterfeiter and sexual sadist James Mitchell DeBardeleben, known as Mike, a serial offender who traveled throughout the United States, ordered police badges through ads in detective magazines and similarly used them as abduction props.

  Returning to the cartoon case, many readers may wonder, if Johnstone was so intelligent, why did he send Mrs. Smith the incriminating pictures that led to his arrest? Why did he use the motel stationery that enabled authorities to identify him?

  The answer is narcissism.

  Because he had successfully eluded detection for so long and with such apparent ease, Johnstone grew overconfident, believing himself too smart for the police to catch. Consequently, he let his guard down and took unnecessary chances. He must have felt that no matter what he did, he would never be caught.

  For many ritualistic offenders, taking risks intensifies the thrill of the crime. Stealing Mrs. Smith’s bras off her clothesline might have been a safer, surer way of securing them, but that couldn’t compare to the ingenious way in which he extracted them from the donation box while it was under direct police surveillance.

  Paid Partners

  Ritualistic offenders also act out their deviant fantasies with paid partners. Experienced sexual crimes investigators know that when an offender commits his crimes in a ritualistic manner, they should contact local prostitutes. He likely has attempted to enact with them the same fantasies he plays out with his victims.

  In one intriguing California case, an expensive call girl was found dead at a deluxe hotel in a bathtub full of water. The room had been rented under an alias and paid for in advance with cash. The victim was nude. Her hands were bound behind her back, and she had been strangled with a man’s tie.

  Medical evidence indicated vaginal intercourse occurred perimortem, that is, just at the time of her death. It appeared the perpetrator had bound her and placed her in the tub, where he strangled her as they were having sex.

  Investigators wisely sought out other high-priced prostitutes in the vicinity, asking if any of them remembered encountering customers who desired a similar sort of sex. Two of the women reported such a client, a business executive who subsequently was identified, tried, and convicted of the murder.

  Compliant Victims

  Some ritualistic offenders (most commonly sexual sadists) act out fantasies with compliant victims, usually wives or girlfriends. The compliant victims I have interviewed report that they often were used as props for the deviant fantasies of their mates. Other times, they were rehearsal partners, stand-ins for future victims.

  It is not unusual for a sexual sadist to force his victim to sign a “slave contract,” a physical representation of the master-slave relational fantasy. One of these women described to me the strict rules she was expected to observe. For example, skirts slit up the sides to her upper thighs were all that she was allowed to wear on her lower body. He permitted no underwear, and she was not allowed to cross her legs in his presence.

  This man’s deviant interests included fetishism, necrophilia, sadism, and masochism. To help him act out these paraphilias, she sometimes was made to wear fetish items during sex. At other times he directed her to take cold baths and then to lie perfectly still so he could pretend she was dead. On still other occasions, he would demand that she whip him.

  Mike DeBardeleben acted out his fantasies against at least four of his five wives. To enhance his pleasure, he even tape-recor
ded torture sessions with one of them, his fourth wife, Caryn.*

  As I listened to the Caryn tapes, I noted his pattern of demanding she call him “Daddy” and beg him to physically abuse her according to a script he forced her to memorize. Then, for comparison, I listened to tapes that DeBardeleben had made with Becky,* one of his stranger-victims. His demands and behavior with both women were virtually identical.

  “Do you like the pain?” he asked both partners.

  “Yes, I like the pain,” both Caryn and Becky answered.

  “Do you love the pain?”

  “Yes, I love the pain.”

  “How much do you love the pain?”

  “I love it a lot.”

  Caryn had served as his rehearsal partner for victims such as Becky and countless others.

  Autoeroticism

  Finally, ritualistic offenders sometimes act out using themselves as props or “costars,” if you will. Some years ago, Dr. Park Dietz, Prof. Ann Wolbert Burgess of the University of Pennsylvania, and I researched and wrote the first textbook ever devoted to fatal autoeroticism. We found that such deaths were basically masochistic. That is, most of the 150 victims we studied were acting out masochistic fantasies at the times of their accidental deaths.

  Yet masochism wasn’t the only feature we detected. A large percentage of the victims also were cross-dressed when they were discovered, a provocative finding that opened a new avenue of speculation. While I still believe the great majority of deaths due to dangerous autoeroticism are grounded in the victims’ masochistic fantasies, the males who cross-dress may not be fantasizing only masochistic plots. They may also be acting out sadistic fantasies using themselves as replacements for women who are unsatisfactory, unavailable, or unwilling.

  The case of the late Gerard John Schaefer, a Florida deputy sheriff, supports this theory. Shaefer is believed to have kidnapped and killed more than twenty young women, disposing of them in remote swamps. In a photo that he doubtlessly took, Shaefer appears cross-dressed and suspended from a tree in the swamp. From his extensive writings, it is clear that one of his preferred ways of killing his victims was by hanging them exactly this way.