by John Douglas
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.
As a parent, it’s impossible to imagine going from the exhilaration and joy of finally seeing your new baby to the terror and devastation of learning your infant is gone: that the “nurse” who told you she needed to take the baby to the nursery for tests or the “hospital administrator” who offered to take the child for the customary photos disappeared with the infant. New mothers, often exhausted from the physical and emotional experience they’ve just been through, have literally handed over their infants to abductors. Other times, a woman dressed as a nurse has simply snatched a baby from the hospital nursery and walked out of the hospital, sometimes hiding the child in bulky clothing or a large shoulder bag, but other times making no effort to conceal the baby.
While most of the time the abductors take the child from the hospital, they’ve also been known to abduct from the baby’s home. Answering an advertisement in the local paper for a baby-sitter, for example, they wait for the mother or other family member to leave the room and simply take the baby.
Obviously, these offenders don’t look suspicious or nobody would hand over a baby to them. From my early work and by the more recent studies, we can draw a pretty clear profile of this type of offender. Nearly always female, often overweight, infant abductors appear perfectly normal. Many have responsible jobs and most have no criminal record. We’ve seen two age group clusters: sixteen to twenty-one and thirty-two to forty-five. These ages represent the typical beginning and end of childbearing years, which is apparently very significant to this type of subject. Infant abductors suffer from low self-esteem and their sense of self-worth may be based on their ability to be wives and mothers. Many have older children from earlier successful pregnancies. Without a young child to care for, they feel inadequate, as though their existence has no value. The crime is tied to these complex emotional needs and not the traditional motives of greed (such as a kidnapping with a ransom demand), sexual gratification, or power.
The precipitating stressors will be different, too. While an inadequate man may murder a child after he’s lost his job or been dumped by his girlfriend, a female infant abductor’s stresses are more likely related to childbearing: a recent loss of a child through miscarriage, stillbirth, or even abortion; the approach of menopause; a recent hysterectomy; or a threatened end to a relationship that the woman may feel could be saved by a new baby.
These offenders operate with a curious blend of intelligence and denial. A lot of thought and planning goes into the abduction, including months of lying to their husband or lover and family and co-workers as they feign pregnancy. Their act is so complete that they change body size, go to regular “doctor’s appointments” (which they may have their partner drop them off for), make preparations for maternity leave, shop for things for the baby, and talk about the upcoming birth. We have seen reports of women going so far as to steal a pregnant woman’s urine sample at a doctor’s office, or taking someone else’s sonogram to show their partner. They can be so convincing people will throw showers for them. Their partner, often someone significantly older or younger than they are and usually somewhat gullible, can get caught up in the excitement of planning as well. The hospital abductor will do research, visiting nurseries and maternity units several times before the abduction to get the lay of the land, figure out which hospital represents the lowest risk for them, and also judge the size of the infant population they’ll get to pick from on any given day. They read through birth announcements and baby-sitter-wanted ads to research an abduction from home. In either case, they will lie, impersonate, use trickery and deceit to such an extent that they may believe they are getting their own baby. Some develop symptoms of false pregnancy. All are in denial of the fact that in nearly every case they will be caught. In fact, in many cases, they are turned in by the very loved ones and friends they show off their new baby to when the child is recognized from media coverage of the abduction.
The abduction itself, whether planned for nine months or just a few hours, shows signs of that planning. In a hospital setting, the abductor has nurse’s garb to wear, knows where everything is located, and is even able to convince other nurses that she belongs there. Her ruse is often scripted and she knows the names of mothers and infants so she can also impersonate a visiting family member. Abduction from a home is less risky since there are fewer authorities and other people to interfere and protect the infant. Victim selection isn’t nearly as important to them as choosing the site and means of the abduction. Because their need is simply to have a child, they’re not preferential in their choice of victims as far as sex goes, although most select a baby of their own race (or that of the supposed father).
While most of the time these offenders are not violent, if force is used to obtain the baby it is usually applied in home abductions or outside a hospital. The abductor may take an infant at gunpoint in the parking lot of the hospital, or may use a weapon to overpower a parent at home. The harder it has been for the abductor to obtain an infant (if she’s made several attempts which have been thwarted just before the abduction) the greater the likelihood that she will turn to violence and take greater risks out of desperation.
In some cases, the subject will go so far as to murder a parent or other caretaker obstructing her.
Joan Witt, a thirty-year-old new mother, was killed trying to defend her four-day-old daughter, Heather, from an abductor. Nineteen-year-old Wendy Leigh Zabel shot Witt several times and shot and stabbed the baby’s grandmother as she abducted the child from the Witts’ home in Jacksonville, Florida, in November of 1987. Zabel was desperate to have a baby. She’d been trying for years.
In planning the abduction, she visited the nursery at the hospital where Heather was born. But the hospital was too much of a high-risk setting for her to snatch the child there. Tracking down the Witts days later, she knocked on the door pretending to be in labor and asked to use their phone to call her husband. The infant’s mother and fifty-six-year-old grandmother were the only ones home at the time and they acted solicitously toward Zabel, advising her that Heather had just been born at nearby Baptist Medical Center and she should go there. After they let her use the bathroom, Zabel emerged with a gun and a knife and ordered them to hand over the baby.
According to Zabel, what happened next surprised her. She knew the mother instinct was strong but she didn’t think she’d actually have to resort to force to get the baby. When she moved toward the baby’s crib, however, both women tried to stop her. She stabbed the grandmother and then shot her as Joan grabbed the baby and ran outside for help. There, Zabel shot her once in the leg and twice in the abdomen before grabbing the baby and fleeing.
Zabel’s MO coincides with patterns of behavior observed with most infant abductors: the crime took place during the day; she used a verbal ruse to get into the victim’s house so there was no sign of forced entry; and the crime scene obviously showed signs of a panicked or hurried retreat. Before the abduction, Zabel and her partner had been preparing for the baby for months, purchasing baby things, telling his co-workers about the pregnancy. Reportedly, no one who knew the couple was suspicious about the infant, despite the fact that Zabel had been “pregnant” about eleven months at the time of the “birth.” Although originally charged in the abduction,
Zabel’s companion was later dropped as a suspect when his alibi for the afternoon of the murderabduction held and it could not be proven that he knew the baby wasn’t really theirs. He also agreed to take, and passed, a polygraph.
Unlike the many infant abduction cases that are solved following tips from the community, Zabel was undone by the gun she used in the attack, which she discarded on the side of the road not far from the victim’s home.
Zabel had never previously been in trouble with the law. In fact, her father was a retired highway patrol sergeant in her home state of Wisconsin. In an interview taped about four years after the abduction and murder, Zabel said she’d always suffered from low self-esteem. She felt she was unattractive: too tall, too fat, and not pretty. She reportedly also suffered a false pregnancy, which gave her expectancy more credence with friends and family members.
Wendy Zabel is serving three consecutive life terms earned in a deal that enabled her to avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty to armed kidnapping, first-degree murder, and attempted first-degree murder, without the option of an appeal.
The media is often key to the quick recovery of a missing infant, and the way the case is played in the papers and on television can be critical to the level of care the baby receives from the abductor. The event should not be characterized as a kidnapping or abduction, and the perpetrator should not be referred to as evil. You want to avoid panicking the abductor, causing her to flee and/or harm the infant. Also, instead of stressing punishment to the offender, news statements should emphasize the safe return of the baby. You want to reach out to the abductor’s friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers, who will be sympathetic to the victim’s family and quite possibly suspicious about the new baby.
