{"id":8004,"date":"2019-06-11T06:36:42","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T10:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8004"},"modified":"2019-06-11T06:36:42","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T10:36:42","slug":"seasoning-dinner-with-crime-first-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8004","title":{"rendered":"Seasoning Dinner with Crime: First Course"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The audience\u2019s murder weapons are pen and keyboard, members\nof the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America. They came together last\nweek to hear Louis Schlesinger, professor of psychology at Manhattan\u2019s John Jay\nCollege of Criminal Justice, present some of his insights as a forensic\npsychologist\u2014very useful stuff for people who write crime stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staging a Homicide\nScene<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He talked about \u201ccrime\nscene staging<\/a>,\u201d when killers try to make a murder look like something else\u2014<\/em>for examples, as if the a victim died\nin a fire, in an auto accident, during a robbery, or by suicide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About one in five domestic homicides is staged, the highest\nrate for any type of murder, Schlesinger said. Seems to me the main reason he\ncould know that is that they aren\u2019t staged very well. Consider how cleverly writer\nGillian Flynn used the idea of staging in Gone\nGirl<\/em>. Amy\u2019s disappearance looked to be the result of a kidnapping after a\npitched battle in her living room. But the physical evidence didn\u2019t quite add\nup, so the detectives looked further. One drop of blood in the clean-looking\nkitchen prompted them to bring out the luminol, which revealed evidence of mopped-up\nblood. Clearly, something else entirely had gone on there. Of course, what really\nwent on, the reader finds out only much later. A staging double-cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only about five percent of single-victim homicides (not\ndomestic) are staged, in part because of the greater likelihood of witnesses\nmay make staging too difficult. Schlesinger\u2019s studies have found no cases of\nserial sexual homicide that have been staged, in part because the offenders\u2019 focus\nis not on misleading investigators, but on something else entirely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUndoing\u201d a Murder<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If staging is done to mislead the detectives, symbolic\nreversal\u2014or \u201cundoing\u201d\u2014is done, in a sense, to mislead the perpetrator. It\u2019s a\nkind of bizarre coping strategy. Especially when a young child has been killed,\na mother (usually) may try to reverse the death by tending to the baby, washing\nit, changing its clothing, psychologically telling herself she was a good,\ncaring mother. Or, she might bandage the child\u2019s injuries (to me, that\u2019s\nespecially creepy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the victim is not a child, symbolic reversal is rare,\noccurring in about one percent of cases. These acts may be as simple as\ncovering the victim\u2019s body, putting it on a sofa or bed, or putting a pillow\nunderneath the victim\u2019s head, for example. In a\nstudy<\/a> of 975 homicides, 11 such cases were found, with 10 of the 11\noffenders male and all of the victims female. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the undoing, which suggests perpetrators\u2019 guilt\nand remorse, came too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow: Foreign Objects,\nSerial and Sexual Homicide, and What\u2019s Trending <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: geralt from\nPixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The audience\u2019s murder weapons are pen and keyboard, members of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America. They came together last week to hear Louis Schlesinger, professor of psychology at Manhattan\u2019s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, present … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Seasoning Dinner with Crime: First Course - staging a homicide scene and how murderers try to \"undo\" their crimes","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,174,632,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-first-draft-blog","category-police","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/police.jpg?fit=417%2C340&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-256","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8005,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8004\/revisions\/8005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}