{"id":8006,"date":"2019-06-12T07:25:47","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T11:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8006"},"modified":"2019-06-12T07:25:47","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T11:25:47","slug":"seasoning-dinner-with-crime-second-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8006","title":{"rendered":"Seasoning Dinner with Crime: Second Course"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Forensic psychologist Louis Schlesinger<\/a>\nof John Jay College of Criminal Law spoke to the NY chapter of Mystery Writers\nof America after dinner last week. Yesterday, I summarized his points<\/a> about staging a\nhomicide scene and undoing a murder\u2014both aspects of criminality that writers\nmay find useful in their diabolical plotting. Here\u2019s more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foreign Objects<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schlesinger has written about foreign object insertions, a\ntopic he considered not suitable to delve into in a postprandial talk, except\nto say that about half are not discovered until autopsy and the moths found in\nthe throats of The Silence of the Lambs<\/em>\nkiller\u2019s victims were not realistic. Why not? I wonder. He\u2019s published an\narticle on this topic, and if you\u2019re super-curious, you can access\nthe full article here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serial and Sexual\nHomicides<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serial and sexual homicides often involve rituals and follow\na pattern\u2014a \u201csignature.\u201d The murder alone is not psychologically sufficient to\nfulfill the killer\u2019s intent. Creating any kind of an elaborate crime scene\ntableau requires time, which increases the risk of apprehension. Taking this\nextra risk shows how important that aspect of the crime is to him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recall Douglas Preston\u2019s true-crime book, The\nMonster of Florence<\/a><\/em>, about a series of 16 (at least) murders that took\nplace in north Italy between 1968 and 1985. The killer\u2019s victims often had\ncomplicated wounds that would have taken some time to inflict, yet as I recall,\nthe bodies were found in well frequented lovers\u2019 lanes. It was a mystery how he\ngot away with it for so long. (Preston\u2019s book describes the horribly botched investigation\nmasterminded by prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Over the course of Mignini\u2019s \u201cinvestigation,\u201d\nhe prosecuted some 20 individuals, all of whom were subsequently acquitted. If\nhis name rings a bell, Mignini was also responsible for the mishandling of the\ncase against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But just because a serial killer has a signature, he may\nvary it occasionally, depending on circumstances. These variations crop up\nanywhere in the series of killings and can take many forms, making\nidentification of all the victims in a challenge for your fictional\ninvestigator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychopathic serial killers are typically of average\nintelligence, Schlesinger said, with Ted Bundy the exception that proves the\nrule. What they\u2019re very smart about is masking their pathology. Maybe that\u2019s\nwhy a killer\u2019s neighbors and co-workers always say, \u201cHe seemed like such a normal\naverage guy!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trends<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schlesinger pointed to several trends of interest to crime\nwriters. Advances in emergency medicine that have helped save injured military\npersonnel on the battlefield have been imported to our city hospitals. Many\npeople whose injuries would have been fatal a few years ago now can be saved. That\u2019s\nthe good news, partly responsible for holding murder rates down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bad news is that, despite more police and better analytic techniques, only about 60 percent of murder cases are cleared by an arrest. It isn\u2019t that the police aren\u2019t doing a good job. Back when most murders occurred between people who knew each other, police investigations had something to go on. Today, the increases in random shootings, drive-by killings, drug killings, and gang warfare mean that, absent a confession, the responsible party is forever a question mark. And, they lack the dramatic possibilities of a 20-year feud between neighbors, a wronged lover, or jealous sibling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forensic psychologist Louis Schlesinger of John Jay College of Criminal Law spoke to the NY chapter of Mystery Writers of America after dinner last week. Yesterday, I summarized his points about staging a homicide scene and undoing a murder\u2014both aspects … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8007,"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: Second Course - writers can avail themselves of real psychological traits of criminals to create realistic characters","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":[52,53,174,632,29],"tags":[1579,1580],"class_list":["post-8006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-criminal","category-first-draft-blog","category-police","category-writing","tag-psychology","tag-serial-murder"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Silence-of-the-Lambs.jpg?fit=398%2C384&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-258","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006","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=8006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8008,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions\/8008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}