Psychopathology and weapon choice: A study of 103 perpetrators of homicide or attempted homicide

Purpose: in the literature, the term ‘Internet crime’ has been coined to\ud indicate the scenario in which a victim of homicide or other crimes is met\ud through a chat room, and lured to death at the hands of the murderer. Various\ud criticisms have been made of this new concept, on the grounds that the outcome\ud is no different from that of other crimes committed without the use of\ud Web resources, and so the method used has no particular influence. Indeed, it\ud has been claimed that informatic crime just reflects a technological change in\ud the nature of crime rather than a new form of criminal behavior attributable\ud to the use of the Internet for criminal purposes. Method: our reflections were\ud prompted by our experience as expert forensic psychiatry witnesses in three\ud cases in which the aggressors had confessed to having had an exclusively\ud virtual relationship with the victims, in which they spent a lot of time daily in\ud a chat room. Conclusion: this scenario offers points for reflection on the\ud nature of Web-mediated victim–aggressor interactions, to assess the effects\ud on the planning and commission of the crime. Discussion. it’s our opinion\ud that there really is such a thing as Internet-correlated crime, because in this\ud case the quality and quantity of the Internet interactions progressively altered\ud the men’s perception of the real relationship between themself and their\ud victims

Previous research suggests different crime scene patterns reflect differences in the background characteristics of the offender. However, whether differences in crime scene patterns are related to offender psychopathology remains unclear. We hypothesise that schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depressive illness will each associate to a specific homicide crime scene pattern. Homicide data were obtained from the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. Our sample comprised 759 homicides committed by offenders in contact with mental health services in the year preceding the offence and with an available psychiatric report. We used joint correspondence analysis to examine patterns between different methods of homicide, circumstances of homicide, victim gender, and victim age groups. Three homicide patterns were identified: male conflict homicide, intimate female homicide, and child homicide. Additionally, each homicide pattern was associated with one or more mental illnesses. Results are discussed in terms of the possible role of psychopathology in "offender profiling" research.

Matricide is one of the rarest of reported murders and has always been considered one of the most abhorrent crimes. Psychiatric investigations as to why a son might murder his mother yield indications of a high rate of mental illness, primarily psychotic disorders, in perpetrators. In an attempt to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of the mother-son bond in the etiology of matricide by mentally disordered sons, this article presents a qualitative study of nine cases of matricide examined at two Italian Forensic Psychiatry Departments between 2005 and 2010 and retrospective analysis of forensic psychiatry reports on the offenders. Most matricides suffered from psychotic disorders, especially schizophrenia. Nevertheless, not all the perpetrators had psychotic symptoms at the time of the crime. A "pathologic" mother-son bond was found in all cases. However, mental illness is not the only variable related to matricide and, taken alone, is not enough to explain the crime. Several factors in the history of the mother and son need to be probed, especially how their relationship developed over the years. The peculiar dynamics of the mother-son relationship and the unique personalities and life experiences of both subjects are the real key to cases of matricide.