ABSTRACT
Introduction Sadism was named after the Marquis de Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, an eighteenth-century aristocratic French writer and revolutionary who gained notoriety and was eventually jailed for penning scandalous erotica. In these tales, the typically female object of desire is subjected to acts of extreme violence and
Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Features and Assessment of Sexual Sadism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Prevalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Diagnosing Sexual Sadism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Etiology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Typology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Destructive versus Preservative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Prolonged versus Brief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Elaborate versus Simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Category 1: Fred West: A Destructive/Prolonged/Elaborate (DPE) Sex Sadist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Category 2: Robert Berdella: A Preservative/Prolonged/Elaborate (PPE) Sex Sadist . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Category 3: The Chicago Rippers: Destructive/Prolonged/Simple (DPS) Sex Sadists . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Category 4: Keith Hunter Jesperson: A Preservative/Prolonged/Simple (PPS) Sex Sadist . . . . . . . . 138 Category 5: Andrei Chikatilo: A Destructive/Brief/Simple (DBS) Sex Sadist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Category 6: Dennis Rader: A Preservative/Brief/Simple (PBS) Sex Sadist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Categories 7 and 8: No Offenders Discovered: Preservative/Brief/Elaborate (PBE) and Destructive/Brief/Elaborate (DBE) Sex Sadists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Characteristics of Sexually Sadistic Homicides and Their Perpetrators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Identifying and Investigating Sexually Sadistic Homicide Crime Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Linkage Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Offender Profiling and Investigation Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Comorbid Paraphilias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Recommendations for Handling Cases of Sexual Sadists Who Kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Arresting, Charging, and Prosecuting the Sexual Sadist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Interviewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
humiliation, with the stories often framed by François’ prenihilist libertine philosophy. Though the term sadism soon became part of the French vernacular meaning “cruelty,” it premiered in scientific literature when the German alienist Richard von Krafft-Ebing employed it in his Psychopathia Sexualis, describing sadism as
Since the early work of Krafft-Ebing, the concept of sadism has been refined substantially. Many of the activities in his definition have since been disaggregated into individual paraphilias such as
sexual masochism (when inflicted on one’s self) and zoosadism (sexual sadism involving animals). Several paraphilias (picquerism, mutilophilia, necromutilophilia, pyrophilia, etc.) represent destruction-related sexual pleasure in its different permutations and manifest in crime scene behavior (Mellor, 2016a).
