ABSTRACT
Despite its low base rate, sexual homicide attracts a lot of attention from the public, practitioners, and academics. Although the empirical research on this type of sexual crime has been scarce and issues related to its definition have been raised, recent studies have shed some light on this unusual type of homicide. The current chapter discusses the different types of sexual homicide and how some of these crimes are sexually motivated whereas others are related to sexual activities. Also, models explaining sexual homicide are reviewed as well as some of the empirical findings on the factors related to this form of sexual violence. The chapter ends with a discussion of the hypothesis that sexual homicide is the result of an escalation during a sexual assault and the fact that perpetrators of this type of sexual crime present some characteristics that are different from those perpetrators of non-homicidal sexual crimes.
