ABSTRACT
Although there is little evidence of any significant association between autism and criminal offending, occasional and sometimes lurid publicity has led to suggestions that there may be an excess of violent crimes amongst more able people with autism or those diagnosed as having Asperger syndrome. Certainly, tragic events do sometimes occur. In the United Kingdom in 1994, for example, a thirteen-year-old boy diagnosed as having Asperger syndrome murdered an eighty-five-yearold woman on her way to church, apparently without any motivation. In 2001, a London newspaper reported the case of a seven-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome who had killed his six-month-old brother, stabbing him seventeen times and cutting off his left hand. He had then gone to the police to tell them what he had done. The first his mother (who had been at home all the while) knew was when the police arrived at the house.
