Journal of Interpersonal

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Violence

Offender Interaction With Victims in Homicide: A Multidimensional Analysis of Frequencies in Crime

Scene Behaviors
C. Gabrielle Salfati,
J Interpers Violence 2003 18: 490
DOI: 10.1177/0886260503251069

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ARTICLE
JOURNAL
10.1177/0886260503251069
Salfati / OFFENDER
OF INTERPERSONAL
INTERACTION
VIOLENCE
WITH VICTIMS
/ May 2003

Offender Interaction With

Victims in Homicide
A Multidimensional Analysis of
Frequencies in Crime Scene Behaviors

C. GABRIELLE SALFATI
Centre for Investigative Psychology, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

Homicide grows out of a transaction between individuals. This transaction is a prod-

uct of the individuals and their relationship. More may therefore be understood
about different “styles” of homicide by examining how an offender acts toward a vic-
tim during the crime. The analysis of the actual behaviors used by offenders at 247
single offender–single victim homicide crime scenes indicated a pattern of frequen-
cies that follow a continuum from where the offender reacts in an impulsive way
toward the emotions engendered through the conflicted interpersonal relationship
with the victim, to where the offender interacts with the victim much more at a
removed level, both physically and emotionally. Behaviors can thus be seen to follow
a thematic pattern that can be related to underlying psychological principles, which
closely relate to how an offender interacts with the victim at the crime scene.

Keywords: homicide; victim-offender interaction; impulsivity; multidimensional

analysis; behavioral crime scene analysis

Homicide grows out of a transaction between individuals. This transaction

is a product of the individuals and their relationship. More may therefore be
understood about the nature of homicide by examining how the offender acts
toward the victim during the crime. It is proposed that different forms of
interpersonal transactions, and thus variations in homicide “styles,” will be
reflected in the murder crime scene itself, through the victim the offender
chooses and the behaviors exhibited at the crime scene.
Many authors (e.g., Wolfgang, 1958) stress that most violent acts are com-
mitted between people who know each other, caused by an escalation of a
series of disagreements and arguments. Such acts are often born out of emo-
tions and consequently lead to impulsive acts of violence.
Author’s Note: The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very thor-
ough and helpful comments on the earlier draft of this article.
JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE, Vol. 18 No. 5, May 2003 490-512
DOI: 10.1177/0886260503251069
© 2003 Sage Publications
490

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 491

Zillman (1979) explained that cognitive or thinking processes are greatly

impaired at extreme levels of emotional arousal. At very high levels of emo-
tional upset, hostile or aggressive behaviors are likely to become impulsive as
the behaviors have previously been so well learned that they appear quickly
and without thought. Impulsive behavior then is not unusual out-of-character
behavior but reflects habitual responses that might be rejected by the individ-
ual under low arousal or normal conditions.
This fits in with Huesmann and Eron’s (1989) ideas of learned and
adopted social scripts of behavior. Huesmann and Eron hypothesized that
social behavior is controlled to a great extent by learned responses for behav-
ior that have been learned during a person’s early development. Learned
responses for social behavior in general and for aggressive behavior in partic-
ular are largely controlled by what they term cognitive scripts, learned and
memorized during the young child’s daily experiences and persisting into
adulthood. These scripts are stored in a person’s memory and are used as
guides for behavior and social problem solving, suggesting how the person
should behave in response to specific types of events and what the likely out-
come of these behaviors would be.
Within this framework, a habitually aggressive person is one who regu-
larly retrieves aggressive scripts and employs aggressive behavior. This regu-
lar retrieval in turn accumulates into a large number of aggressive scripts
stored in memory, making more of them available to be used as a response to a
particular situation. In addition, the action of continuously drawing on these
gives them a higher threshold (i.e., makes them easier to retrieve when a prob-
lem is faced, as they are more readily available). In this case, if aggression is
the repeated response to a particular problem such as difficult interpersonal
situations, then when this type of situation is faced, aggression will be used.
Silverman and Mukherjee (1987) suggested that most homicides can be
best characterized as a social event in which there are at least two actors and a
social relationship that plays a dynamic role in the way that the homicide
unfolds. The social relationship between offender and victim, they sug-
gested, should play a key role in the analysis of homicide. In particular, they
hypothesized, the intensity levels associated with intimate relationships will
be associated with the types of homicide that occur.
Wolfgang (1958) also stressed the importance of the interpersonal rela-
tionship between the victim and the offender. He ascertained that because a
relationship is a prerequisite to homicide, stranger homicides exist less than
do homicides between people who know each other. Out of 550 relationships,
he found that 65% of the homicides involved primary contacts (close friend,
family member, paramour, or homosexual partner). Pokorny’s (1965) study
of homicides in Houston, Texas, from 1958 to 1961, found the percentage of

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492 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

victims killed by a family member or close friend to be virtually the same as

that reported by Wolfgang. Voss and Hepburn (1968) found that 47% of vic-
tims were killed by a family member or a close friend. Curtis (1974), in a
national survey in 1967, found that one third of homicides occurred between
family members. More recently, British Home Office statistics between 1977
and 1995 also show that on average, in 70% of cases, the offender knew the
victim (Home Office Criminal Statistics England and Wales, 1977-1995).
Another key factor in the violence that may characterize cases where the
offender and victim have an intimate history (through family or relationship)
is the intensity of the emotional involvement and bond between the group’s
members. Gillies (1976) found that the closer the tie between offender and
victim the more often a homicide seems to be a spontaneous, emotion-laden
act. He also found that uninvolved offenders were more likely male and youn-
ger than 30, with little or no evidence of emotional content in their acts.
Kratcoski (1987) analyzed 2,600 cases of nonjustifiable homicides in
Ohio from 1970 to 1983. The study showed that characteristics of the victim
and the assailant and the circumstances surrounding the incident when the
death occurred differed significantly when family related homicides were
compared to those involving acquaintances or strangers. The sex of the vic-
tim was much more likely to be female (37%) in family member homicides
than in either acquaintance (15%) or stranger (15%) killings. This finding is
consistent with other research on family violence, which indicates that the
victims of family violence are most likely to be those members of the family
who are the most vulnerable (women and children). The study also reported
that 71% of the family member cases involved death during or after a quarrel.
This was also quite prevalent in the acquaintance cases (66%) but was true in
less than one third of the cases involving killing by strangers.
As has been illustrated, much of the literature stresses the importance of
impulsivity and control in the exhibition of aggression. The literature also
emphasizes that the nature of the interpersonal relationship between offender
and victim will influence how this impulsivity is exhibited and how it affects
the extreme violence of the crime.
However, most studies, following in the footsteps of Wolfgang (1958),
have attempted to unravel incidents of violent crime into their components by
looking at the actions of the offender at the time of the crime and by concen-
trating mostly on the frequencies of homicide actions. However, it is impor-
tant to look not only at the frequencies of the actions themselves but also at
the relationship between these different actions to each other. By doing this,
we can go beyond stating the behavioral composition of homicide, toward
attaining a deeper understanding of the underlying psychological patterns of
these behaviors.

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 493

Davies, Wittebrod, and Jackson (1997), in a study on rape, attempted to do

just this and took a correlationally based approach to understanding the link
between the actions committed during rape and the types of offenders
involved. However, although this study found many interesting associations
between offense behaviors and offender characteristics, it merely presents a
one item–to–one item modeling of behavior at the crime scene to previous
convictions characteristics. The model does not attempt to establish themes
of co-occurring offense behaviors and so does not establish the basis for the
pattern of relationships between the different variables. The danger with only
relating one single variable to another single variable, without taking account
of the co-occurrences with the other variables present, is that it does not allow
for the fact that a rapist might not use that exact same behavior each time but
instead might use another single behavior, which is similarly themed. An
example would be an offender who binds one victim but gags another. These
represent two separate single behaviors, yet thematically, they are similar
(see Canter & Heritage, 1990) and tend to be committed by a specific type of
offender for specific reasons, such as controlling the victim.
Some of the early modeling work on homicide, such as the FBI study (e.g.,
Ressler, Burgess, & Douglas, 1988), categorized serial sexual murders into
organized or disorganized. However, although this very important and influ-
ential early work more fully explores the idea of themes of behavior, it fails to
incorporate a thorough evaluation of the actual frequencies of behavior into
its model. In particular, the study’s classification system does not take into
account the influence of the frequencies of the behaviors in its inherent ability
to discriminate between individuals. As an example, any behavior that occurs
in the majority of all cases is unlikely to aid differentiating offenders into
either of the study’s two different groups, and including these high-frequency
variables into one of the two categories will inevitably make the classification
structure invalid and unreliable.
More recent studies, such as that by Salfati (2000), have aimed to address
some of the methodological issues highlighted in the Davies et al. (1997) and
Ressler, Burgess, and Douglas (1988) studies (for a more thorough examina-
tion of these, see Salfati & Canter, 1999) and have analyzed the manifesta-
tions of behaviors that were left at 247 homicide crime scenes to empirically
examine the underlying patterns that reflect both different styles of homicide
and the kind of person responsible for each one of these styles.
In her study, Salfati (2000) showed that homicides could be reliably classi-
fied into two broad thematic subgroups, expressive and instrumental, which
both centered on the meaning of the offender-victim relationship in homi-
cide. Figure 1 illustrates the model, which incorporates the pictorial illustra-
tion of the smallest space analysis (SSA), which shows the associations

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494 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

INSTRUMENTAL

foreign object
covered
naked anal

prop.not.id arson
prop.v weapon fr.
bound manual neck
clothdam
sexual
forensic
torso face partundr vaginal
blunt head MWD
prop.id
limbs
weapon to
hidden

transported
shot

suffocated

blindfolded
water

drugged/poisoned

EXPRESSIVE
Figure 1: Smallest Space Analysis Illustration of 36 Behaviors Across 247
Homicides
SOURCE: Adapted from Salfati (2000).
NOTE: For explanation of variable names, please see Tables 1 through 4.

between the behaviors. In this case, the closer two behaviors are on the plot
the more often they occur in the same case across the sample (for a more
detailed explanation of SSA, see the “Method” section of this article).
With expressive homicides, there was often an extreme physical attack.
Moreover, these behaviors, when looked at together, are suggestive of actions
centered on needing to separate from the victim and the place of the crime, as
these elements might have aided the identification of the killer. All of these
behaviors, Salfati (2000) suggested, show a prior relationship between the
two parties, or at least suggest that the offender knew the victim to some
extent. Actions in the instrumental theme, on the other hand, centered on
behaviors that were not singularly directed at the victim as a person. Rather,
the actions were part of a larger theme of the offender using the victim to fur-

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 495

ther attain an ulterior aim such as sex or money. When taken together, these
actions suggested a behavioral theme where the offender regarded the victim
not as a person with whom they were personally interacting but as an object
ultimately to be used for personal gain.
Through the analysis of the co-occurrences of the actual behaviors used by
offenders at homicide crime scenes, Salfati’s (2000) study brings attention to
the actual behavioral components that make up different themes of homicide,
such as expressive and instrumental crime scenes. The study also takes into
consideration that a number of behaviors occurred in the majority (50% and
above, see dark points in the middle of the plot) of all the cases, and these
behaviors were thus not used to discriminate between cases. However,
although this study did take a more empirical approach to the examination of
behaviors as they occur at crime scenes, it was not in the scope of that study to
provide a more in-depth discussion of how the actual frequencies of the
behaviors in each of the two themes related to the structural makeup of each
of the themes.

AIMS OF THE STUDY

The aim of this study will therefore be to more fully investigate the pat-
terns of co-occurrences of crime scene actions as evidenced by the different
types of behaviors that were executed at homicide crime scenes. Moreover, it
is suggested that the patterns of co-occurrences will show a consistency in the
thematic content of different subgroups of behaviors that tended to co-occur
at homicide crime scenes. Based on the literature, particular emphasis will be
put on understanding these differences in terms of the meaning of the victim
to the offender and the way the offender manifested impulsivity.

THE DATA

So that the results from the current study could be directly used to build on
the previous literature, the data used were the same as those used for the study
by Salfati (2000). These data consisted of 247 British single offender-single
victim solved homicide cases spanning from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
The data were collected from various British police forces around the
country, as well as the Crown Prosecution Service. A thorough randomiza-
tion of cases was not possible due to the nature of the data and issues of avail-
ability and access. However, the data did include cases from many areas of
England and Wales, throughout the time period investigated.

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496 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

To examine aspects of aggressive behavior, cases selected for the study

included all homicide cases, regardless of the sentence outcome (i.e.,
whether the offender was sentenced to manslaughter or murder), as it was felt
that these legal classifications do not reflect psychological patterns of behav-
ior but rather depend on the ad hoc legal court procedures used by the defense
to establish the moral guilt of the offender to diminish the sentence length.
Although the nature of some cases poses more of a problem to police investi-
gators (such as cases where the offender killed someone they did not know
and so had no previous links with the victim), it was felt that the study needed
to go beyond mere stranger killings to understand the interpersonal dynamics
inherent in many different types of offender-victim relationships. For this
reason, the collected sample contains cases classified as domestic (i.e., where
the offender killed a family member or spouse/partner) and cases classified as
stranger.
The sample specifically looked at cases that involved only one offender
and only one victim. No cases of multiple homicide (where there were more
than one offender and/or more than one victim) were included in the sample
as the study concentrates specifically on aggression as exhibited by the indi-
vidual offender, irrespective of any interaction with a fellow offender. This
avoids any interference with regard to issues of group influences.
All cases involved a victim who died due to the assault to ensure that the
offender’s intention of using extreme force was taken into account and so that
outside forces such as the emergency services did not influence the difference
between legal definitions and attempted homicides and homicides.
All offenders were adults, as defined by the court, meaning the offender
was 17 years or older at the time the crime was committed. Some cases (n = 5)
where the offender was 16 were included when their 17th birthday was so
close to the time of the crime that they were handled as adults by the courts.
The main reason for excluding young offenders from the sample was two-
fold. First, it was felt that not enough recorded life experiences (offender
characteristics) would be present in these files, and so later analysis with
regard to the consistency between their past experiences and their present
homicide crime scene behaviors would be tenuous at best. Second, files on
young offenders are difficult to access due to the issue of the protection of
young offenders by the court system. Most files of young offenders are kept
separately and cannot be accessed for reasons of confidentiality.
Although certain cases were excluded from this study, it must be stated
here that it was not because of the lack of value in their analysis but because
the present analysis specifically focused on the criteria outlined above. Due

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 497

to the hypotheses being tested in this study, a number of cases were excluded
from this study. These are outlined below.
The excluded cases included cases of death by reckless driving, as this
type of homicide does not explicitly deal with the interpersonal relationships
between the offender and the victim. Nor were cases included that very
clearly involved professional hit men, as it was felt that the professional
aspect of these crimes would interfere with the issues at hand. Cases that were
clearly defined as euthanasia cases, where the offender(s) was deemed
legally sane when the life of the victim was taken and where the victim was
killed as an act of mercy rather than as an explicit act of aggression, were also
excluded. Cases where offenders killed family members for the reason that
they did not want them to suffer from any type of pain, whether caused by dis-
ease or not, were included in the sample only if the offenders were diagnosed
as mentally ill, or not legally sane, at the time of the offense.

THE VARIABLES

Data from police reports of homicide crime scenes are rich in information
about the actions that occur at crime scenes and were therefore used as the
basic data source. From the case files, 36 crime scene behaviors were selected
for the analysis of co-occurrences across 247 cases of homicide. This selec-
tion was based on several criteria:

1. Behaviors that were clearly observable at the crime scene and were not easily
misinterpreted.
2. Behaviors that reflected the crime of homicide, such as the type of wounding
the victim had sustained and where the victims were found.
3. Behaviors that indicated more specialized behaviors regarding how the
offender acted toward the victim, in particular with reference to the intensity
of this involvement, such as an “overkill” attack (e.g., multiple wounds dis-
tributed all over the victim’s body) as well as more removed or controlling
interaction such as binding or blindfolding the victim.

These variables were recorded in dichotomous form with values based on the
presence or absence of each behavior in any one file. Dichotomies were used
because the information was drawn from police records not initially collected
for research purposes. Previous research has also indicated that for content
analysis, any distinctions more refined than presence-absence dichotomies
are likely to be unreliable (Canter & Heritage, 1990).

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498 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

SAMPLE DEMOGRAPHICS

For the purposes of generalizability of the results from the analysis of the
data sample, comparisons were made between trends of the current data set
and national figures relating to homicide (as provided by Home Office Crimi-
nal Statistics England and Wales, 1977-1995) as well as the figures provided
by the general literature on homicide.
Looking at those variables that could be compared to Home office crimi-
nal statistics (see Salfati, 1998, for more details), it could be seen that the
present sample had a larger percentage of victims known to the offender.
Similarly, the present sample had a smaller sample of stranger cases. In part,
this may be due to the issue of definition in that these variables may have been
defined slightly differently for the present purpose. Regardless of problems
of definition, it can be said however that the present sample contained more
cases where there was a prior relationship between the offender and the
victim.

Victim Demographics
Of the sample of 247 victims, the gender of the victim was known for 246
cases. In all, 44% were male, and 56% were female.1
For the 232 cases (94%) where information about the victim’s age was
available, the range of ages spanned from newborns to victims who were 93
years old. The mean age for the total sample was 39 years. Separating the
sample into males and females revealed a slightly younger mean age of 36
years for male victims (n = 99, range 0 to 82) and a slightly older mean age for
female victims of 41 years (n = 133, range 0 to 93).

Offender Demographics

Information regarding the gender of the offender was known for 246 of the
247 cases. Of these, 89% were male, and 11% were female.
For the 239 cases where information was available as regards the age of
the offender, the range was from 16 years to 79 years, with the mean age being
33 years. Splitting the sample into male and female, the mean age was 32 years
for male offenders (n = 212, range 16 to 79) and 33 years for female offenders
(n = 27, range 17 to 70).
Of the 247 offenders, 201 (81%) had a previous conviction. Of these 201
offenders, 116 (58%) had previous convictions for theft, 77 (38%) for bur-
glary, 74 (37%) for fraud, 68 (34%) for violence, 54 (27%) for disorder, 51
(25%) for public disorder, 50 (25%) for traffic offences, 46 (23%) for vehicle

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 499

theft, 22 (11%) for sexual offenses, 17 (9%) for drugs, 15 (7%) for firearms
possession, and 7 (4%) for arson. And 73 (36%) had previously served a
prison sentence.

Offender-Victim Relationship Demographics

In all, 83% of the victims were known to the offender to a small or large
extent. Of these, 36% of the offenders had previously had or did have a rela-
tionship with the victim at the time of death. Less than 1% of the offenders
were related to the victim by marriage, and 8% were blood related. Only 17%
of cases in this sample could be classified as strictly stranger homicides.

METHOD

The data were analyzed using SSA (Lingoes, 1973). SSA allows a test of
hypotheses concerning the co-occurrence of every variable with every other
variable. In essence, the null hypothesis is that the variables have no clear
relationship to each other. SSA is a nonmetric multidimensional scaling pro-
cedure based on the assumption that the underlying structure, or system of
behavior, will most readily be appreciated if the relationship between every
variable and every other variable is examined.
Initially, association coefficients between all variables are computed. It is
these coefficients that are used to form a spatial representation of items with
points representing variables. The more often variables co-occur during
homicide the closer the points will be representing those variables in the SSA
space. The pattern of points can hence be examined and thematic structures
delineated.
The hypotheses of this study are built on the assumption that actions with
similar underlying themes will be more likely to co-occur than those that
imply different themes. These similarly themed actions will co-occur in the
same region of the plot. This regional hypothesis has previously been seen as
an appropriate way of interpreting co-occurrences of behaviors and has suc-
cessfully been used to interpret both studies of emotion and personality (see
Plutchik & Conte, 1997).
The coefficient of alienation2 (Borg & Lingoes, 1987) is an indication of
how well the spatial representation fits the co-occurrences as represented in
the matrix. The smaller the coefficient of alienation is the better the fit (i.e.,
the fit of the plot to the original matrix). However, as Borg and Lingoes
(1987) emphasized, there is no simple answer to the question of how “good”
or “bad” the representations are. This will depend on a combination of the

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500 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

number of variables, the amount of error in the data, and the logical strength
of the interpretation framework. In the present study, the data are mainly
derived from police crime records, which are not created for research pur-
poses and thus do not adhere to strict collection protocol and procedures. It
would therefore be expected that the data are not error free and could contain
considerable “noise” that could reduce the possibility of interpreting the
results. A relatively high coefficient of alienation would therefore be accept-
able, provided the plot produced a meaningful interpretation.
Although SSA and similar techniques have been widely used by social
scientists over the past 30 years (e.g., Canter, 1985), using multidimensional
scaling techniques in the study of crime is a relatively new concept (e.g., Can-
ter & Heritage, 1990). Using multidimensional scaling for classifying homi-
cides has recently successfully been used by Salfati and Canter (1999),
Salfati (2000), Salfati and Haratsis (2001), and Santilla, Canter, Elfgren, and
Häkkänen (2001).
Using this methodology to analyze the co-occurrences of actions at a
crime scene enables a test of the hypothesis that sets of actions will co-occur
to form different types of interaction between the offender and the victim.

RESULTS

Figure 2 shows the same distribution of the 36 crime scene behaviors for
the 247 cases of homicide on the 1 × 2 projection of the three-dimensional
SSA analysis, as used by Salfati (2000). The coefficient of alienation of this
analysis was also 0.17224, showing a good fit of the spatial representation of
the co-occurrences of the behaviors.
The regional hypothesis of SSA states that items that have a common
underlying psychological theme will be found in the same region of the SSA
space. The manifestations of the behaviors on the plot therefore reflected
how associated each of the behaviors were to each other across the sample.
To examine the pattern of frequency of the behaviors and how these
related to each other, the frequencies for each of the behaviors were examined
(see Tables 1 through 4). Furthermore, by superimposing frequency bands
onto the SSA plot (see Figure 3), a discernible pattern of the frequencies of
occurrence of the behaviors can be seen in terms of a circular pattern of
descending frequencies from the middle of the plot out to the periphery of the
plot. Each one of these frequency bands is further expounded below.

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 501

foreignobj

covered anal
naked

arson
prop.notid
prop.v weap.fr
bound faceup neck
scene manual
clothdam
faceunh stab sexual
forensic mwoa
face
torso partundr vaginal
blunt head mwd
prop.id
limbs
weap.to
hidden

transport
shot

suffocated

blindfold
water

drug/poison

Figure 2: Smallest Space Analysis of 247 Homicide Crime Scenes

NOTE: Four core variables at the center of the plot are denoted by a larger symbol. For explana-
tion of variable names, please see Tables 1 through 4.

TABLE 1: Behaviors Occurring in More Than 50% of Cases

Behavior Variable Frequency (%)

Face not hidden faceunh 88.3

Victim found at the same scene where he or she was killed scene 78.9
Face up (victim found as he or she fell) faceup 61.1
Multiple wounds to one body area mwoa 52.2

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502 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

TABLE 2: Behaviors Occurring in 30% to 50% of Cases

Behavior Variable Frequency (%)

Wounds to torso torso 49.4

Manual method (hitting, kicking, and strangling) manual 46.6
Wounds to neck neck 46.2
Weapon from scene used weap.fr 45.3
Stab stab 38.1
Wounds to face face 36.4
Wounds to head head 35.6
Multiple wounds distributed across different body parts mwd 34.4

TABLE 3: Behaviors Occurring in 10% to 30% of Cases

Behavior Variable Frequency (%)

Wounds to limbs limbs 23.9

Weapon brought to scene weap.to 23.5
Blunt instrument blunt 22.3
Property of value taken prop.v 21.5
Victim partially undressed partundr 20.2
Offender forensically aware forensic 19.8
Sexual crime sexual 15.4
Property taken (non-identifiable) prop.notid 11.3

TABLE 4: Behaviors Occurring in Less Than 10% of Cases

Behavior Variable Frequency (%)

Vaginal penetration vaginal 9.3

Body hidden (outside) hidden 8.9
Body transported transport 8.5
Victim naked naked 8.1
Victim covered (i.e., inside rather than outside) covered 7.7
Shot shot 6.9
Property (identifiable as belonging to victim) prop.id 6.9
Arson to crime scene/body arson 5.7
Suffocation suffocated 5.7
Clothing damage clothdam 4.5
Bound bound 4.0
Anal penetration anal 3.2
Victim found in water water 3.2
Foreign object used foreignobj 1.6
Victim drugged and/or poisoned drug/poison 1.6
Blindfolded blindfold 1.2

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 503

foreignobj

covered anal
naked

arson
prop.notid
prop.v weap.fr
faceup neck
bound scene manual
clothdam
faceunh stab sexual
forensic mwoa
torso face
partundr vaginal
blunt head mwd
prop.id
limbs
weap.to
hidden

transport
shot

suffocated

blindfold
water

drug/poison

Figure 3: Smallest Space Analysis of Homicide Crime Scenes With Frequency

Bands
NOTE: Dotted arrows denote variables that belong in a different frequency group but were
included in the present one due to the strict drawing of the frequency bands. Variables in italics
illustrate the case study. For explanation of variable names, please see Tables 1 through 4.

Behaviors Occurring in More Than 50% of Cases

Four behaviors occurred in more than 50% of the 247 cases (see Table 1).
These included the victim being found at the same scene where they were
killed, the victim being found facing up and uncovered, and the victim being
found with multiple wounds to one body area. These four high-frequency
behaviors were indicative of impulsive behavior with no great degree of plan-
ning and with the main purpose of killing the victim. They all represent
behaviors suggestive of a more frenzied and emotional attack than an orga-
nized and intentionally planned attack. This is consistent with the idea that
homicide is for the most part an act of impulsive aggression, most probably
spurred on by an argument of some description.

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504 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

60.0

50.0

43.3
40.0

30.0

25.1
20.0
19.8
Percent (%)

10.0
10.5

0.0
0 1 2 3 4

Number of variables (out of 4)

Figure 4: Variables in High-Frequency Band

As can be seen in Figure 4, 68.4% of the 247 crime scenes had three or four
of the high-frequency variables present. As such, this further validates the
idea that these high-frequency behaviors should not be used to attempt to dif-
ferentiate between cases. The percentages also suggest that there were few
cases that had none (1.2%) or only one (10.5%) behavior present. This shows
that most of the cases included the majority of these behaviors, and thus these
behaviors can be said to exemplify the norm of behavior within the sample.
Further analysis showed that 57% of the sample had a higher percentage3
of variables present in this high-frequency band than the percentage of vari-
ables present in the other three frequency bands (described below) added
together. This also suggests that the majority of the cases in the sample could
be classified as highly impulsive in nature.
The represented case study below, taken from the sample investigated,
was typical of many impulsive homicides where the offender reacts in an
impulsive way toward the emotions engendered through the conflict-ridden
interpersonal relationship with the victim. This crime scene exemplifies the
direct, impulsive, and messy crime scene of the impulsive type of murder that
defines the majority of the cases in this sample.

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 505

When the behaviors in which the offender engaged in at the crime scene
are plotted onto the SSA plot (see variables in italics on Figure 3), the distri-
bution of the presence of the actions committed by the offender during the
homicide can be ascertained. As can be seen, the offender engaged in all of
the high-frequency actions at the crime scene (variables more than 50%),
such as leaving the victim face up, with the face unhidden, and at the same
scene as where the crime took place. The offender also engaged in most of the
other high-frequency actions in the next frequency band (30% to 50%, see
description below), such as killing the victim manually, that is through hit-
ting, kicking, and strangling the victim, as well as using a blunt instrument
and stabbing the victim. The offender in this case left wounds all over the
body of the victim and wounded certain areas of the victim’s body intensely.
In this case, the victim was wounded on the neck, the face, the torso, the head,
and the limbs. The offender was also careful not to leave forensic evidence at
the scene.

Case Study
The offender (36 years old) and the deceased (27 years old) shared a very
stormy and violent relationship. The offender was a heavy drinker and drug
user and had a long list of previous convictions for assault, theft, burglary,
disorder, possession of drugs, and the possession of a weapon. Consequently,
this lead the deceased to seek an injunction on the offender, which was
granted.
However, despite the injunction, there was a violent argument between the
two, during which the offender kicked and punched the deceased and ulti-
mately killed her through wounds caused by a blunt instrument. The
deceased sustained extensive bruising to her head, face, neck, and upper and
lower limbs and to the back of her hands. There was also bruising consistent
with the application of manual pressure on the neck.

Behaviors Occurring in 30% to 50% of Cases

Behaviors in the 30% to 50% frequency group (see Table 2) all represent
actions concentrating on the specific behaviors engaged in the killing of the
victim (i.e., specific body parts have been aimed at or particular methods
used). All the behaviors in this frequency band4 represent a more specific
intention of killing the victim in a particular way or striking the victim in a
particular place.
As can be seen in Figure 5, almost two thirds of cases (64.4%) will engage
in between two and four of these variables at the crime scene. Further investi-

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506 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

60.0

50.0

40.0

30.0

25.1
20.0 23.1

16.2
Percent (%)

10.0
10.1 10.5

5.7 6.1
0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Number of variables (out of 8)

Figure 5: Variables in the 30% to 50% Frequency Band

gation shows that 39.3% of the 247 crime scenes had four or more of the vari-
ables in this frequency category present. Only very few cases had none
(2.4%) or only one (10%) of the variables present.

Behaviors Occurring in 10% to 30% of Cases

Behaviors in the 10% to 30% group (see Table 3) have a much more instru-
mental theme to them in the sense that they appear to have more of a purpose
to the offender. Two of the more prominent behaviors in this frequency band
deal with actions using an instrument to kill. The offender also shows plan-
ning by bringing a weapon to the scene and moreover takes property of value
of unidentifiable nature. Offenders showing these types of behaviors also
appear to be more organized in that they exhibit more forensically aware
behaviors such as avoiding leaving forensic evidence or removing forensic
evidence from the scene.
If a closer investigation of the distribution of these actions is done, it can
be seen that there has been a move away from the patterns evidenced in the
previous two frequency categories described in Figures 4 and 5. As can be
seen in Figure 6, only 8.5% of the 247 crime scenes had half (i.e., four vari-
ables) or more of the variables in this frequency category present. Indeed, no
offender engaged in more than six out of eight variables at the scene. The per-

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 507

60.0

50.0

40.0

30.0
27.9
26.3
20.0 22.7
Percent (%)

14.6
10.0

6.5
0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Number of variables (out of 8)

Figure 6: Variables in the 10% to 30% Frequency Band

centages also show that more than half the sample had none (26.3%) or only
one (27.9%) behavior present at the crime scene. This patterns shows a clear
shift away from offenders using a range of the behaviors in this frequency
band, to offenders using only a few, very select, number of behaviors. As
such, there is evidence that these behaviors form a much more select, special-
ized group of actions.

Behaviors Occurring in Less Than 10% of Cases

Behaviors in the less than 10% frequency band (see Table 4) are compara-
tively more thought out and certainly more instrumental in nature. These
behaviors have less to do with the actual killing of the victim and are more
likely related to the offender’s special agenda (e.g., fantasies, motivations,
etc.). Here, offenders rape their victims but make sure that their tracks are
much more covered (transporting the victims away from the crime scene and
hiding them or setting fire to the crime scene). Indeed, if a closer investigation
is made of the very specialized behaviors that occur in less than 5% of the
cases, it can be seen that these behaviors are even more psychologically dis-
tancing and cognitive in nature. Here, the offender penetrates the victim
anally (i.e., the offender does not see the victim’s face), uses a foreign object

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508 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

60.0

50.0 51.8

40.0

30.0

20.0 23.1
Percent (%)

14.6
10.0

7.7
0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5

Number of variables (out of 16)

Figure 7: Variables in Low-Frequency Band

(thus not entering into direct intimate contact with the victim), and blindfolds
the victim (again, the offender removes the impact of the victim’s face).
These are all cognitive behaviors where the offenders “removes” themselves
from the victim physically and psychologically.
As can be seen in Figure 7, no offender engaged in all 16 variables within
this frequency band. Indeed, the maximum number of behaviors was 5, a
third of the possible variables. Of these 5 variables, only a very small number
of cases (10.5%) had more than half (i.e., 3 to 5 variables) present. Looking at
the distribution of these behaviors, compared with those in Figures 4, 5, and
6, a marked decrease in the number of offenders who engage in these actions
can be seen. In this group, as many as two thirds of the sample had none
(51.8%) or only one (23.1%) behavior present in this frequency band. This
again shows the specialized nature of the actions within this category.

Summary of the Themes Shown by the Frequency Bands

The pattern of the frequencies of the crime scene behaviors indicates a

descending structure moving from high-frequency impulsive behaviors to
low-frequency behaviors. The high-frequency impulsive behaviors show
behaviors related to the actual actions involved in killing the victim. The low-

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 509

frequency behaviors, on the other hand, have less to do with killing the victim
and more to do with offenders using actions that are controlling and that sug-
gest they are psychologically distancing themselves from the victim. In these
cases, the transaction with the victim becomes more one where the offender
removes himself or herself from the victim, both physically (e.g., shot, trans-
port, foreign object, etc.) and emotionally (e.g., blindfold, drug/poison, etc.).
The frequency structure of behavior can thus be seen to follow a contin-
uum from where the offender reacts in an impulsive way toward the emotions
engendered through the conflicted interpersonal relationship with the victim,
to where the offender interacts with the victim much more at a removed level,
both physically and emotionally.
This distribution of the frequencies of behaviors at these homicide crime
scenes pertinently reflects that homicide is an impulsive act that is acted out
at times of stress and the consequences of which may therefore not be at the
front of the mind of the offender. The majority of the behaviors reflect an
impulsive or reactive dimension to the offenders’ actions, whereas the less
frequent behaviors are more organized or purposeful and directed in nature.
Like Cornell et al. (1996) suggested, these can be seen as more psychopathic,
in the sense that the offender’s actions reflect an ulterior motive rather than
just a reactive reaction to an interpersonal conflict.

Implications for Modeling Homicide Behavior

By understanding the thematic structure underlying the frequencies of
homicide actions, it can be established that the behaviors of an offender at the
crime scene go beyond just engaging in a number of actions. Instead, they can
be seen to follow a pattern of frequencies that can be related to underlying
psychological principles such as impulsiveness, which appears to be related
closely to how an offender interacts with the victim at the crime scene.
Because SSA represents the associations between the variables in a spatial
manner (whereby, the closer two variables are on the plot, the more often they
occur together during a homicide), variables that can be seen to be in the same
frequency band but in a different area of the plot (e.g., sexually assaulting the
victim with an object and drugging or poisoning the victim) (see Figure 8)
can thus be understood as not only being related to the theme as reflected by
the frequency band in which they lie but also as being related to the overall
theme, such as expressiveness and instrumentality. In this case, (according to
Salfati, 2000), the variable relating to drugging or poisoning the victim would
be more related to expressive homicides, whereas the variable relating to sex-
ually assaulting the victim with an object would be more related to instru-
mental homicides. They are both in the low-frequency band and so relate to

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510 JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / May 2003

INSTRUMENTAL

Foreign
Low % variables

Medium % variables

High % variables

Drug/poison EXPRESSIVE

thematic (expressive/instrumental) division

frequency bands

Figure 8: A Model of Frequencies and Behavioral Themes of Homicide

how the offender is distancing himself or herself from the victim. But the sug-
gestion here is that the offender does this differently, depending on whether
they are generally committing an expressive or instrumental homicide.
In conclusion, this article has attempted to illustrate that by understanding
behaviors within a multidimensional context in terms of their occurrence fre-
quency, as well as in terms of their thematic associations with other behaviors
during the crime, a more comprehensive modeling of homicide behavior may
be established.

NOTES

1. Please note that all percentages in the demographics section are rounded up or down to the
nearest whole number.
2. All smallest space analyses were analyzed using Jaccard’s correlation coefficient.
3. Please note that the percentage of variables was used rather than the actual number due to
each frequency band containing a different number of variables.

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 Salfati / OFFENDER INTERACTION WITH VICTIMS 511

4. Please note that the behavior “wound to limbs” in the next frequency category fits in with
this categorization but because of its frequency is left in the next frequency category table.

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C. Gabrielle Salfati is a lecturer in the Centre for Investigative Psychology at the Univer-
sity of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, and the course director for the M.Sc. in forensic
behavioral science. Her main areas of interest are homicide and violent sexual crimes, in
particular with reference to offender profiling, classifications of crime, and cross-
cultural comparisons. She has presented widely both nationally and internationally on
homicide crime scene pattern analysis and offender profiling. For more information, see
www.i-psy.com.

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