Free The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood's Journey Into the Minds of Sexual Predators by Stephen G. Michaud, Roy Hazelwood

blessing, Ressler and Douglas could elevate an informal, sub rosa project into an official FBI study. Working with Hazelwood and Ann Burgess at the University of Pennsylvania, the two agents developed a protocol, or questionnaire, and then set out on what wouldbecome their widely studied survey of thirty-six serial killers.
    Other BSU agents at the meeting with Monroe that day proposed to study subjects ranging from pyromania to suicide to stress. Then came Roy’s turn.
    “I want to study autoerotic fatalities,” the new profiler said.
    Silence.
    “Huh?” Monroe asked finally.
    Undaunted, Hazelwood rose and explained autoerotic fatalities to the group. When he finished, fellow profiler Dick Ault asked whether such a rare phenomenon—approximately fifteen hundred to two thousand such deaths occur in the United States each year—merited the time and resources necessary to study it as thoroughly as Roy proposed.
    Clearly not on the basis of mortality alone, Hazelwood conceded.
    But there were two good reasons for undertaking the project, he said.
    One, more than almost any other type of death, the autoerotic fatality creates a painful emotional resonance among the victim’s family and acquaintances. Because most victims keep their solo-sex habit well hidden, such deaths almost always come as a sudden, ugly, and shameful surprise to survivors. When the deceased’s private, deviant sexual practices are suddenly made plain in death, there is bewilderment, disgust, denial, guilt, and often considerable anger among those closest to them.
    Hazelwood told the group of one instance where a victim’s parents litigated his death for two years, insisting their boy had been murdered. In another, a father pressured the local coroner to change his son’s death report from “accidental during autoerotic acts” to “accidental due to physical exertion.”
    Hazelwood’s second, more persuasive argument to the group was that his research would provide police departmentswith the basic information and tools necessary to differentiate autoerotic deaths from homicides or suicides.
    As he explained, some police agencies weren’t sure what an autoerotic fatality was. For example, Roy once received a telephone call from a local police official inquiring whether he was available to lecture.
    Roy said yes, he was, and listed his areas of expertise, including autoerotic fatalities.
    The chief considered for a moment.
    “Well, I don’t think that last one would be very useful for us,” he finally said. “We don’t have too many traffic deaths down here.”
    Misreading an accidental autoerotic death can have serious consequences. Among Catholics, for example, an autoerotic death mistaken for a suicide may mean the deceased is denied burial in consecrated ground.
    To misidentify an autoerotic death for a suicide can also be expensive: Some life insurance policies refuse to pay in the event of suicide.
    Mistaking one for homicide raises a separate set of potential problems. Time, money, and energy are wasted. The victim’s family, as well as the community, is subjected to needless stress.
    Conversely, if a homicide is successfully staged as an autoerotic death, justice is evaded.
    To illustrate his point, Hazelwood told the group of a case that the police at first filed away as an unsolved sexual homicide, but which turned out to be an accidental death due to a dangerous autoeroticism.
    The victim was a respectable midwestern businessman and community leader who one day disappeared.
    He was not known to have been depressed in any way, and had no apparent motive for vanishing. The police considered kidnapping the likeliest possibility. However, no ransom demand was made.
    A few days later, searchers discovered the businessman dead in a secluded woods not far from town. He was partially clothed and elaborately bound, suspended from a tree limb, with his head and shoulders touching the ground. He’d died from exposure.
    Nearby was a