Free Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind by Roy Hazelwood, Stephen G. Michaud Page A

investigative techniques, interrogation methods, and the forensic capabilities of law enforcement.
    Advertisements almost invariably are directed at the inadequate male. He’s told he can learn how to hypnotize women from across the room; how to increase the size of his penis; how to become a private investigator; how to acquire police paraphernalia and identification. This last offer is more ominous than it may at first seem, as in several cases police badges have been used by serial offenders to capture their victims.
    Ted Bundy was probably the best-known consumer of detective magazines. He studied abduction and murder stories in them to learn what had worked or hadn’t worked for other deviant offenders. In the process he no doubt found material to feed his unique fantasies of possession.
    One staple of the pulp genre is the police-stop story, in which an offender poses as a law officer to bring a potential victim under his control. Bundy used the ploy several times himself. Angelo Buono, murder partner with Ken Bianchi in the infamous Hillside Strangler cases, also used a police badge to abduct women. From his extensive records, we know that the counterfeiter and sexual sadist James Mitchell DeBardeleben, known as Mike, a serial offender who traveled throughout the United States, ordered police badges through ads in detective magazines and similarly used them as abduction props.
    Returning to the cartoon case, many readers may wonder, if Johnstone was so intelligent, why did he send Mrs. Smith the incriminating pictures that led to his arrest? Why did he use the motel stationery that enabled authorities to identify him?
    The answer is narcissism.
    Because he had successfully eluded detection for so long and with such apparent ease, Johnstone grew overconfident, believing himself too smart for the police to catch. Consequently, he let his guard down and took unnecessary chances. He must have felt that no matter what he did, he would never be caught.
    For many ritualistic offenders, taking risks intensifies the thrill of the crime. Stealing Mrs. Smith’s bras off her clothesline might have been a safer, surer way of securing them, but that couldn’t compare to the ingenious way in which he extracted them from the donation box while it was under direct police surveillance.
    Paid Partners
    Ritualistic offenders also act out their deviant fantasies with paid partners. Experienced sexual crimes investigators know that when an offender commits his crimes in a ritualistic manner, they should contact local prostitutes. He likely has attempted to enact with them the same fantasies he plays out with his victims.
    In one intriguing California case, an expensive call girl was found dead at a deluxe hotel in a bathtub full of water. The room had been rented under an alias and paid for in advance with cash. The victim was nude. Her hands were bound behind her back, and she had been strangled with a man’s tie.
    Medical evidence indicated vaginal intercourse occurred perimortem, that is, just at the time of her death. It appeared the perpetrator had bound her and placed her in the tub, where he strangled her as they were having sex.
    Investigators wisely sought out other high-priced prostitutes in the vicinity, asking if any of them remembered encountering customers who desired a similar sort of sex. Two of the women reported such a client, a business executive who subsequently was identified, tried, and convicted of the murder.
    Compliant Victims
    Some ritualistic offenders (most commonly sexual sadists) act out fantasies with compliant victims, usually wives or girlfriends. The compliant victims I have interviewed report that they often were used as props for the deviant fantasies of their mates. Other times, they were rehearsal partners, stand-ins for future victims.
    It is not unusual for a sexual sadist to force his victim to sign a “slave contract,” a physical representation of the master-slave relational fantasy. One of