Lust murder
A
lust murder is a
homicide in which the offender stabs, cuts, pierces, slashes, or otherwise
mutilates the
sexual organs or areas of the victim's body. The mutilation of the victim may include
evisceration and/or displacement of the genitalia. It also includes such activities as posing and propping of the body in different positions, generally sexual ones; insertion of objects into bodily orifices;
anthropophagy (the consumption of human
blood and/or flesh) and
necrophilia (the performing of sex acts on a human corpse).
A lust murder begins with the
obsessive compulsions of the offender. Generally, they have a sexual obsession with their victims, and organized lust murderers may
stalk their
victims for weeks or months before the actual killing. The
signature component of the crime, that which names it a lust murder, is the killer acting out their fantasies with their victims and the bodies of those victims. Lust murder is a common feature in the criminal careers of
serial killers.
The term is also used in a related but slightly different sense, to refer to an individual which gains
sexual arousal from the act of committing murder, or has persistent
sexual fantasies of committing murder, even if the murder itself does not involve the genital mutilation or other characteristics cited above. As such, it is a type of
paraphilia.
*
Jeffrey Dahmer*
John Wayne Gacy*
Ed Gein*
Jack the Ripper
