Impulsive Offenders Who Commit Homicide

The word impulse is derived from the Latin verb impulsus, which essentially means to “push, drive, urge, stimulate, or force.” In a psychological context, impulse is defined as an unexpected urge motivated by conscious or unconscious feelings over which the person has little or no control (Freedman, Kaplan, and Sadock, 1972). Impulsive offenders who commit homicide are distinguished mainly by their lack of direction, randomness of actions, and unpredictability. These individuals are passive, easily led, and overinfluenced by circumstances; their personality structures are loose and poorly integrated. They cannot see life in perspective but, instead, view it on an immediate basis. The offenses they commit, whether homicides or some other crimes, are generally poorly structured and only partially, if at all, premeditated.

Impulsive offenders differ from situational offenders mainly by the number of antisocial acts in their background. Whereas a situational homicide is often a one-time event, the impulsive offender has a history of multiple criminal events with homicide being just one in a series. Impulsive offenders are often recruited into semiprofessional crime, but they lack the purposefulness and know-how of the professional. Impulsive offenders often have a disorganized family life; sometimes they even have developmental handicaps such as attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, physical maladies, or speech problems. As a result of their background, they have acquired strong feelings of inadequacy and feel especially inferior in the competitive world. These feelings of inadequacy bring about feelings of hostility which result in chronic anger and a vague need for revenge. Offenders discharge their tension by action, as they are largely unable to modulate their emotions.

Impulsive offenders merge with antisocial personality disorder to some extent, as these offenders usually manifest more personality or characterological disturbance than do other offenders. The concept of impulsive offender, however, cuts across all personality diagnoses. Impulsive offenders do not, in our view, suffer from an impulse disorder per se, although some of them may fall into this category. Mainly, they are not driven to commit the offense but are simply reacting to circumstances. In the prison population, nonhomi- cidal offenders are usually less reliable, less integrated, and more disturbed than offenders serving time for homicide. That is because most prisoners have a lifestyle with multiple prior antisocial acts similar to the lifestyle of impulsive offenders, whereas most murderers commit situational, one-time events. Table 3.4 lists characteristics of impulsive offenders who commit homicide.

The following case is an example of an impulsive offender who killed a woman. A detailed account of the crime and the crime scene, provided by the offender’s 15-year- old girlfriend, provides a graphic description of the thinking and behavior patterns of individuals who commit a sudden, unplanned, and unexpected act of violence with grave consequences.

Case 3.10: Impulsive Offender Who Killed a Woman

A 20-year-old male lived with his mother until 6 months prior to the homicide. He had learning problems, was teased in school (“Kids called me retard”), and eventually dropped out in the tenth grade. His biological father left the family as a result of marital strife, but

Table 3.4 Characteristics of Impulsive Offenders Who Commit Homicide

the offender believed that he left “because I had a growth and he couldn’t take it,” referring to a nonmalignant tumor on his neck, which was hardly noticeable but bothered him greatly. His mother remarried, and her husband inflicted cruel physical and emotional punishment on GG, beating him with a hose and making him kneel on rice. As an adolescent, GG was involved in repetitive minor antisocial acts, including theft of radios, public intoxication, marijuana possession, minor assaults, school behavior problems, and one or two violation of probation offenses.

GG’s mother was unable to tolerate his conduct, lack of steady employment, and general lack of direction. She asked a friend of hers, a 35-year-old divorced woman, if GG could live with her for a period of time. GG moved in and stayed with her for several months.

The offender became involved with what was known as the “party line,” a predecessor of the present-day computer chat room. Individuals could dial a 900 telephone number and talk to strangers. On the party line, GG met a 15-year-old female (A) who lived about 70 miles away. After extended conversations, they decided to meet. He showed up at her home, but after 1 or 2 days of “hanging out,” A was unable to get rid of him. Her parents, as well as the school vice-principal, talked to GG. Out of desperation, As father called the police, who threatened to have him arrested if he returned to their town.

But the following week, after again talking to GG on the party line, A agreed to meet with him “for one last time” before finally terminating the relationship. Without telling her parents where she was going, she took a train to his residence. Later, A provided a vivid description of the unplanned murder of the 35-year-old woman (B) whom GG had been living with.

G started yelling at В. I got up from my seat to look, and they were arguing about something,

I don’t know what. They were fighting a lot. I heard a thump, and they were doing a lot of yelling. I heard him yelling, saying how she was a problem. The next thing I heard was В screaming. She was screaming hysterically. I heard a banging noise. Screaming and banging was going on.

G came downstairs. He was crying and told me that he had just killed B. He said to me that she was just another problem and he had to take care of her. He was screaming at me. “You gotta come with me. You gotta help me clean this up. I can’t leave her there.”

B’s bedroom door was half open and half closed. I walked into the room. She was lying on the floor. She was covered with sheets from the bed. The rug was covered in blood. The walls had blood all over them. On the floor, there was a knife and there was some kind of stick. G was full of blood. He had a green surf shirt on. It was full of blood. His white socks were full of blood, too. His hands had blood all over them. He was nervous, huffing and puffing, out of breath. He told me, “Don’t tell anybody. This is not happening. I did this for us. She would have been a problem.”

He brought her out of the room. I could see he was dragging her by four belts he tied around the sheets. I didn’t see her face until later. When I did, her face was a mess. I saw her arms. They were all bloody. He was still mad because I was screaming. Then he started to drag her down the stairs. While she was in the hallway, she bled onto the rug. He had a hard time getting her downstairs. She was very heavy and he was screaming. Her body kept falling on the stairs. Her body was rolled up and just lying there. He said her car keys were on the counter and told me to get them.

He couldn’t carry her because she was heavy and he wanted me to help him. He said, “Never mind, never mind.” He then took the body and jammed her in the trunk of her car. I felt really sick. I might have blacked out because I remember some things and some things I don’t. I looked in the house; there was blood on the floor. G got steel wool, dish detergent, and bleach. There was a sponge in the sink, but there was nothing really to clean up this mess. Everything was covered in blood. On the floor were blood stains. The phone was ripped out of the wall and covered with blood. Her white sneakers were full of blood. B’s nightgown was white; it was short, ripped in half, and full of blood.

He told me to go downstairs to get bleach and steel wool to clean the walls. The blood was not coming off the walls, and he started yelling at me again to help him. I was standing there hysterical. He went from the walls to the rug with the bleach, trying to get the blood stains out. It didn’t work and it made the room stink. It made the blood stains black. There was no way he was going to get this out of the rugs. The rugs were wet, so wet with blood. There were spots of blood where she was lying. He was getting nuts. He was getting crazy. He kept screaming, “Just don’t touch nothing.”

He was rolling the rug as he cut it out, and he told me to help him. He cut the rug in sections. He went down, grabbed the rugs, and went down to the lake. He threw the rugs into the water, but the rugs just sat on top of the water. They wouldn’t sink. He started going crazy. “What am I going to do? I gotta get rid of these rugs.” Then he went into the water, stepped on them to make them sink. Finally they sank and we came back to the condo. He was drenched in blood and soaking wet.

Underneath the padding from the bed there was blood on the wood floor. He said to me, “We gotta get her outa the trunk and gotta get far away from here.” He swept the floor and tried to get the blood stains up from the floor. As he put more bleach on it, it made the blood stains more visible. By this time, it was almost morning and you could see the sun shining on the floor, making the blood stains stand out.

I don’t remember how we left the condo, whether it was in the front or the back. He kept saying “We have to get rid of her.” In the trunk of the car I could see her face and arms. She was full of blood and still bleeding. I could see bruises, and her face and body were just broken. She was a mess. She wouldn’t move.

He got her out of the trunk of the car and she fell on the road, and everything that she was wrapped in fell off of her. She was completely nude on the roadway. Finally, he threw her into the lake also.

We walked back to the condo and went through the back door. That’s when G painted the walls in B’s room. It took him about three hours to paint them. As he was painting the walls, the blood kept seeping through, and he was going nuts because he couldn’t get rid of the blood. He would put another coat of paint on and the dark spots of blood would still come through.

After this, I took a shower and he made me go to the food store with him to buy hair dye. He said my red hair stood out too much and he wanted me to dye it blonde. It changed my hair color to brown. He took B’s car and was driving south on our way to Florida. We were gonna stop to get a room but then G realized “I can’t let you go in alone, because I can’t trust you.” We went to get a room. We were going to use B’s credit card, but the lady said we needed a driver’s license. So we went back to the car and then we just drove off. G started to drive faster and faster and the cops started to follow us. Finally the police pulled over and I jumped outta the car. It was over.

When GG was interviewed in the county jail, he gave a very different account of the events. He said that A was pregnant (which was untrue), and it was As idea to kill B. He said,

I did it because of her. A and В got into an argument, a sexual argument. В was a lesbian and came on to A. A said if I don’t do something about it, she would do something. A said she didn’t want her around. If she wasn’t around, we could stay in the condo. So I got a knife, went to B’s room, and stabbed her in the back and I hit her with a billy club. I stabbed her three more times so that she’d die.

When asked if he had any remorse, he said, “I feel bad. I feel stupid because I did something like that for a girl. I deserve to be here. I’d rather be executed than do life in prison.”

Psychological test findings revealed a great deal about the psychodynamics of this offender. His figure drawings are shown in Figure 3.3. The house, tree, and drawing of a member of the opposite sex are bland and empty and reflect serious depression and

Figure 3.3 Drawings by an impulsive offender who killed a woman. His sketches of a house, tree, and member of the opposite sex are bland and empty, indicating deep depression and inadequacy. His drawing of a male reflects how this young man would like others to perceive him.

inadequacy. The drawing of a male shows a person of massive strength, the opposite of how he truly feels about himself but probably how he would like others to see him.

His TAT stories were filled with themes of inadequacy and deep depression, including the following. Card 1: “This boy is depressed. He feels he can’t do anything. He is useless. He has no friends.” Card 3BM: “This is a guy crying. He shot himself. He was depressed. He killed himself because it’s the only way he can deal with his grief. He shoots himself in the head.” Card 14: “This person is lonely. He is thinking of suicide. He doesn’t have a normal life. People keep rejecting him. He is not liked.” Card 18GF:

A woman strangling another woman. She wanted her money. He gets rid of the body. Puts it in the car, drives it off a cliff, and makes it look like an accident. The police thinks it’s an accident. It bothers him, so he kills himself.

The following story (to Card 13MF) is most revealing of his inner thoughts:

This is a guy who had a prostitute and then killed her. Maybe something happened in his past. Women used to reject him or treat him like dirt and tease him. He figured he’d get back. He did it to a prostitute because they are easy to get away with. The police won’t try as hard with a prostitute. He hates woman. Women teased him. He feels good while he is doing it. Some kind of revenge. He feels like he is getting back at the world.

Expressions of self-deprecation, inadequacy, and self-loathing poured out of this offender. The day before his capital murder trial was to begin, GG stabbed himself in the eye with a pen, which resulted in his death. He was found in his cell, lying on his back with a pen sticking out of his left eye.