Stalking and Catathymic Homicide

Stalking has been described as the quintessential crime of the 1990s (Goldstein, 2000). During this decade, a great deal of interest was generated in stalking, and numerous clinical and empirical studies were carried out. In Meloy’s (1998) compendium on the topic, he summarized 26 fairly definitive research findings on every aspect of stalking perpetrators and victims. Most research has found that, although stalkers are a heterogeneous group of offenders, common to all stalking behavior is an obsessive (pathological) attachment to the victim. Some stalkers are unable to give up a prior intimate relationship (Zona, Sharma, and Lane, 1993). Some develop delusional beliefs about the target (Goldstein, 1987), while others develop strong obsessional thoughts about virtual strangers (Spitzberg and Cupach,

1994). Meloy (1992) and Kienlen (1998) believe that a disturbance of attachment begins in the offender’s early childhood and stalking starts when some type of loss in adulthood resurrects these early conflicts.

Intimate relationships often involve a great deal of violence, including homicide. The percentage of females involved in violent relationships, who were eventually killed by their mates (about 30%), has remained fairly constant since 1976 (U.S. Department of Justice,

2000). It is not clear how many of these aggressive and homicidal acts involve prior stalking, however. In fact, the prevalence of homicide among stalkers is unknown, and estimates are unclear. Meloy (1996b) reviewed the scientific literature between 1978 and 1995 and found that out of 180 cases of stalking, only 4 of the subjects committed a homicide— an incidence of 2%. However, this finding may underestimate the prevalence of homicide among stalkers because (1) the vast majority of cases were not reported in the scientific literature and (2) as Meloy (1998) has subsequently pointed out, when there is a homicide, individuals are frequently not charged with stalking.

Moracco, Runyan, and Butts (1998) provide a methodology that may obviate these problems. These researchers determined the percentage of femicides in a jurisdiction in which stalking was involved by reviewing police and medical examiners’ reports and by interviewing law enforcement officers. Using this method as opposed to simply looking at whether the perpetrator was legally charged with stalking, Moracco and colleagues found that 23% of the women were stalked prior to their deaths. In a subsequent study

(McFarlane, Campbell, Wilt, Sachs, Ulrich, and Xu, 1999), the researchers not only used medical records and law enforcement information but also conducted interviews with proxy informants (victims’ family members and friends). This procedure revealed that 76% of female victims were stalked prior to their death, and 42% of these women had not reported the stalking to the police. It therefore seems clear that the prevalence of homicide among stalkers may be greater than previous estimates indicated.

The following case of a stalking homicide involved a young man who quickly became obsessively attached to his girlfriend. He followed her, broke into her home, and ultimately developed a fixed idea to kill her in a manner typical of the catathymic process.

Case 6.4: Stalking Homicide of a Girlfriend

A 22-year-old male (DD) killed his girlfriend (A) by multiple stabs to the neck during a car ride. Immediately following the homicide, the offender had fleeting thoughts of committing suicide but lacked the impetus to carry it out.

DD grew up in a working-class family with five siblings. The father was a lay preacher who was preoccupied with religion, as was DD. His mother was described as heavy set, aggressive, and the one “who ruled the roost.” DD dropped out of high school in the ninth grade, served 6 months in the military, but was administratively discharged because of emotional instability and various psychosomatic manifestations. Diagnostically, he fell within the spectrum of severe personality disorders with schizotypal and paranoid traits.

Throughout DD’s life, he was a loner with few friends. He felt shy and inferior and had serious difficulties relating to females. As a young boy, he was involved in a forced homosexual relationship that he equated to “a big sin.” Following this experience, he felt that sex was dirty, and he claimed it made him feel even more inferior. “I couldn’t make out with girls like the other guys; I liked to be alone by myself.” He had three prior sexual contacts before meeting A, but he was unsure whether he had intercourse since he was uncertain as to whether he had penetrated the woman. Several times DD attempted to sexually touch his younger sister. During his preteen years, he recalled hitting a girl cousin in the stomach but could not explain why he did it. When he was 15 or 16, a girl insulted him, and he grabbed and twisted her breast until she started crying.

DD and A dated for about 9 months before the homicide. When DD met A, she seemed to accept him immediately; he was surprised because of his previous experiences with members of the opposite sex. The courtship was marked by DD’s obsession with A and his attempt to control her. He not only stalked her but continuously tested her love and her interest in him. The relationship became intense shortly after they met, and he immediately became insecure, possessive, and threatening. He would check on A’s whereabouts, also requesting that she provide him with details of her past activities and friendships. He got angry if A went home from work a different way than usual or disobeyed one of his “orders.” On one occasion, the offender went to the home of A’s former boyfriend and told him that he had had sexual relations with A and that “she was no good.” On another occasion, he told A’s father “she is no good. She is a whore. She had sex with me and with E.” DD felt that he had to “own” A completely. He also broke into the cellar of A’s home to see whether he could find an alleged letter from a prior boyfriend in the garbage can. He even tried to check on A’s faithfulness by asking his friend to call her and attempt to make a date. Although she did not accept the date, A made some remarks damaging to DD, which also angered him. He always felt that she lied to him, told “fishy stories,” and may have been seeing another man.

There was frequent hitting, cursing, and yelling. Once DD hit A when the car in which they were driving came to a red light; she tried to jump out of the car, and he kept hitting her. He then asked her forgiveness. On another occasion, “I hit her out of the clear blue sky.” There were several other incidents of unprovoked minor assaults on A, followed by feelings of remorse. In general, DD found his relationship with A confusing. Her actions often enraged him and made him feel insecure and distressed.

The homicide was preceded on DD’s part by several weeks of strange fantasies, obsessional ideas regarding suicide, murder, and stalking. One afternoon, while driving with A over a bridge, DD told her jokingly that he would throw her off. On another occasion, he was in the car with her and her mother. He drove both to a local tavern, and after some talk, he felt like crashing the car. Several weeks prior to the homicide, he borrowed a knife, sharpened it, and told his friend to stay with him while he visited A. He did not want to go alone because “I was afraid I was going to hurt her.” DD increasingly experienced intrusive violent thoughts in which he felt like smashing A in the head with a bottle. He also had a bizarre fantasy of catching a snake, throwing it at A, and having the snake bite and kill her. He had daydreams of shooting A and of taking A to a reservoir and shooting and killing her, as well as other fantasies of hitting A’s younger sister with a belt. On another occasion, while he was kissing A, he bit her lip so hard that she bled. “I wondered why I was thinking about all this. Maybe I should have shot her and made an excuse when the cops came. I can’t understand it.”

The homicidal thoughts were becoming overpowering, and DD said he was “trying to fight them.” He threw his gun and bullets into the woods in an attempt to remove any weapons from his possession that could lead to A’s death. He later returned to pick up the gun. While he was there, he was rather surprised at his actions: “Holy cow! What am I doing in the woods with my shotgun? It was like a dream. Then I put the shotgun in my car and went back home.”

Three weeks prior to the homicide, DD cried in church.

When I am in church, I think of God, then I cry. I thought of leaving God out of my life.

I still have sin in me. I asked my pastor if I could see him. He told me to call him the next afternoon. So I told my father I wanted to use his car. I started crying. My father said, “What’s the matter?” I told him the devil was in me. Then I told the pastor what I had in mind. I also thought of shooting myself. The pastor prayed for me. All this came into my mind just like that.

The day before the homicide he put the shotgun in his father’s car and thought, “I am going to kill A.” All evening, while driving the car, it seemed to him that the scenery was moving but he did not move. He also felt that he had no sense of balance. While all these thoughts and actions were gaining momentum, he went to see his friend in order to reveal his plan. He still did not believe it was possible to act on his thoughts. His friend thought DD was joking.

On the day of the murder, DD brought a sharpened knife with him to a planned date with A. He had homicidal thoughts intermingled with some vague suicidal ideas, but the homicidal intention was now dominant and fixed. He picked up A; they changed cars, and he got into her car.

I don’t even know what was said. I grabbed her by the hand and told her to drive. Then I started unbuttoning her coat. I had her by the hair at the same time. Then I said I meant business. I felt different. I felt as if someone else was doing my movements. Then I said that we are going to drive on. I had my knife. I felt as if I was in a predicament. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I was looking at her. Looking at her throat. Then something happened. Like a bad dream, when you fall off a fence.

I was trying to stab her in the head. I felt like the weakest person in the world. Then a car blew the horn. I was in the driver’s seat then. I put the car in neutral. She yelled for help. I pulled her. My hands felt real cold. She grabbed the wheel. I was driving fast. It felt like there was no time at all. When she asked me to take her to the hospital, I asked, “A, what happened?” She said, “You stabbed me.” Then I put the knife between my legs. She said, “Please hurry.” I started going towards the hospital. She said, “Honey.” I said, “God will tell me what to do.” Then I asked her to show me the wound. There was a cut on her neck and on her arm. I asked myself what I was gonna do. I was afraid. I put my arms around her. I asked her to kiss me and she kissed me. Then I saw a police car.

I started driving again. But instead of going to the hospital, I went around the park. Then I saw a sign and went into the park. I was afraid. She said, “Honey, let’s go.” I picked up the knife. My heart was pounding. I had the knife in my hand. She said, “Stop. I am dead already.”

Then the knife fell out of my hand. I started reaching for the knife, but immediately I was afraid. Then she fell and sighed. Everything looked so different. I stopped the car and picked her up. She felt very light. All of a sudden she fell on the floor. I looked at her, and I thought it was a joke. What the heck did she try to prove. I said, “A,” but she didn’t answer, so I started cleaning up the blood. It was thick. It stunk. My mouth felt dry and hot. It never was like that before.

A was still lying there. Then I realized that she was dead. I was afraid. I did not remember stabbing her. I took my shotgun out of my car and put it in her car. Then I thought about getting a soda or about going to my pastor. Suddenly the thought came to my mind. “Now you have to kill yourself.” I loaded my gun and went on, but everything looked funny. I went to a cliff. I shot off the gun. I looked at A, touched her pulse, but there wasn’t any. I saw cigarettes on the floor. I finished my last cigarette, put the gun in the back, and went to the police. I told them I had killed my girlfriend. I left a note. “A and I have sinned together. I hope God will forgive us.” DD explained that the sin he referred to was “having sex.”

Following the murder itself, DD expressed a feeling of relief. “Now I don’t have A to worry about any longer.” He was emotionally flat during the evaluation and was most upset about having sinned by having sexual relations. He even claimed that he would fast on As birthday since he loved her so much. He was quite upset by the prosecution theory that he had planned the homicide. “They all think that I planned it. It was just in my mind. I never thought it would happen. I never really meant it.”

After serving 17 years in state prison for the homicide, DD was paroled. Within a year of his parole (at age 39), he succeeded in establishing a romantic relationship with another woman. A press report noted that he went to his new girlfriend’s home when she was out. There, he attacked a 27-year-old woman who lived in the same house, bound and gagged her, and put her in an upstairs bedroom. DD then waited for his new girlfriend’s return. When she entered the home, he shot and killed her and then committed suicide.

Unfortunately, the details of this new relationship remain unclear. Perhaps this was another catathymic homicide or, perhaps, it was the breakthrough of an underlying compulsion to kill, unleashed by the first homicide. The prior sadistic fantasies and unprovoked attacks against A, as well as other women, are typical of compulsive offenders.

The stalker who kills has been rarely studied and remains poorly understood, but the stalker who kills a relative stranger is even more enigmatic. Unlike cases in which there had been an intimate relationship between the stalker and the victim, relatively few instances of stalking homicide in which no such prior relationship existed have been reported. Schesinger and Mesa (2008) studied 17 cases of celebrities who were killed by their stalkers and found catathymic process to be an aid in differentiating those who are at the risk of actually acting out violently from those who had similar obsessive ideas but managed to control their behavior.

In the following case, described in detail by Schlesinger (2002a), a stalker kills a casual acquaintance, following months of obsessional preoccupation that developed into a fixed idea to kill the woman.

Case 6.5: Stalking Homicide of a Casual Acquaintance

A 28-year-old male (EE) stabbed and killed a 23-year-old female (B) whom he had stalked for less than a year. EE met the victim at church about a year prior to the homicide. He was immediately attracted to her. After several weeks, he drove by her home and began to “watch” her and her boyfriend. “I thought of her all the time. I could not get her out of my mind. It was her charm and smile. She was perfect. I was supposed to be her boyfriend.”

During the next 6 months, EE followed В to her job, began to telephone her with increased frequency, and repetitively asked her on dates which she politely declined, explaining that she had a boyfriend. One month prior to the homicide, EE called the victim three to five times a day asking her to go out with him. About 2 weeks before the homicide, an idea to kill В emerged spontaneously

when I was driving by her boyfriends house. I saw her car parked. It was right there I got the idea to kill her and kill myself. It was just an idea. I didn’t think it was possible for me to kill somebody. The idea was just a little bit; but the idea kept building. My life was pretty much empty without her.

About a week prior to the homicide, following an increase of stalking and telephone calls, В sent EE a letter. She explained that she had a boyfriend, planned to get married, and although she would like to have EE “as a friend,” she was not in love with him and did not want any type of romantic relationship. This letter triggered anger and a deep feeling of rejection in EE.

It belittled me. It made it look like there was nothing. I loved her.... I kept thinking of killing the both of us as the only thing to do. Now I felt I had to do it. There was no choice. The urge was so strong.

On the day of the homicide, EE went to B’s boyfriend’s house and spotted her carrying an infant.

I went to my car and picked up a knife I had in the trunk. Then she came out and said, “What’s going on?” She put the baby down that she was carrying and ran away. That’s when I stabbed her in the back. I don’t even know why. Then I started stabbing myself because I felt I wanted to die I wanted to put an end to it. I loved her so much. I was angry that she wasn’t mine. I thought about killing the both of us all the time. It’s better for both of us to die because I loved her and I didn’t want nobody to have her. I couldn’t imagine my life without her.

Not only did EE stab himself, but he resisted aid and tried to injure himself further by inserting his fingers into his abdominal wounds in an apparent attempt to pull out his internal organs. He was eventually placed in custody and transported to a local hospital, where he underwent surgery and recovered completely. Initially, EE told hospital and legal authorities that he killed his “girlfriend because she broke up with me for another man.” Finally, he told the truth, described a feeling of relief after the murder, but revealed embarrassment over what now seemed to him to be illogical thinking at the time.

Psychological testing was consistent with clinical impressions indicating that EE fell diagnostically within the schizotypal spectrum, characterized by introversion, excessive social isolation, and feelings of interpersonal alienation. Figure drawings were meager and revealed depression, inadequacy and immaturity (see Figure 6.2).

TAT stories were quite illuminating, with repetitive themes of sexual inadequacy leading to unfaithfulness and subsequent violence. The following TAT stories are illustrative:

Figure 6.2 Sketches by a man who stalked and killed a relative stranger. Depression, inadequacy, and immaturity are noted.

“Infidelity. She cheated on him. She cheated on him for sexual satisfaction. He probably beats her up when he finds out because he is insecure. He is not sure of himself.” “It looks like her husband is abusing her due to infidelity. She was unfaithful because he didn’t satisfy her.” “She is sexually bored. She will find somebody else. She will find another man to keep her happy. The new man will give her more sexual satisfaction.”

She has been raped and sexually abused. She left him because of his sexual performance. She underrated his performance. She didn’t get sexual satisfaction from him. He ends up killing her because she laughed at him. She said, “You are half a man.” He raped and killed her because she was about to leave him. He is insecure about finding another girlfriend for himself as beautiful as she is.

Interestingly, EE previously had thought to kill a former girlfriend but was able to control himself because “I didn’t love her as much [as B].” The obsessional ideas in the prior relationship were not as strong as with the current victim, and the stalking behavior associated with the first relationship was not as extensive. The homicide itself is a classic example of a chronic catathymic process within the context of depression. Applicable here is Meloy’s (1992) belief that the murder in such cases reverses an intolerable feeling of being controlled by the victim. Here, EE viewed the victim’s rejection of him as the ultimate form of control, and he attempted to regain some degree of control through violence.