title: Signature murders: a report of several related cases.
abstract: Three female patrons of singles bars were murdered in separate events in Bellevue, Washington in 1990 within sixty-seven days of each other. An evaluation of those murders revealed that all the murders were linked by a distinct personal "signature" or "calling card" left by the killer. As reported in the literature, the modus operandi of a killer frequently changes from one murder to the next and is different from the killer's signature, which is a permanent psychological imprint at each scene. The murder cases reported here demonstrate an elaborate signature of one killer who engaged in a rare personalization of his necrophilic fantasies by posing, openly displaying, and sexually inserting foreign objects into each one of three victims' bodies.
authors.affiliation: Washington State Attorney General's Office, Seattle, USA.
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Keppel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006708:Homicide / Q000145:classification* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans