title: Frequency of serial sexual homicide victimization in Virginia for a ten-year period.
abstract: The frequency of serial sexual murder has been widely discussed, and estimates of the number of victims in the United States range from 500 to 6000 per year. This study attempted to quantify the number of serial sexual murder victims in Virginia for a ten-year period. Multiple sources of data were utilized, including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) case files, FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) reports, Virginia State Police ViCAP reports, Virginia Homicide Investigators Association, and the Virginia Division of Forensic Science DNA database, to effectively cull out all the known serial sexual murder victims for the given time period. Review of these records revealed a total of 28 victims of serial sexual murder, compared with a total of 5183 murder victims for the same ten-year period. The frequency of serial sexual victimization was 0.5% of all homicides for the given period. These results highlight the unusual frequency of serial sexual murder.
authors.affiliation: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, FBI Academy, Quantico, VA, USA.
authors.forename: James J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: McNamara
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Morton
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005554:Forensic Medicine; D005555:Forensic Psychiatry; D006708:Homicide / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010262:Paraphilic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014768:Virginia / Q000453:epidemiology