Part 14 (2/2)

The forty-one rapists who sat down for the open-ended interviews, which lasted between four and a half and twelve and a half hours, were a predictably strange, and highly various, group. In all, they had committed 837 known rapes, plus an additional 400 attempted rapes.

One of Roy's biggest surprises in a survey that would be full of unantic.i.p.ated results was that only one of the offenders said that he himself had been s.e.xually abused as a child.

Yet by their responses to his next question-”With whom and at what age did you have your first s.e.xual experience?”-it was evident that thirty-one of the men, 76 percent of the sample, were in fact s.e.xually victimized as youngsters.

One rapist said that his first s.e.xual contact occurred at age fifteen with his girlfriend's mother, who began a yearlong affair with him. Although she was a willing bed partner, she forced him to withdraw from her before he spent himself. She then would m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e the boy to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

Later, when he started raping, he also would have his victims m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e him-in handcuffs.

”I was seven years of age when my mother hired a knockout baby-sitter, who was twenty-one,” said another. ”She taught me how to go down on her.”

A third inmate said that his initiation to s.e.x came at age nine with a child molester. Each week at the movies, he told Roy, he had allowed the older man to fondle him in return for a ticket, refreshments, and two dollars.

Overall, s.e.xual abuse committed against these men by family members was fairly evenly divided between male and female relatives. s.e.xual abuse by outsiders, however, almost invariably was committed by males.

One offender, Tim,* described how he had been repeatedly raped by his father until Tim was eleven. That's when Dad, a serial rapist, found other uses for his boy.

He took his son with him into bars (shades of M. P. Redd.i.c.k) where Tim drank c.o.kes and watched as his father chose his prey for the night. At closing time, Dad would suggest to a woman that she join him and his son for breakfast. Tim's presence usually put the intended victim at ease, and she'd agree.

But instead of heading for an IHOP, his father would drive to a graveyard, where he raped and tortured the woman in the backseat as Tim looked on in front. Once finished, Dad would direct Tim to carry out an a.s.sault of his own.

At first, the boy was frightened.

”I was terrified,” he said. ”But I remember one woman telling me to do what my father said, 'or he's going to hurt me worse.' ”

”Was there any significance to the choice of graveyards?” Roy asked.

”Police don't usually patrol them,” he answered.

By about age thirteen, Tim said, he had changed. He started looking forward to the attacks, hoping his father would finish quickly, ”so I could have her.”

It wasn't until he was fourteen and began to discuss s.e.x with his peers in school that Tim learned s.e.xual intercourse ever occurred with warmth and affection between willing partners. This was a profound revelation for him.

Two years later, his father raped Tim's girlfriend, and the young man finally broke away from home. But his pattern had been set. Tim was by now a habitual rapist himself, different from his father only in that he always stopped short of physically brutalizing his victims.

To him, that was an important distinction, he told Roy.

He continued to rape even after enlisting in the army and becoming a military policeman in Korea. After returning to the United States, Tim joined a major East Coast police force. While a cadet officer in the training academy, he committed so many s.e.xual a.s.saults that a special task force of his fellow officers was created in the unsuccessful hope of hunting down the phantom UNSUB.

They never did.

Tim finally quit the police department, he told Hazelwood, because of the huge physical cost of working during the day and raping at night. ”I was so exhausted, I couldn't stay awake,” he said.

Finally he was captured, convicted, and sentenced to prison, where he served seven years. Upon his release, Tim found a job managing a bowling alley, and married.

All apparently went smoothly for him for two years and Tim began to believe he had conquered his deviant urges. Then one night, he called his wife to say he was picking up a couple steaks and a bottle of wine. She was to ”get ready,” he said.

As he was driving home, Tim stopped at a light where he happened to glance at a woman in another car. Suddenly, the old violence was reawakened in him and Tim chose not to resist it.

Instead of continuing on home to his waiting spouse, Tim followed the woman, stopped her, and raped her.

”My boyfriend's going to kill you for this,” she said after he finished.

Again, the old behavior boiled up. Tim mercilessly beat the victim with his fists, and raped her again, this time a.n.a.lly.

However, even as he was committing the a.s.sault, Tim was. .h.i.t with a horrifying realization.

”My G.o.d, this is exactly what my father did,” he thought. ”I'm turning into my father!”

With that he stopped, walked to his car, and drove away, allowing the victim ample opportunity to write down his license number, which she did. He subsequently was caught, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

”Why did you allow yourself to get caught?” Roy wanted to know.

”I didn't care anymore,” Tim answered.

Another serial rapist taught Roy that even deviants can have a code of conduct.

This inmate recalled the night his mother had bailed him out of jail. She later helped him celebrate his release with some marijuana and a bottle of Jim Beam.

Mother was dressed only in her bra and panties.

In time, she pa.s.sed out, or at least she seemed to. Her son thought to exploit the situation, and began to undo her bra.

She stirred at his touch.

”What are you doing?” she asked him.

”I'm gonna f.u.c.k you,” he answered.

She slapped him hard several times. ”No son of mine is going to do that!” she shouted.

”So I stabbed her three times and killed her,” he told Roy.

Hazelwood nodded, then asked, ”Well, did you rape her?”

The inmate stared at Hazelwood, a confused, hostile look in his eye.

”Did you hear what I said?” the rapist finally said.

”You said you stabbed her three times, but did you then rape her the way you originally intended?”

”Jesus, no!” the prisoner finally snapped, shocked that this FBI agent would think him capable of both incest and necrophilia.

”I didn't rape her! I just killed my own mother!”

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