Part 15 (1/2)

There were thirty-five white males, five African Americans, and a single Hispanic in Roy's sample. They had committed between ten and seventy-eight s.e.xual a.s.saults each, and ranged in age at the time of their interviews from twenty-three to fifty-five years.

The youngest victim was five years of age; the oldest was sixty-five.

The first apparent clue to their success was intellect. Of the thirty-three for whom intelligence testing was available, all but four scored average or better. Nine were ”bright normal” and eight more were ”superior or very superior.”

Part of that intelligence was expressed in their eagerness to learn.

”Some of them told me that they went to rape prevention seminars to find out what women were being told,” says Hazelwood. ”They wanted to figure out ways of circ.u.mventing what experts were suggesting to women.”

The rapists' second important shared characteristic was patience. They were, for the most part, organized offenders like Barry Simonis. Fewer than one in four described his a.s.saults as impulsive or opportunistic.

But there was also an important subgroup that Hazelwood identified, a handful of impulsive rapists with low IQs who nevertheless had been quite successful in avoiding arrest.

Their key to success was more difficult to quantify. Roy calls it street smarts, the kind of animal cunning displayed by the anger retaliatory rapist who recounted to Roy the violent rape he committed in the hospital women's room.

Most of the forty-one told Hazelwood they adjusted their MOs over time. Across their early, middle, and late-stage a.s.saults, the rapists learned that one of the best places to a.s.sault a woman is in her home. They gradually reduced the number of riskier attacks they committed on the street or in alleyways.

”Many of the rapists told me, 'The woman feels safest in her home, but when I get her in that bedroom, there's four walls and me, and that's all there is.' ”

The serial rapists also consistently a.s.saulted strangers, rather than acquaintances or neighbors who might be able to identify them.

Roy asked the rapists about their initial contact with victims, a critical component of their MOs.

He differentiates an offender's approach into three general types: ”the con,” ”the blitz,” and ”the surprise.”

The con, just as the name implies, is the friendly, at-ease advance, something as simple as asking a woman for directions, or if she'd like to dance. Any pretense will do. Impersonating a police officer is a very common con approach.

”Prior to his arrival in Florida, Bundy used the con approach,” Roy explains, ”as part of his ritual to select 'worthy' victims. Actually, it was practically a necessity for him to convince them to go willingly with him.”

The second type Roy calls the blitz, although the term has nothing to do with suddenness. The blitz a.s.sault is brutal, whether short-lived or long. It might be as instantaneous as a stunning blow to the victim's head, or as protracted as strangulation to unconsciousness, then choking and then application to the victim's mouth of a fatal dose of anesthetic, such as chloroform.

The blitz approach is frequently seen among anger retaliatory rapists.

The third method is the surprise approach, in which the offender selects his victim and then lies in wait for her-in her car, in her residence, in her backyard garden, anywhere he can get her alone for a moment.

Typically, he will come upon the victim from behind, produce a knife, and promise her she will not be hurt if she does as he says. The surprise approach is most often used by the power rea.s.surance rapist. He relies on the threat of harm, not pain or injury, to secure his victim's cooperation.

For the forty-one serial rapists in his study, the incidence of blitz attacks dropped from 23 percent in the early offenses to 17 percent among the last rapes. Surprise approaches fell from 54 percent to 44 percent, while the most sophisticated approach, the con, rose from 24 percent to 41 percent.

Those who used minimal physical force and relied instead on the threat of violence to control their victims did so consistently across all three phases.

Yet the survey showed that a minority of offenders, like Barry Simonis, do escalate their violence. Ten of the forty-one rapists increased their violence over time.

Roy zeroed in on these ten, hoping to find root causes for their escalation. He was surprised to find none. There were no significant differences in these rapists' personal histories that were predictive of escalation. Whether or not a parent was physically abusive, for example, would not necessarily determine if their son would be violent, too.

However, those who did escalate their violence also committed the most rapes; increasers averaged forty victims, while nonincreasers averaged twenty-two.

They also a.s.saulted more frequently, every nineteen days as opposed to every fifty-five days.

”It's obvious,” says Hazelwood, ”that a police jurisdiction should give priority to UNSUBs who are increasing the level of violence each time. They'll a.s.sault twice as many victims as a nonincreaser in about one-third the time.”

None of the forty-one decreased their violence over time.

The most common nons.e.xual offense on the serial rapists' rap sheets was breaking and entering or attempted burglary. Reason: ”If law enforcement can't prove attempted rape,” Roy explains, ”they'll charge him with something they can prove.”

About three-fourths of the rapists reported multiple paraphilias, as Simonis had. Twenty-one of the men were compulsive masturbators. Twenty-six said they collected detective magazines and violent p.o.r.nography.

The responses suggested these rapists commit their crimes largely indiscriminately. Of the forty-one rapists, 15 percent said the victim's attire was a reason for the a.s.sault; 39 percent cited race; 95 percent cited gender; and all but one rapist said that victim availability was the reason she was a.s.saulted. A quarter of the survey sample said they had no specific criteria at all for choosing victims.

The best-educated of the group was a black professional, who stands out as one of Hazelwood's more intriguing interviews, too.

”When I walked in the door,” Roy recalls of this visit, ”I said, 'My name is Hazelwood.'

”He said, 'I know who you are. You're Roy Hazelwood.' ”

Roy asked why he knew his name.

”When I was raping I did a literature search on you,” the inmate answered. ”I've read everything you've written.”

Martin Mason* was one of only five serial rapists who would not allow his interview to be audiotaped.

As a youth, he had been something of a black Horatio Alger hero, extremely bright and highly motivated. His father was imprisoned when Mason was young. His mother, a professional woman, made tremendous personal sacrifices to make sure her son made it through graduate school and into his highly paid profession.

The first of Mason's paraphilias to surface was voyeurism.

He told Roy he used to window-peep his mother when she played bridge with her friends. He also peeped on his favorite male schoolteacher as he ate dinner or watched television with his family.

Mason said his fantasy was to walk up to this teacher's door with a .38 and shoot him. When he told his mother about the fantasy, she said, ”Well, you'll grow out of it.”

Mason was full of self-loathing and anger.

”What I could discern from that interview was that he believed he was eventually going to screw up because he was black,” Hazelwood remembers. ”And he felt there was nothing he could do about it.”

Mason told Roy he tried in various unsuccessful ways to cope with his deviant impulses. When he raped for the first time, he rationalized that if he acted out every one of his fantasies-which included torture and simulated murder (Mason was a s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t)-then perhaps he'd be sated and could stop.

When that didn't work, he tried audiotaping an a.s.sault.

”Then anytime I wanted to rape I reasoned I could play it back and m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e to it,” he said to Hazelwood.

However, what he heard was so horrendous he could not bear to listen. So he erased the tape.

”Did you destroy it, too?” Roy asked.

”No, I just erased it,” Mason answered.

”Why?”