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JOURNAL OF IN'TERPERSONAL. VIOLENCE / September 1986 @ likely to think out and plan the crime, @ likely w be angry and depressed at the time of the murder, @ likely to have a precipitating stress (financial, marital, female, job) ® likely to have a car in decent condition, ® likely to follow crime events in media, and @ likely to change jobs or leave town. Disorganized offenders are more likely to @ be low birth order children, © come from a home with unstable work for the father, e have been treated with hostility as a child, © besexually inhibited and sexually ignorant, and to have sexual aversions, e have parents with histories of sexual problems, have been frightened and confused at the time of the crime, ® know who the victim is, @ live alone, and e have committed the crime closer to home/work. The analysis established the existence of variables that may be useful in a criminal profile and for which the organized and disorga- nized sexual murderers differ and thus met the study’s second objective. VICTIMS OF ORGANIZED AND DISORGANIZED SEXUAL MURDERERS The organized/disorganized dichotomy provided a new context for analyzing the victim-murderer interaction. Rather than using the traditional view of victim focused on the concept of precipitation and provocation as interpreted by criminologists from police reports ofa murder, we examined our data of murdered victims from the percep- tions of the offenders who had killed them. Thus our view is on victim response by type of offender analyzed through crime scene evidence. Data were obtained for 118 victims, 9 of whom survived murder attempts. The majority of victims in the sample were white (93%), female (82%), and not married (80%). Ages for 113 victims ranged from 6 to 73 (ages were unavailable for 5 victims). Of the victims, 14, or 12%, were 14 years old or younger; 83, or 73%, were between 15 and 28 years old; and 16, or 14%, were 30 years or older. Thus the majority of victims (73%) were between ages 15 and 28, which matches the age range for rape victims in general. 73