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JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE / September 1986 identity. Although this kind of crime has existed throughout history (Lunde 1977), the number of such murders has never been as high(Ressler et al., 1985). According to the 1984 FBI Uniform Crime Report, 22.1% of murders com- mitted in the reporting year had an unknown motive as analyzed by law enforcement. This figure takes on added meaning when it is compared to earlier reporting figures. In 1976, murders with an unknown motive repre- sented 8.5% of all murders, 17.8% in 1981, and 22.1% in 1984 or an increase of 160% in an 8-year period. Such seemingly motiveless murders were first covered extensively by the stalked victims, apparently chosen at random, and killed them with a .44 caliber pistol. Since then there has been considerable attention to these types of murders. People fear becoming the next random victim of these violent, often grisly crimes. Sexual homicide results from one person killing another in the context of power, control, sexuality, and aggressive brutality. The psychiatric diagnosis of sexual sadism, sometimes applied to the victimizer, states that the essential feature of this deviant behavior (i.e., paraphilia) is the infliction of physical or psychological suffering on another person in order to achieve sexual excitement It has been difficult to gather dependable statistics on the number of sexual homicide victims for several reasons: (1) the victim is officially reported as a homicide statistic and not as a rape assault (Brownmiller, 1975; MacDonald, 1971), (2) there is a failure to recognize any underlying sexual dynamics in a seemingly "ordinary" murder (Cormier & Simons, 1969; Revitch, 1965), (3) those agencies that investigate, apprehend, and assess the murderer often fail to share their findings, curtailing the collective pool of knowledge on the subject (Ressler, Douglas, Groth, & Burgess, 1980), and (4) conventional evidence of the crime's sexual nature may be absent. When law enforcement officials cannot readily determine a motive for murder, they examine its behavioral aspects. In developing techniques for profiling murderers, FBI agents have found that they need to understand the thought patterns of murderers in order to make sense of crime scene evidence and victim information. Characteristics of evidence and victims can reveal much about the murderer's intensity of planning, preparation, and follow. through. From these observations, the agents begin to uncover the murderer's motivation, recognizing how dependent motivation is to the killer's domi- nant thinking patterns. In many instances, a hidden, sexual motive emerges, a motive that has its origins in fantasy. The role of fantasy in the motive and behavior of suspects is an important factor in violent crimes, especially sexual murders (Ressler et al., in press). In the last 20 years, the role of sadistic fantasy has been explored in severa! studies (Brittain, 1970; Reinhardt, 1957; Revitch, 1965, 1980; West, Roy, & 40