Dismemberment as a method of body disposal : behavioural profiling and analysis of manner of mutilation

The dismemberment of corpses can be interpreted in different ways: it is commonly used as a method of body concealment but may be the sign of a psychological need, and part of the signature of the murderer; thus dismemberment can be related both to single individuals and to organised crime. The classification of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, though too schematic, is useful for the specific study of dismemberment. Whereas among organized crime killers dismemberment can be explained by a perverse disposition which can be seen as a form of paraphilia, in individual killers a psychotic pathology is more frequent. Five forms of dismemberment are recognized by criminology: Dismemberment for practical purposes; Dismemberment under the effects of drugs (usually cocaine, amphetamines and derivatives); Dismemberment by sadistic impulse; Dismemberment by severe psychotic pathology; Dismemberment of so-called lust killers. Lust killers are the most interesting subjects under the psychopathological point of view. Lust homicides are different from the sadistic ones,because they more often concern an aggression with dismemberment of breasts, rectum or genitalia). Dismemberment usually occurs in the postmortal period and the murder is part of the sexual impulse which can be explained by the need to destroy the victim rather than kill him or her. Different categories may be present in the same subject and the choice of dismemberment can be explained both by the need to conceal the body and by paraphilic traits of personality. The authors here wish to describe four cases of voluntary dismemberment encountered in the past 15 years at the Institute of Legal Medicine of Milano, which involved also forensic anthropologists.