An Empirical Test of Holmes and Holmes’s Serial Murder Typology
By David Canter, N. Wentink. 2004
121 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This article presents the results of an empirical test of Holmes and Holmes’s serial murder classification scheme. Crime scene evidence from 100 U.S. serial murders, each the third in a distinct series, was content analyzed. The co-occurrence of content categories derived from the crime scene material was submitted to smallest space analysis. The features characteristic of the category of “power or control” killings were found to be typical of the sample as a whole, occurring in more than 50% of cases, and thus did not form a distinct type. Limited support was found for aspects of the lust, thrill, and mission styles of killing, but this support drew attention to differences in the ways victims were dealt with, through mutilation, restraints, or ransacking their property rather than the motivations implicitly inferred in Holmes and Holmes’s typology. The current results are presented as an empirical basis for the classification of serial killings on which more detailed models can be built.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/669ae84a04bcb3122d1c603ad399840d8c72b501
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In Clinical Psychology
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Behavioural crime linking in serial homicide (2008, background): “However, Canter and Wentink (2004) argue that more emphasis should be put on observable features of how the offender interacted with the victim rather than on inferences about the motives of the offender.”
- Prostitutes as Victims of Serial Homicide: Trends and Case Characteristics, 1970-2009 (2011, methodology): “The present search strategy for verifying case information is similar to that done by others (Brewer et al, 2006 for prostitute homicides, Missen, 2000, as described in Canter & Wentink, 2004 for serial murder cases, Dudek et al., 2009, for single and serial murder cases involving prostitutes).”
- Offender profiling and investigative psychology (2004, background): “Canter, Alison, Alison & Wentink (2004) reveal the weaknesses the organised/disorganised dichotomy and Canter & Wentink (2004) show that Holmes and Holmes’ five-fold classification scheme is only marginally more successful.”