"Warren" - ein Fallbeispiel

[Shadow Ghost]

New Information Following Arrest

In further interviewing after arrest, Warren confessed to additional murders. On 11 November 1975, a white, twenty-seven-year-old female was found beaten and shot one time over the eye in the convenience store where she worked.  Warren reported that he and his wife had bought gas at the convenience store.  He later returned, saw boys in the store, drove on, and returned when the boys were gone.  He went into the store and shot the clerk in the forehead.  He did not take any money.

On 16 April 1976, a white forty-four-year-old, blue-eyed, blond-haired, 170-pound woman clerk at a convenience store was reported missing at 2:50 A.M.  by the man delivering the morning papers.  The store was empty.  The woman's purse, containing $85, cigarettes, lighter, and glasses case, was in the store.  There was no sign of a struggle, nothing was disturbed, and nothing was out of place.

Three days later, the woman's naked body was found near an old abandoned farmhouse.  The body was lying face upward; her underclothes were around her ankle.  Both breasts had been removed and were lying between the legs.  There was a midline incision on the body as well as incised wounds on both legs. There was a bloodstained pathway leading away from the house.  A detective magazine was lying near the body and clutched in her right hand were dying kudzu vines. It appeared the killer returned to the scene to make cuts to the inner and outer thigh.  The coroner listed the cause of death as a hammer blow to the head.

Warren confessed he abducted the woman at gunpoint, taking her to the abandoned house.  He forced her to lay down on the ground after making her take her slacks and underpants off.  He then shot her in the face. He returned the next day, moving her closer to the house where he cut her in the stomach, cut off her breasts, and cut her legs.

[Shadow Ghost]

Trial Preparation

In preparing for trial, Warren's attorneys continually impressed upon him the seriousness of the charges against him and the need for him to search his background for anything out of the ordinary and to tell, if possible, when he began to act or feel abnormal.  After a pretrial hearing; Warren indicated his intent to talk.  As he talked he began to sweat profusely.  His body tensed and his eyes bulged out to about twice their normal size.  He began to shake violently and told his attorneys that two female teenagers raped him when he was twelve years old.  He did not know them and they did not go to his school.  He said he was walking along a road (the same small suburb where he was living at the time of the murders and where he grew up and where all the victims lived) late in the afternoon from school with a baseball glove in his hand.  He said the two women began walking beside him and started talking to him about having sex with him.  He said he resisted and they took him by the hand and led him into a grassy field near the road where they opened their shirts and one of them took her shorts off.  He said they tried to make him have an erection and he said that he "couldn't get it up-,, He said they kicked him in his testicles and really hurt him.  He said they threw him on the ground, one woman sat on him and the other one took off her shorts and placed her vagina over his mouth and, with a knife to his neck, made him "eat her out" (something he says he had never done before or since).  He said that after they let him go, he walked home in great pain and was forced by his parents to return to look for his ball glove, which he found near the area where he was
attacked.  When asked why he did not tell his parents, he said that his dad was always drunk and that "you never mentioned sex or anything like that" around his mother.

He told his attorneys that, on another occasion, he beat up a woman because she tried to get friendly with him and he was deathly afraid. He also said he shot one woman because she looked just like the woman who sat on top of him.  He said he returned to his crime scenes and cut on the women because he wanted them to feel pain, "pain like [the females] made me feel."

The attorneys learned about Warren's assault upon a fourteen-year-old girl before his entry into the military service.  His version was that he was about to have sexual relations with the girl when she became frightened and refused to cooperate.  He said he had intercourse with her on previous occasions and that she was promiscuous around the neighborhood.

Warren also confessed to murdering the elderly woman when he was an adolescent, a crime he had previously denied.  The murder gun, subsequently determined to have killed the elderly woman, was found several years later when his family house was torn down.

[Shadow Ghost]

Pretrial Psychiatric Examination: The Question of Sanity

A pretrial psychiatric examination of Warren was conducted and he was diagnosed as a severe schizoid personality with marked paranoid traits. Also found were necrosadistic traits and episodic discontrol.  Warren, it was concluded, was presently sane and competent to stand trial.  He knew the difference between right and wrong, he generally had the capacity to adhere to the right, and he could assist in his own defense. However, it was also considered possible that at the time the murders
took place, he had not been able to exercise sufficient control over himself to prevent himself from committing the offenses.

Because Warren had already confessed to the murders, his guilt or innocence in a literal sense was not at issue.  The question before the jury at trial was whether he was sane at the time the murders were committed.  If the jury were to find that he had been sane at that time, there was a strong possibility that the death penalty would be imposed. If the jury were to find he had been insane at that time, he could not be held criminally responsible for his acts. Defense counsel therefore stressed that although Warren was presently sane and could differentiate between right and wrong, at the time the murders took place he had been unable to control his behavior.  This inability, they claimed, was solely the result of mental illness and Warren was therefore not criminally responsible for his actions.

For the defense, one psychiatrist diagnosed Warren as being a schizoid personality with paranoid and necrosadistic features and episodic discontrol. He found Warren competent to stand trial.  He described Warren as operating at a level of relative detachment from interpersonal relationships, with an outward appearance of being calm and stable; however, at all times Warren was under massive intrapsychic conflicts and immense anxiety.  He possessed projective tendencies and erupted in violent behavior.  The psychiatrist believed Warren departed from reality at the times of the murders and stated that the murders were so gruesome that they must be considered acts of a psychotic person.  This psychiatrist testified that Warren's personality had always been poor in function and, at times, became so further disrupted that Warren became psychotic.  It was at those times that the murders occurred and Warren was unable to prevent himself from killing the women.

In attempting to explain why Warren committed the murders, the psychiatrist pointed to his background, making the following observations:

1.  Warren grew up in a home where women were in control and men were denigrated.
2.  Warren's traumatic victimization at age twelve by two older girls served to confirm his picture of the world.
3.  Warren's marriage to a woman with four children demonstrates his tendency to empathize more with children than adults and his feelings about mother figures.
4.  The timing of the murders indicated a rekindling of Warren's own childhood fears as a result of the events of pregnancy and childbirth; thus, he perceived it necessary to destroy these women in order to prevent his own destruction.
5.  The mutilation of his victims was an attempt to remove gender identification from his victims and render them nonfemale.

During an intense cross-examination, the prosecution established:

1 .  Warren's choice of female victims with a particular physical appearance demonstrated he could exert some control over his behavior.
2.  Had another person discovered Warren during the course of one of the murders, he probably would have been able to attempt to leave the scene and escape detection.
3.  Warren was sane between his periods of loss of control and that no known psychiatric program could reasonably be expected to be successful in treating Warren; consequently, he would, in all probability, continue his former pattern of behavior, and might even become more violent over time.

For the prosecution, a psychologist found Warren to be overcontrolled in emotional life, and his contact with reality adequate.  Warren used defense mechanisms of denial, repression, projection, and rationalization.  Warren was found to be highly ambivalent, emotionally immature, demanding, and threatened by adult role relationships and
close ties.  Warren was found to have control sufficiently intact to plan and execute the murders without endangering himself.  The diagnosis was mixed personality disorder characterized by paranoid and schizoid ideation.

Warren was found guilty on 9 August 1977 and sentenced to death on 7 September 1977.  The death penalty was imposed because the aggravating circumstances (the murders were especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel) outweighed mitigating circumstances (no mitigating circumstances such as, offender acting under duress, a consenting victim, or insane).

The conviction was appealed on several grounds.  First, it was claimed that Warren had committed the murders under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance, and this should have been taken into account as a mitigating factor in making the decision to impose the death penalty.  The court of criminal appeals rejected this argument and concluded that the trial court in this case had applied the aggravating/mitigating circumstances test appropriately, and then
correctly imposed the death penalty.

However, two other arguments made on appeal convinced the court of criminal appeals that the conviction should be reversed and the case remanded to the trial court for a new trial.  First, the remarks made by the prosecuting attorney were prejudicial.  The remarks in question related to the consequences that would result if the jury found Warren had been insane at the time he committed the murders.  A pretrial motion precluded the prosecutor from referring at trial to the fact that an insanity finding might allow Warren's immediate release since he was evaluated as presently sane.  It was further ruled that no reference was to be made to the fact that Warren had been released before and had subsequently committed these murders.  The reason for this ruling was that such references would have no value in providing whether Warren was
insane when he committed the murders, concededly the only question before the jury.  In closing remarks, the prosecutor stressed testimony that referred to Warren's current sanity.  The second ground for reversal concerned a problem with the wording of the verdict form. Warren had been indicted for rape and intentional killing.  The trial judge, however, instructed the jurors that if they found Warren guilty, the verdict form should read, "We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder as charged in the indictment and fix the punishment at death." This instruction, by itself, was considered improper because it theoretically asked the jury to find Warren guilty of a crime for which he had not been indicted.  To complicate things even further, the jury then returned a guilty verdict that read, "We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of capital murder as charged in the indictment and fix his punishment at death by electrocution."

If a jury found a defendant guilty of an offense not charged in the indictment, there was, under state law at the time, said to be a "fatal variance" between indictment and judgment.  The legal principle was that a defendant may never be convicted of a crime for which he has not been indicted.  Under those circumstances the judgment had to be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial.

There were concurring and dissenting opinions written by judges in the court of criminal appeals and the state supreme court.  One of the dissenters from the supreme court decision not to hear the case expressed the opinion that the wording of the jury's verdict was adequate to allow the trial judge to enter judgment, the only real requirement.  This is in contrast to the judge who wrote a special opinion concurring with the court of criminal appeals decision.  That judge would have rejected the prosecuting attorney's remarks as a ground for reversal, but he considered the "fatal variance" problem to have been enough in itself to justify the court's decision to reverse.

The prosecution petitioned the court of criminal appeals for a rehearing, but the petition was denied.  They then appealed to the state supreme court, which refused to hear the case.  Thus, the reversal and remand order stood and Warren was entitled to a new trial.

Warren was retried and found guilty in August 1981 and the death sentence was again imposed in September 1981.  The case was again appealed; the appeals court affirmed the guilty finding and the case then went to the state supreme court.  The case was again remanded to the trial court, this time for a review of the death sentence.  The certificate for remand was received in the circuit court in July 1984.  Also pending is a civil lawsuit brought by one of the victim's husband against the United States Board of Parole and the United States Bureau of Prisons.  In that lawsuit, the husband and children claim money damages for injury to them (i.e., being deprived of their wife/mother) caused by the negligence of government employees in releasing Warren when they were in possession of medical reports confirming him as a homicidal psychotic.

The second feedback filter was in operation during Warren's prison time and was activated upon his release from prison for the attempted murder conviction.  Our confidence that Warren's patterned responses had not been challenged and our understanding of the escalation of the sadistic violence was information as to his total resistance and refusal to any kind of psychotherapeutic intervention during his prison or parole time.  There were no reports of anyone talking to him about his preoccupation with murderous fantasies. These fantasies had not pushed him to where he thought he was abnormal or crazy; rather they continued to be a primary source of pleasure with which he identified.  They remained cognitively at the time of his release.

Three aspects of his second set of murders deserve comment: (1) the escalation of the violent fantasies, (2) his identification with his mother, and (3) the report of his adolescent rape victimization by two females.

Without psychiatric treatment to confront his fantasies, they persisted, intensified, and escalated during his prison time.  He had time to become more organized in planning the sequence of his crimes.  After release he committed three mutilation murders before being apprehended, indicating an escalation of violent bloody fantasies.  His planning and fantasy are noted in his revisiting of the crime scenes with every suggestion of sexual encounters with the dead body indicating his rational rather than irrational behavior.

Warren's marriage occurred after release from prison and represented complex dynamics related to his identification with his mother and his selection of wife and victims.  Warren's wife symbolically resembled his mother (a woman with four children).  His fantasies toward her led to an attempted murder that was missed by the systems (psychiatric and probation).  In the second series of crimes, there is the birth of his own child, followed by his sexual rejection of his wife (recall mother's behavior with father following Warren's birth).

Warren then selected victims outside of the family, repeating the behavior noted in the first feedback filter loop.  He knew the three victims in an oblique manner such as purchasing items from the store where they work.  As with the first murder victims, he then used his fantasy to build up a dialogue that ended in a justification for murder.
That the victims were not total strangers in his mind was the connection and identification with the mother.  She is there and she isn't there. He knows them but he doesn't.

With the first crimes, one significant event is his rape at adolescence by the two females.  The intriguing question is how to treat this rape memory.  One reaction is to disbelieve the account on the basis that deviant female sexuality does not usually manifest itself in such a manner.  One could argue that it was a projection of Warren's own
sadistic sexual inclinations.  Or it might be argued, if the account of rape were believed, that rather than two females, Warren was raped by two males but was unable to admit this fact.  If he believed as he reported, another question would be whether a psychic trauma at age twelve had the power to account for the destructive behavior evidenced by Warren.  His symptoms suggest it was a reality: the weight fluctuation (e.g., pregnancy fantasy) and the outburst of aggression through the rape and murder include his rage at being sexually inadequate.

[Shadow Ghost]

Model Summary

When adolescent and adult criminals are studied in terms of the contribution of past events to their criminality, the emphasis in earlier studies has been on the event itself, rather than on the subject's response and reaction to the event.  Our motivational model suggests that unaddressed traumatic and early damaging experiences to the murderers as children set into motion certain thinking patterns. Although there may be initial attempts to work through the troublesome effects of the experience, these attempts become patterns for limiting choices.  In addition, a structure of thinking begins to emerge that motivates and sustains deviant behavior through developmental and interpersonal failure and through the alliance of distorted perceptions. Of particular importance is the activation of aggression and its link to sexual expression.  The lack of attachment to others gives a randomness to the sexual crimes; however, scrutiny of the thinking patterns of the offenders indicates that there is planning in these crimes, whether the men rely on chance encounters with any victim or whether they plan to snare victims.  Although the crimes themselves are premeditated, the choice of victim is generally impersonal and a result of chance selection.  If lacking in evidence of sexual assault, the crime appears random and motiveless; the killer's internal fantasy motivating his actions remains unknown.

To summarize these points to the case of Warren, his sense of entitlement, derived from his family environment (demanding whatever he wanted), combined with a role reversal (relegating father ineffective with mother) and narcissistic rage at any infringment in this area (family violence).

We next hear of his teenage activities with his neighborhood peers, an involvement not to be confused with friendships.  Teenagers with gang mem bership often have empty relationships, feeling different or separate because of their preoccupations and fantasy interests and juvenile delinquency is an outlet (for example, Warren's autobiography quotes).  Warren advances to major crimes of rape and murder in frustration over being identified for the purse-snatching.  He is furious when betrayed by the elderly lady and the fourteen-year-old girl.  The entitlement surfaces and he justifies the rape by projecting the girl to be consenting and/or promiscuous.  For the
murder, he thinks to himself: She criticizes me; she is berating me; therefore, I am justified in killing her.  There is also a linkage to the peer group: He proved he could rape
and kill.  Neither peers nor parents betrayed him; both provided protection and alibis.  The childhood indulgence by the parents is the psychopathy; he learns he can get away with murder.  He becomes bolder in his violence.

Separated from parental protection, his next known violent act catches him.  Physical evidence links him to the crime and he is convicted.

Once inside prison, pressure is applied for his release.  He claims innocence and begins the appeal process.  The justice system responds fairly to Warren and his mother's letters to high-placed persons and the conviction holds.  In prison, he is not held accountable for his actions; he maintains his innocence, which divides and confuses the psychiatric evaluators.  Only one evaluator fully appreciates his dangerousness; the majority voted for clemency and he is released after finishing one-third of his sentence.  There is no evidence that psychiatric intervention has touched his patterned responses and violent fantasies.

In the community, both the mental health counselor and probation officer are totally unaware of the sexually violent thoughts and behaviors and permit all external controls to be terminated, at which time his third murder is discovered and he is again apprehended and convicted.  The justice system is tested a second time; a retrial held; and the appeal to the death sentence is still pending.

[Lestrade]

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