U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Rarity of "Unusual" Dispositions of Victim Bodies: Staging and Posing

NCJ Number
207716
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 49 Issue: 6 Dated: November 2004 Pages: 1308-1312
Author(s)
Robert D. Keppel Ph.D.; Joseph G. Weiss Ph.D.
Date Published
November 2004
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This paper discusses the nature and purpose of a killer's staging and posing of the victim's body in an unusual position.
Abstract
"Staging" occurs when the killer manipulates the conditions of the crime scene in order to make it more difficult for the investigators to identify the killer, who may be a logical target of an investigation. Common staging efforts attempt to make a homicide appear to be a suicide or an accident. Other staging scenarios are designed to make the victim's death appear to be a sex-related homicide or the result of an accidental fire. An actual example of staging is described. "Posing" involves the killer's positioning of the victim's body as a photographer would position a subject for a photograph. Common purposes of posing are to leave the victim in a sexually degrading posture to shock the finders of the body or police investigators or to satisfy a psychological need of the killer. An actual example of posing is presented. Based on an analysis of 1981-2000 homicide data from the Washington State Attorney General's Homicide Investigation Tracking System, this study concludes that finding a victim's body in an unusual position due to posing or staging is a rare occurrence among murders. Given the rarity of such cases, it is impossible to conduct valid statistical analyses of the characteristics of such cases; however, descriptive analyses of these cases are possible. This study identifies similar characteristics of victims that are posed and those that are staged in terms of age, race, and gender, as well as the profile of the killer, the type of crime, and the weapon used. 11 references