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Culturally sanctioned child homicide practices arid criminally motivated acts of child murder result in thousands of juvenile deaths each year. Whereas research elucidating the causes and mechanisms underlying child abuse and neglect has gained national recognition and prominence, studies specifically addressing child homicide have historically been scant. Recently, however, comprehensive empirical studies have facilitated the examination of child homicide as a successional, life course process of victimization. Although homicidal deaths occur in children of all ages, risks and dynamics are not uniform. Child homicide incidence is generally bimodal, peaking in early childhood and late adolescence, periods characterized by intense competition and social rivalry. Analogous patterns of conspecific lethality have also been noted in many nonhuman primates and other social vertebrates. Although not mitigating human responsibility, descriptive comparative analyses of the behavioral changes inherent in juvenile growth and development, childhood socialization, and social competition can provide valuable insights into the proximate and ultimate causation of child homicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The FBI consults regularly on the investigation of extraordinarily violent and unusual homicide cases. Although overall awareness of elderly victimization throughout the United States has greatly increased over the past decade, little attention has been focused on elderly female victims of sexual homicides and the offenders who commit these crimes. Law enforcement agencies are often faced with rarely seen and excessively violent crime scenes as they attempt to solve these homicides. This in-depth study examines the characteristics of 128 elderly women who were murdered by 110 offenders as well as the characteristics of the attendant crime scenes. An empirical analysis of crime scene attributes, victim characteristics (including severity of victim injuries), and offender demographics produces significant predictive information about offender characteristics that may assist law enforcement investigations of such cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines existing research on the topics of child abduction and child homicide by assessing potential victim risk factors. It discusses victim access, vulnerability, and routine activities theory. It informs that children of certain ages or genders are more likely to be targeted by offenders. It also investigates about offenders in child homicides and relationships between offenders and their victims. It discusses ecological perspectives on child homicide and includes the concepts of competition, predation, and developmental victimology. It further informs that research that addresses these questions directly benefits law enforcement personnel, social workers, and forensic scientists actively working child homicide cases, and social scientists involved in the formulation of child homicide prevention programs and policies. In addition, this information helps improve prevention programs designed to protect children, helps children protect themselves, and provides potential avenues for identifying offenders in such cases.

The article focuses on various aspects of violent serial crime. Early research efforts on serial offending could be characterized as being concerned with either chronicling cases of serial homicide or exploring the psychological dysfunctions associated with serial killers. This research was primarily descriptive in nature, and typically only involved the analysis of a limited number of cases. By the latter part of the 1980s, the focus of research on violent serial offending had started to expand, in part out of recognition that there was considerable variation in patterns of serial crime. Researchers began to explore differences in offender attributes and behaviors, as well as offense characteristics. However, despite these noted advances, traditional academic research on serial crime has slowed in recent years. This may be in large part due to the lack of reliable data on violent serial crime. Moreover, there is some disparity in the existing literature as to what exactly constitutes serial crime, and more specifically serial murder. Some of this disparity involves differences in the number of victims necessary to qualify as a serial crime or the temporal elements required.