Over the past six weeks, Boston has endured two abduction cases involving two young women-Jassy Correia and Olivia Ambrose.  Both had gone to clubs in Boston to enjoy a night out and became the victims of violent sexual predators who were driven by the desire for power, control, and the need to fulfill some abnormal sexual attraction.

These types of crimes committed against adults are rare in nature-- most abductions involve children who are abducted by parents that have no sexual motive. But, when these crimes do happen against older victims, they are more violent than child abductions due to the fact that most of these offenders have some form of mental illness combined with abnormal sexual fantasies that contributes to the brutality of the treatment of their victim. Victor Pena, who abducted 23 year old Olivia Ambrose a little over six weeks ago, is a prime example of this dangerous combination of factors.

Both Victor Pena, and Louis Coleman-the abductor of Jassy Correira—most likely had paraphilia’s, which are abnormal sexual attractions that can range from beatings, binding, rape, mutilation or some combination. Brutal violence is used in many of the cases to show dominance over the victim and to control their actions. These violent abductors sometimes become serial in nature due to the thrill and sense of power they get from controlling their victims.

Despite the rarity of these types of crimes, they generate a significant amount of fear for people due to the random nature of the act.  What needs to be done to help decrease fear is to increase the safety of the area, and surrounding areas, where the crimes took place.  We need to create a safe zone for women to feel confident that nothing is going to happen to them when they go out in public. A greater police presence, or private security, at public places to help detect predators and odd behaviors amongst those in attendance is also needed. Increased video surveillance in public places such as bars and dance clubs is also needed to monitor the actions of those who attend. These public safety actions are put into place in casinos and day care centers to protect the public from predators and therefore should also work on places attended by young adults.

Another long-term solution is to increase the penalties of these crimes within the criminal justice system to deter future perpetrators from committing similar acts.  If the #me too movement has taught us anything, it is that violent crimes against women are not taken seriously enough in the CJ system and that tougher penalties should be in place to protect women from all kinds of violent crimes. 

Kevin Borgeson is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Salem State University and is the co-author of the book Serial Crime in Theory and in Practice.

 Over the years, the Internet has proven to be both good and bad. On the positive side, the net allows us to get the news, talk to others who are far away, use social media, and use search engines to do research. The problem is that these same features can be used by extremists to spread bigotry, xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism. The recent events by Robert Bowers, the racist gunman who killed eleven and wounded six, demonstrates exactly how this toxic mix helped lead to one of the worst hate crimes in the 21stcentury history.

Robert Bowers was a habitual user of Gab, a media platform that allows bigots who have been kicked off of other internet and social media platforms, to spread their views of hate and anti-Semitism, allowing users to feed off of each other’s hate and, in the end, increasing their anger and frustration.  The power of the net and social media was apparent at the Charlottesville rally were protesters used twitter and web sites to spread ideas to like-minded bigots about attending the rally and to inflict violence on the left. As a result of the violence at the rally, web providers and social network sites began shutting down accounts to stop the spread of hate. As a result, Gab was created by Andrew Toba in the summer of 2016 to provide a platform for individuals to express their biased views.

On Bowers’ Gab account, he made comments stating, “Open your Eyes! It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”  Online Bowers began making conspiratorial comments that the Jews ran the government and were secretly bringing Muslims to the United States and that their goals were to destroy “white civilization” and that this would eventually lead to the eventual demise of “Western Civilization”—this is what the racists refer to as “white genocide”. Bowers is not alone. The net, over the last couple of years, has seen an increase in cyber-hate because hate group, and the alt-right, have worked to reach a larger global audience. Organized hate groups have become tech savvy, the net and social media are their plat forms to incite violence and have others do their dirty work.  Their use of the net is to be expected given that 51% of the world’s population—which equates to 3.2 billion people--have access to net and can go on these hate sites. 

This is not to say that the net needs more regulating.  What needs to be done is more monitoring by site providers. This type of cyber-hate being shared only leads to larger problems; like Dylann Roof, the mass shooter who opened fire on blacks attending service at the African Methodist Church, learned and was fed more hate by like-minded bigots, who met online and used social media. More education needs to be done to combatting hate online as well. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty law center are doing this and more people need to become savvy to detecting hate sites. Only education will help prevent future incidents like the Pittsburgh massacre from happening again.

Kevin Borgeson is the Faculty Research Fellow at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University.  Robin Maria Valeri is Professor of Psychology at St. Bonaventure University.  They are the editors of the book: Hate Crimes: Typology, Motivations, and Victims.

Recently, Stewart Weldon was arrested for the kidnapping of a women in Springfield who he viciously beat and raped for over a month at his home.  After the police officers made the arrest of Weldon, they investigated Weldon’s residency and made the grisly discovery of three dead women who have recently been identified by law enforcement. A day later, another woman came forward making the accusation that Weldon had kidnapped her; but, let her go. Although this does not happen that often, it is not uncommon for this to happen if the victim does not meet their narcissistic fantasies of the moment. In all, Weldon is responsible for two kidnappings and possibly three homicides.  Only time will tell whether or not there are more victims. 

With the investigation still in its infancy, it is unsure whether the police are dealing with a kidnapper or a killer.  I believe they are dealing with a serial killer who suffers from narcism and an over-inflated ego—the psychological baggage that most serial offenders carry around. While these cases are complicated to investigate, it is usually the small things that they do not think about that gets them caught—and eventually convicted.  For Weldon, he did not think that a taillight being out would be a big deal—but in the end, it turned out to be his undoing.  Most serial offenders go undetected for a long time fooling law enforcement and the criminal justice system for months and in some cases even years—inflating their sense of worth giving them a feeling of power.  Over time, they do fool law enforcement, this gives them a grandiose sense of self-worth, a feeling that they are smarter than everyone else— especially the police.

Some famous serial killers have been caught because of this grandiose sense of self-worth as well.  John Wayne Gacy (the clown serial killer), was convicted of killing 33 victims and burying them in the crawl space of his home outside of Chicago. Gacy was caught because he thought he had outsmarted the police, who were watching his house because he became a suspect in their investigation, and invited the police on the stakeout into his house so they could get warm and out of the rain.  Once the police were inside, they could smell the rotting corpses buried in the basement and they knew they had their man. Gacy was so accustomed to the smell of his home, it didn’t occur to him that others would notice it.   Gacy was arrested and went on to become one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. If it wasn’t for Gacy’s feelings of superiority over the police for all those months, he might not have invited them in, but he did he tested them—and he lost.  Most serial offenders feel that they will never get caught and that they are invulnerable to being detected.  While there is a certain normalcy to most serial offenders, and they go undetected for so long ,they—like the rest of us—overlook small things and believe nothing will come out of it.  Weldon, like Gacy, thought he was smarter than those that enforce the law.  The tail light being out, or the invitation to come into one's house, may seem small, but, in the end, it is always the small things that become their eventual demise.

Kevin Borgeson is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Salem State University and Co-editor of the book, Serial Offenders: In Theory and Practice.