Exploration of Crime Scene Characteristics in Cyber-Related Homicides

• DOI: 10.1177/1088767919868835
• Date: 01 February 2020
• Author: Norair Khachatryan,F. Jeane Gerard,Bethany Browning
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767919868835

Homicide Studies

2020, Vol. 24(1) 45 –68

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DOI: 10.1177/1088767919868835

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Article

Exploration of Crime Scene

Characteristics in Cyber-

Related Homicides

F. Jeane Gerard1, Norair Khachatryan2,

and Bethany Browning1

Abstract

Despite the alarming nature of homicides in which the offender meets the victim

online, or cyber-initiated homicides, little empirical attention has been devoted to

this phenomenon. The present study was designed to explore the behavioral patterns

found prior to and during a cyber-initiated homicide event. Data on 61 homicide cases

from various countries were collected through news media and legal sources. Smallest

space analysis revealed that cyber homicides were characterized by four distinct

themes: excessive violence, fatal escalation, crime-related incidents, and predatory

behavior. Implications of the findings and avenues for future research are discussed.

Keywords

homicide, cyber-initiated violence, luring, online modes of communication, predatory

violence, conflict-related violence

Introduction

The increasing availability of the Internet and the development of social media plat-

forms over previous decades have substantially facilitated communication between

people who have had no prior face-to-face encounters. Individuals communicate with

strangers in online environments to meet new friends (Subrahmanyam, Reich,

Waechter, & Espinoza, 2008; Wang & Edwards, 2016), seek romantic and sexual

partners (e.g., Couch & Liamputtong, 2008; Griffiths, 2001), conduct business

1Coventry University, UK

2University of South Florida, Tampa, USA

Corresponding Author:

F. Jeane Gerard, Centre for Advances in Behavioural Science, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences,

Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK.

Email: jeane.gerard@coventry.ac.uk

868835HSXXXX10.1177/1088767919868835Homicide StudiesGerard et al.

research-article2019

46 Homicide Studies 24(1)

transactions (Castle & Lee, 2008), and seek employment (Kroft & Pope, 2014),

among other purposes. Some acquaintanceships in cyberspace do not result in offline

encounters, while many others do.

Offline encounters between strangers who became acquainted online expose indi-

viduals to a range of predatory outcomes, such as personal robbery and sexual victim-

ization (Mitchell, Finkelhor, Jones, & Wolak, 2010). For example, social media has

been described as a trigger for serious acts of violence between young people through,

among other avenues, social pressure to seek revenge against those whom they have

perceived as disrespecting them in terms of their status and/or reputation (Irwin-

Rogers & Pinkney, 2017).

The most serious consequence of an offline encounter with a stranger (as well as the

one that is most pertinent to the present study) is homicide. As such, the current study

will focus on cyber-related homicide, defined here as a homicide event that occurs

during the first face-to-face meeting between two or more people who became

acquainted online. Residents of the United States may recall the case of Richard

Beasley, who lured two men using a fake Craigslist job advertisement and shot them

to death, with the help of a teenage accomplice (Goode, 2011). Prior to that, Beasley

fatally shot a man he had met at a homeless shelter. Another high-profile case origi-

nated in Argentina, where 12-year-old Micaela Ortega thought that she was going to

meet a teenage female friend on Facebook. An investigation subsequently revealed

that an escaped convict named Jonathan Luna used a fake Facebook profile to lure the

young girl to a meeting, in which he proceeded to beat and strangle the victim to death

(AFP, 2016).

Despite the alarming nature of cyber-initiated homicides, very little empirical

research has been conducted to investigate this phenomenon, as discussed further

below. The scant research on this topic published to date has primarily focused on

homicides related to a specific platform (Wiederhold, 2013; Yardley, 2017; Yardley &

Wilson, 2015). The current study was designed to address these gaps in the literature:

It examines in depth the characteristics of cyber-initiated murder and broadens the

scope of the research to numerous types of online platforms.

Review of the Literature

Homicide in Society

Close to 500,000 people are killed around the world in non-conflict-related intentional

homicides per year, according to data from 2012 (United Nations Office on Drugs and

Crime, 2013). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, worldwide estimates regarding the

prevalence of stranger-perpetrated homicides, which are of particular interest to the

present study, are not available. However, stranger-perpetrated homicides in the United

States have been reported to be one of the highest homicide rates among industrialized

nations, with Harrell (2012) observing that more than 20% of homicides in the United

States between 1993 and 2008 were perpetrated by strangers. Moreover, the percent-

ages of stranger-perpetrated homicides in European Union (EU) countries have ranged