Crime Studies

The following study, by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, is not only comprehensive, but will tell most people more than they ever wanted to know about sex crimes and the people who commit those crimes.  We have done some editing to make the study fit the format of our pages, and to eliminate some surplusages.

by Lawrence A. Greenfeld

BJS Statistician | February 1997

Highlights

In 1995 persons age 12 or older reported experiencing an estimated 260,300 attempted or completed rapes and nearly 95,000 threatened or completed sexual assaults other than rape.

* The number reported by victims age 12 or older in 1995 declined significantly from 1993:

1993 -- 1 violent sex offense for every 435 residents

March 3, 2008 updated July 25, 2008

After serving 17 years for the 1988 murders of his adoptive parents, Marty Tankleff's conviction was overturned by an appellate court in December, 2007. On July 1, 2008, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that he would not retry Tankleff.

by David Kirschner, Ph.D.

The Martin Tankleff courtroom saga may finally have come to an end. Tankleff, 36, was released from prison in December, 2007, after serving 17 years for the 1988 gruesome murders of his adoptive mother and father, Arlene and Seymour Tankleff, in their Belle Terre, L.I. mansion. An appellate court overturned his 1990 conviction, because of "new evidence," suggesting that somebody other than Tankleff might have committed the crimes; and on July 1, 2008, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that he would not retry Tankleff.

After an extensive five month investigation/review however, Cuomo did not exonerate Tankleff, stating that "although there is some evidence that the defendant Martin Tankleff, committed the crimes charged, after 20 years the evidence is insufficient to . . . prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did so. . . There was no sign of a break-in or of a robbery, and the defendant who was the only other person in the house, was unharmed. . . The defendant made vague but incriminatory statements to a family member and direct confessions to some fellow inmates in prison.

Benjamin Rosenberg, Cuomo's chief trial attorney, concluded that making a case against Tankleff was no longer feasible. Legal technicalities and changes in the law would bar prosecutors from trying him in his mother's murder. Another factor in the decision not to retry Tankleff is the passage of time, resulting in "dimming recollections" of some witnesses and the deaths of others.

Cuomo also stated he had no plan to indict any of the possible killers Tankleff named, saying, "We have found no forensic evidence linking any of these persons to the murder."

Of the 500 estimated serial killers in U.S. history, 16 percent were adopted as children, while adoptees represent only 2 or 3 percent of the general population. Adoptees are 15 times more likely to kill one or both of their adoptive parents than biological children.

by Dr. David Kirschner

So far in 2007, there have been at least six high-profile homicide cases in the U. S. and Canada in which the accused perpetrator has been identified in the media as being an adopted child.

Joshua Komisarjevsky, age 26, has been charged in the brutal Cheshire, Conn., killing of a doctor's wife and two daughters.

Codee Wheeler, age 16, is accused in the arson murder of her adoptive father, in Blairsville, Pa.

Sandra Bridewell, aka "the Black Widow," now in her 50's, has been arrested in Dallas, Tex., as a suspected serial husband killer.

Edwin Roy Hall, age 26, stands accused of murdering an Overland Park, Kan., teenager.

Graham Beange, age 20, is charged with the attempted murder of his adoptive parents, in Toronto, Canada.

Aaron Howard, age 19, is being sought in the first-degree murder of his adopted mother, in Ottawa, Canada.

And then, there is Michael Devlin, age 41, indicted for the abduction and four-year disappearance of teenager Shawn Hornbeck, in St. Louis, Mo.

Just coincidence? Or is there a connection between murder (and other criminal behavior) and adoption?

July 22, 2007

by Daniel B. Young

There are many examples throughout history of authorities attempting to detect deception. One of my favorites is that of certain priests in India circa 1500 B.C. A donkey's tail was covered with carbon residue from an oil lamp and placed in a dark room. The suspects were sent into the room and told that pulling the "magic" donkey's tail would reveal the liar. When the suspects came out, the priests examined their hands. Those with clean hands had not touched the donkey's tail. It was assumed that this was due to their fear of their guilt being discovered, proving they were liars. A nice theory with some psychological validity, but what if the guilty man had grabbed the donkey's tail to keep from falling in the dark or an innocent man simply couldn't find the tail in the dark? This probably would not have saved the innocent man – the test was just too convenient for the authorities.

In 1915 a Harvard professor named William Moulton Marston developed an instrument he termed a lie detector; it was a prototype polygraph based on blood pressure measurement alone. Four other men, John Larson, Leonarde Keeler, John Reid, and Fred Inbau, over decades, further developed the polygraph machine and the accompanying interrogation techniques into the modern polygraph test. Mr. Marston is not well known for his part in the development of the polygraph. But he did achieve fame in another area. He was the creator of the comic book character Wonder Woman who had a magic lasso that, when wound around a person, would force him to tell only the truth. As you will see there have been times when the magic lasso would have been preferable to the polygraph machine.

by Lawrence A. Greenfeld

Statistician, Bureau of Justice Statistics

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Highlights

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*An estimated 18.6% of inmates serving time in State prisons in 1991 for violent crimes, or about 61,000 offenders nationwide, had been convicted of a crime against a victim under age 18.

*1 in 5 violent offenders serving time in a State prison reported having victimized a child.

*More than half the violent crimes committed against children involved victims age 12 or younger.

*7 in 10 offenders with child victims reported that they were imprisoned for a rape or sexual assault.

A stunning report was issued by the Department of Justice in 1996, reporting on 28 cases of men who'd been convicted of violent sex crimes, including murder, and were then freed from prison based on DNA tests.

by J.J. Maloney

DNA Exonerations:   Part One

DNA Exonerations:   Part Two

DNA Exonerations:  The Actual Cases

These 28 cases could be the tip of an iceberg -- since the report points out there are still states that do not accept DNA evidence.  Additionally, many convicted men cannot find an attorney to go to bat for them, or the resources to pay for testing.  There also is no codified method for routine DNA testing for cases that have been long resolved.  Finally, many jurisdictions routinely destroy all evidence after appeals have been exhausted.

The importance of this report, however, is that it challenges society's underlying assumptions about criminal law.

The first, and most important, assumption to be challenged is the credibility of eye-witness testimony.  In case after case, the rape victim made a firm identification of the assailant  -- the government's evidence seemed bulletproof.  Yet DNA testing resulted in that defendant not only being freed from prison, but in some cases successfully suing for wrongful imprisonment.

One of the more startling findings of the study is that 20 percent of the DNA tests conducted reveal that the person charged with the crime was "excluded" by the test -- meaning the blood of the defendant did not match with the semen, blood, hair or other body cells found on the victim or at the scene of the crime..  This was based on more than 20,000 tests conducted at the time of this study, with half of those coming from the FBI's laboratory.  An additional 20 percent of tests are "inconclusive."