Lust murder

A lust murder is a homicide in which the offender searches for erotic satisfaction by killing someone. Commonly this type of crime is manifested either by murder during sexual intercourse and/or by mutilating the sexual organs or areas of the victim's body. The mutilation of the victim may include evisceration and/or displacement of the genitalia. It also includes such activities as removing clothing from the body, posing and propping of the body in different positions, generally sexual ones; insertion of objects into bodily orifices; anthropophagy (the consumption of human blood and/or flesh) and necrophilia (the performing of sex acts on a human corpse).

A lust murder begins with the obsessions of the offender. Generally, they have a sexual obsession with their victims, and organized lust murderers may stalk their victims for weeks or months before the actual killing. The "signature" component of the crime, that which names it a lust murder, is the killer acting out their fantasies with their victims and the bodies of those victims. Lust murder is a common feature in the criminal careers of serial killers.

The term is also used in a related but slightly different sense, to refer to an individual who gains "sexual arousal" from the act of committing murder, or has persistent "sexual fantasies" of committing murder, even if the murder itself does not involve the genital mutilation or other characteristics cited above. As such, it is a type of paraphilia.

ee also

* Jeffrey Dahmer
* John Wayne Gacy
* Ed Gein
* Jack the Ripper
* Jerry Brudos
* Andrei Chikatilo