Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Wataru Zaitsu
Forensic Science Laboratory, Toyama Prefectural Police Headquarters, 1-7 Shin-Sougawa,
Toyama-shi, Toyama 930-8570, Japan. Email: wataru0112csi@yahoo.co.jp
Submitted 28 November 2009; revision submitted 16 March 2010;
accepted 26 April 2010
Keywords: Japanese homicidal poisoning, instrumental, expressive,
profiling
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Homicidal poisoning in Japan: offender and crime characteristics
addition, she recorded her mother’s condi- more concrete information concerning
tion in an internet diary. This girl was characteristics of offender, such as age,
obsessed with poisons (toxicomania), and employment status and criminal record.
her poison of choice, thallium, was the Furthermore, empirical data is more appro-
same as that used by Graham Young priate to this type of information.
(Emsley, 2005). Cases of these types are Westveer, Jarvis, and Jensen (2006) stat-
extremely rare; nonetheless, similar events istically analysed the characteristics of poi-
may occur in the future. soners and victims. They concluded that
Westveer, Jarvis, and Jensen (2006) and typical poisoners were likely to be male,
Trestrail (2007) pointed out that homicide from 20 to 34 years of age and white.
by poisoning is one of the most difficult Victims were often aged from 25 to 44
crimes to investigate and prosecute. Because years. Trestrail (2007) empirically proposed
the offenders often disguise this kind of a classification scheme comprising four
crime as a natural death, there may be little types of poisonings (S/S, S/Q, R/S and
evidence that the victim was murdered with R/Q) based on target (‘specific individual’
poison. Good and Goreck (1995) also high- or ‘random target’) and planning (‘slowly
lighted the difficulty of investigating poi- planned’ or ‘quickly planned’). Thus, poi-
sonings. In particular, in cases where soners of type R/S were likely to select a
victims are selected randomly, it is difficult poisonous substance carefully and poison
for investigators to identify the perpetrators. a random victim; Trestrail stated that
Moreover, investigators may be inexperi- offenders of this type were typically terror-
enced in investigating such cases because of ists. Such typological study is useful to
their rarity. Nishimura (1999) stated that the understand crime phenomena. However,
percentage of arrests for poisoning cases in the method of Trestrail’s classification is
Japan was lower (53.8 per cent) than that for arbitrary and obscure, and crime character-
other types of homicide (95 per cent). For istics should be classified more clearly and
the assistance of investigation of unsolved objectively by statistical methods.
homicidal poisonings, such as through Santtila, Häkkänen, Canter, and Elfgren
offender profiling, it is therefore necessary (2003) classified 502 Finnish single hom-
to analyse solved cases and offender icides by Multi-Dimensional Scale (MDS)
characteristics. into two themes according to the crime
To date, there have been several studies scene: instrumental and expressive. ‘Instru-
of the characteristics of individuals who mental’ means actions to accomplish a set
have used poison to murder. Rowland goal such as revenge or crime concealment,
(1960) indicated that such individuals are whereas ‘expressive’ means relieving the
likely to have had an unhappy married life, offender’s emotional distress or frustration.
are not successful in life, may be connected These themes were also observed in several
to the medical profession, are vain, exhibit kinds of crime: British stranger homicide
little sympathy or imagination and are likely (Salfati & Canter, 1999), Greek homicide
to have been spoiled by their parents. (Salfati & Haratsis, 2001), arson (Canter &
Wilson (1988) described poisoners as weak- Fritzon, 1998), and bomb threat (Zaitsu,
willed, prone to daydreaming and fantasy, 2010). Moreover, both themes showed dif-
possessing an artistic temperament and ferences in offender characteristics. For
being cowardly and avaricious. However, example, stranger murderers of the express-
these reports mainly focused on the psycho- ive type were likely to be female and to
logical aspects of offenders while, in an have previously committed various offences
actual investigation, police officers require including violence, traffic offences, drug
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Zaitsu
offences and damage to property (Salfati & because of missing values: the data of 96
Canter). This kind of research is called A-C offenders were therefore used to analyse.
studies, which refers to examining the rela- Offender characteristics were gender,
tionship between ‘actions’ and offender age, employment status, education level,
‘characteristics’ (Canter & Youngs, 2009). fixed residence, marriage status, cohabita-
These studies are useful for offender profil- tion with parent(s) or spouse, parental
ing, but there have not been any studies status, criminal record, mental health prob-
related to the A-C relationship in homicidal lem and involvement of co-offenders.
poisoning in Japan. Crime characteristics were day of the
The purpose of this study was, therefore, week, time of homicidal poisoning, type of
to empirically examine the relationship poison, route of uptake of poison, place
between Japanese homicidal poisoning and where offender poisoned or murdered the
offender characteristics. Analyses of crime victim, sleeping victim, serial or spree
characteristics and offender characteristics poisoning, gender of victim, result of hom-
were performed under the following icidal poisoning for offender and relation-
assumptions. ship between offender and victim.
In this study, if the offenders committed
● Poisoning themes such as ‘instrumental’ a series of murders with poisons, only data
and ‘expressive’ are extracted from crime on the first crime were analysed. If a hom-
characteristics. icidal poisoning was committed by more
● Offender characteristics are likely to dif- than one offender, only data on the prin-
fer between themes. cipal offender in each case were analysed.
Statistical data analysis
METHOD Categorical principal components
analysis
Data Categorical principal components analysis
In this study, the author uses the term (CATPCA) is a non-linear multivariate
‘poisons’ to refer to chemical substances analysis, suited to non-metric (nominal and
that act on human beings, including med- ordinal) measurements, and results in the
ical supplies (eg, hypnotics) and non- reduction of variables as any dimension
medical supplies (eg, thallium). Secondly, (Gifi, 1990). The author used CATPCA to
the author defines ‘homicidal poisoning’ as analyse the data in this study for the follow-
follows: (a) murder of a human being using ing two reasons. First, all data in this study
poison, not including suicide; (b) murder- were of nominal measurement level, except
suicide is excluded; and (c) euthanasia by a for data of ‘time of homicidal poisoning’,
medical doctor, nurse, or another individual which were of ordinal measurement level.
is excluded. Second, these variables consisted of several
In line with these definitions, the author mutually exclusive categories such as
gathered data about homicidal poisonings ‘morning’, ‘daytime’ and ‘evening and
and offenders, mainly from the Japanese night-time’.
National Police Register, which accumu- CATPCA scores variables (ie, compon-
lated information about offenders arrested ent loadings) and categories of variables (ie,
by Japanese police forces. The data gathered category quantifications) in accordance
concerned 106 offenders who had mur- with dimension. Next, an analyst interprets
dered with poison from 1989 to 2009 in and labels these dimensions on the basis of
Japan. Data on 10 offenders were excluded component loadings of variables. Moreover,
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Homicidal poisoning in Japan: offender and crime characteristics
Offender characteristics
Table 1 shows characteristics of 96 offenders Age
in this study. The average age of 96 offenders was 43.2
years (SD = 12.4). Classified by gender, the
Offender’s gender average age of the 44 male offenders was
Overall, there were more female offenders 42.5 years (SD = 10.6), whereas for the 52
(54 per cent) than male (46 per cent). female offenders, the average age was 43.7
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Zaitsu
years (SD = 13.8) (t(94, N = 96) = 0.47, the offenders had a criminal record involv-
p = 0.64, r = 0.05). ing murder, arson or rape. Among 18
offenders who had a criminal record, the
Employment status most common crime was theft (78 per
Among the employed offenders (n = 65), cent). Classified by gender, 27 per cent of
various types of employment were re- the male offenders had a criminal record,
corded, for instance, sex-related business or compared with 12 per cent of female
snack bar owner (22 per cent), office offenders. As a result of a chi-square test,
workers (18 per cent), and nursing staff or this difference of criminal record between
pharmacists (14 per cent). Furthermore, genders was found to be statistically sig-
almost all of the sex-related business or nificant (χ2(1, N = 96) = 3.87, p<0.05,
snack bar owners were female (93 per cent), ϕ = –0.20).
78 per cent of the nursing staff or pharma-
cists were female, and most office workers Mental health problem
were male (92 per cent). Thirteen per cent of offenders had a men-
tal health problem. For example, some
Education level offenders suffered from schizophrenia (four
The education level of 10 offenders was not cases), personality disorder (four cases), or
known because of the absence of data in the depression (two cases).
Japanese National Police Register. Among
86 offenders, some had only graduated Co-offenders
from junior high school (49 per cent), 30 Thirty-one per cent of cases were com-
per cent were high-school graduates, and mitted with a co-offender.
only six offenders had graduated from
university. Crime characteristics
Table 2 shows crime characteristics in this
Fixed residence study.
Only one offender had no fixed residence.
Day of the week
Marriage and parental status 70 per cent of the murders with poison
Over half of the offenders were married (56 were committed on a weekday.
per cent), 25 per cent were unmarried and
19 per cent were divorced. There was no Time of homicidal poisoning
difference between males and females in The most common time of murder with
terms of marriage status. 46 per cent of the poison was in the evening and night-time
offenders had children. (64 per cent), followed by the morning (20
per cent).
Cohabitation
73 offenders cohabited. Among these 73 Type of poison
offenders, 62 per cent lived with a spouse, In this study, 66 per cent of the offenders
and 30 per cent lived with their parent(s). used medical supplies (hypnotics, narcotics,
muscle relaxants and so on), whereas 34 per
Criminal record cent used chemical poisons (non-medical
19 per cent of the offenders had been supplies). 62 per cent of the offenders who
previously arrested at least once prior to used medical supplies for homicidal poison-
their arrest for poisoning. However, none of ing were female. On the other hand, 61 per
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Homicidal poisoning in Japan: offender and crime characteristics
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Zaitsu
per cent), offender’s or victim’s workplace kinship (47 per cent), intimacy or unrecip-
(10 per cent) and other places (12 per cent). rocated romantic interest (16 per cent),
Among these cases, 85 per cent of the friend or acquaintance (12 per cent), co-
victims died in the same place as they were worker (8 per cent) and others (17 per
poisoned. cent). This variable was not used for ana-
lysis, because the investigator cannot deter-
Threat victim mine this relationship pending the
10 per cent of the offenders threatened the settlement of a poisoning case.
victim before poisoning him or her.
Dimension obtained by CATPCA
Sleeping victim Eleven homicidal poisoning variables in
Sleeping victim indicates an offender Table 3 were used for analysis. CATPCA
putting a victim to sleep or into a coma showed an eigenvalue of 3.27 (Cronbach’s
with medical supplies, such as hypnotics, in coefficient alpha = 0.76) in dimension 1
order to murder the victim subsequently. and an eigenvalue of 1.39 (Cronbach’s
Various methods for these murderers coefficient alpha = 0.31) in dimension 2. In
(n = 65) were recorded, including stran- this study, the author did not deal with
gling (29 per cent), stabbing (18 per cent), dimension 2 because of the lowness both of
suffocation (14 per cent), drowning (12 per eigenvalue and of Cronbach’s coefficient
cent) and poisoning (8 per cent). alpha of dimension 2.
Table 3 shows the category quantifica-
Serial or spree poisonings tions and component loadings in dimension
1 obtained by CATPCA. In dimension 1,
83 per cent of the offenders committed a
absolute values regarding ‘five types of poi-
single homicide by poisoning, 15 per cent
son’ (–0.89), ‘sleeping victim’ (0.87), ‘place
committed serial murders with poison. Two
where offender poisoned victim’ (0.70) and
offenders committed spree crimes.
‘result of homicidal poisoning’ (0.68) were
higher in component loadings; therefore,
Victim’s gender
the author interpreted dimension 1 as cer-
67 per cent of the victims were male. When tainty of homicide.
victims were male, 61 per cent of the
offenders were female. In contrast, in cases Themes of homicidal poisoning and
of female victims, 59 per cent of the classification of offenders
offenders were male (χ2(1, N = 96) = 3.55, According to the vector coordinates in
p = 0.06, ϕ = –0.19). Table 3, categories of ‘caustic poison’,
‘organic poison’, ‘blood poison’, ‘serial or
Result of homicidal poisoning spree poisonings’, ‘workplace’, ‘morning’,
27 per cent of the offenders were arrested ‘daytime’, and ‘attempted homicide’ were
on a charge of attempted murder with arranged in the positive direction in dimen-
poison. sion 1. Therefore, this positive direction was
interpreted as the theme of ‘expressive’ poi-
Relationship between offender and soning, because this direction refers to the
victim expression of the offender’s frustration and
Only four offenders were not acquainted resembles the features of ‘expressive’ arson
with the victim. In the other cases (n = 92), (Canter & Fritzon, 1998), for which vari-
the relationship between offender and vic- ables of ‘serial’, ‘spree’, ‘daytime’, and ‘pub-
tim could be classified into five categories: lic’ were arranged.
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Homicidal poisoning in Japan: offender and crime characteristics
In the negative direction opposite to this places where offender poisoned victim’,
direction, there were categories of ‘different ‘car’, ‘nerve poison’, and ‘consummated
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Zaitsu
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Homicidal poisoning in Japan: offender and crime characteristics
Offender's gender
Male 28 (43) 16 (52)
ns1
Female 37 (57) 15 (48)
Age
16–19 0 (0) 2 (6)
20–29 8 (12) 3 (10)
30–39 21 (32) 7 (23)
ns2
40–49 22 (34) 6 (19)
50–59 9 (14) 5 (16)
60–77 5 (8) 8 (26)
Employment status
Employed 43 (66) 22 (71)
ns1
Unemployed 22 (34) 9 (29)
Education level
High-school dropout 33 (51) 13 (42)
Higher level 26 (40) 14 (45) ns1
Unknown 6 (9) 4 (13)
Cohabitation with spouse
None 34 (52) 16 (52)
ns1
Any 31 (48) 15 (48)
Cohabitation with parent(s)
None 54 (83) 20 (65)
p < 0.051
Any 11 (17) 11 (35)
Marriage status
Unmarried 14 (22) 10 (32)
Married 37 (57) 17 (55) ns1
Divorced 14 (22) 4 (13)
Parental status
None 32 (49) 20 (65)
ns1
Any 33 (51) 11 (35)
Criminal record
None 50 (77) 28 (90)
ns1
Any 15 (23) 3 (10)
Mental health problem
None 60 (92) 24 (77)
p < 0.053
Any 5 (8) 7 (23)
Co-offenders
None 40 (62) 26 (84)
p < 0.051
Any 25 (38) 5 (16)
Note:
1
Chi-square test, 2 t test, 3 Fisher’s exact test
had a mental health problem, compared test showed a statistically significant differ-
with 8 per cent of those who committed ence between the two themes (p < 0.05,
‘instrumental’ poisoning. The Fisher’s exact ϕ = 0.21).
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Homicidal poisoning in Japan: offender and crime characteristics
to join forces with someone else to execute attempted poisoning. Over time, the status
this process. Lastly, with regard to cohabita- of this group changed from specific family
tion with a parent/parents, ‘expressive’ poi- to unspecified large number of people (ie,
soners were more likely to live with a the sarin gas subway attack). Similar to this
parent/parents than ‘instrumental’ poi- change of target, a high-school girl, inspired
soners. One explanation for this is that by Graham Young, also conducted experi-
‘expressive’ poisoners had more mental ments on animals before poisoning her
health problems than ‘instrumental’ poi- mother (‘Schoolgirl blogger’, 2005). Does
soners, so it may have been more necessary the range of targets of poisoners tend to
for them to live with a parent/parents for broaden as the number of poisonings com-
the assistance that they can provide. mitted increases, especially serial ‘expressive’
Salfati and Canter (1999) found that poisoners? Longitudinal research of poison-
stranger murderers of the ‘expressive’ theme ings is necessary to resolve this issue.
were more likely to be female and to have Police officers tend to be inexperienced
committed previous offences. Their findings in identifying offenders because homicidal
are inconsistent with those of this study poisonings are rare. Homicidal poisonings
which found that ‘expressive’ poisoners in Japan have not been sufficiently invest-
were more likely to be males than females igated yet; more research is necessary to
and most did not have a criminal record. develop a deeper understanding of this
However, the differences between the poi- phenomenon. As such, the author hopes
soning themes in this study were not statist- that this study contributes to the field, and
ically significant, so it is necessary to stimulates further research of homicidal
undertake further research on the relation- poisonings.
ship between poisoning theme and poisoner
characteristics.
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