Dark Dreams: Sexual Violence, Homicide And The Criminal Mind

by Hazelwood, Roy

  Seven factors in the case were inconsistent with homicide.

  To begin with, the victim was found completely unclothed, which suggested a sexual component to Patrick Mahan’s death. Nudity is rarely associated with homicides committed to silence the victim or for reasons of personal gain. Yet the autopsy revealed no injury to the anus, and the penis was free of foreign material. While this did not rule out a murder, the nudity—taken together with the autopsy results, the body’s position and location, as well as the complexity of the hanging apparatus—made homicide seem improbable.

  Second, the neighborhood in which the young man’s body was found was popular with teens. This meant that Mahan’s clothes and the roll of duct tape left near the sewer pipe opening were likely to be noticed quickly. In fact, this is just what happened, since a search was mounted for the teen in the immediate wake of his disappearance. In my experience with homicide, anyone who had gone to the lengths necessary to murder Patrick in the extraordinary way and place he died would not have called attention to the body’s location by casually discarding the clothes in that way.

  Third, I have never seen, heard, or read about a homicidal strangulation featuring such a complex apparatus. Wrapping the cable around Mahan’s arm as well as his neck did not facilitate death; on the contrary, it would have greatly impeded that goal.

  Fourth, I thought it highly improbable that a killer would take Patrick Mahan to the top of the narrow, twenty-five-foot vertical drainpipe in order to hang him. No matter what the victim’s physical condition, doing so would have been extremely difficult, as well as unnecessary, if the objective was to kill the young man.

  I reflected at length on this part of the puzzle, searching for a hole in my logic. If Mahan was conscious, why weren’t any defensive wounds found on his body, scrapes and bruises consistent with a struggle to defend himself? If he was unconscious, why was there no evidence of his body being dragged or carried to the sewer pipe? There were no ligature marks (save for the one from the bicycle chain) on his body; no evidence of a blow to the head or other injury that would have rendered him unconscious; no toxicological evidence of incapacity due to drugs or alcohol.

  If this was a homicide, the victim either undressed himself or let the killer undress him, and then did not resist being taken or carried up the drainpipe, where the cable was arranged around his neck and fastened by means of a lock. All of this was beginning to sound very unlikely to me.

  Fifth, we knew from his mother that Mahan kept the bicycle chain and lock in the garage at home. If this was a homicide, the killer must have taken these two highly unusual “weapons” to the drainpipe with the intent of using them to kill Patrick. Once more, the pieces weren’t adding up in my mind.

  Sixth, the victim was allegedly killed because of his association with a ring of homosexual prostitutes. In my experience, homosexually related murders are highly personal and violent crimes. An investigator can expect to find multiple injuries to the victim’s face, neck, heart, or genitalia. Patrick Mahan was virtually unmarked.

  Finally, his grandfather’s pocket watch was found taped within the victim’s mouth. An extraordinary—and, in my experience, unique—feature of this case, the watch’s placement is inconsistent with homicide. If anything, I would have expected Patrick Mahan’s killer to destroy the cherished article not preserve it.

  So I was inclined to rule out homicide as the cause of Patrick Mahan’s death.

  I next examined the evidence for and against a conclusion of suicide.

  When people contemplate taking their own lives, they often give away, or destroy, personal possessions, including items of great sentimental value. Remember that Mahan reportedly broke and threw away his sword collection after beheading a cat. We learned that he also collected precious coins. These were missing from his locked trunk, and it is possible that he gave them away or disposed of them in another manner.

  The second factor consistent with suicide was the victim’s frame of mind. His mother and others reported that Patrick was depressed and anxious about the future. Mrs. Mahan said her son feared the possibility of World War III or a nonsurvivable nuclear war. He was unhappy over the lack of contact with his biological father, and he reportedly was using both alcohol and drugs. Recently, his grades at school had declined, too.

  Third, prospective suicides often distance themselves from close friends and family just prior to taking their own lives. Patrick had recently severed his close relationship with another boy, whom people described as “like a brother” to him. He also had broken up with his girlfriend.

  Fourth, his mother and a few of his friends told police that the victim had discussed suicide with them.

  Fifth, Mahan died in an isolated and secluded spot. Serious suicides typically pick out such locations in order to kill themselves undisturbed.

  So a viable argument could be made that Patrick Mahan was a suicide. More persuasive, however, were the seven factors I isolated that argued against that conclusion.

  First and foremost, the victim was a Roman Catholic who, according to his mother, took his faith very seriously. Catholic doctrine, which forbids suicides from burial in hallowed ground, would have presented a strong deterrent in Mahan’s mind.

  Second, nudity and suicide don’t mix. Outside of prisons, jails, mental institutions, or juvenile facilities, it is rare for someone to commit suicide by hanging himself in the nude. Call it a peculiarity of the human psyche. Every fatal, naked hanging I have ever seen, outside an institution, occurred in the course of an autoerotic misadventure.

  Furthermore, Patrick’s mother told police her son was meticulous about his clothes and grooming. Had he intended to commit suicide, he probably would have showered, shaved, and dressed beforehand.

  Fourth, hanging himself from the third highest rung of the metal ladder was inconsistent with suicide. A much lower rung would have served Mahan’s purposes just as well.

  Fifth, the configuration of the bicycle chain ligature made as little sense for a suicide as for a homicide. As mentioned before, the complex looping actually would have impeded Mahan’s death.

  Sixth, the duct tape and watch were inconsistent with a suicide. The tape covering his eyes and mouth were a form of sexual bondage, for which there is no reasonable explanation in a suicide. Likewise, placing the watch in his mouth served no useful function if the young man’s intent was to kill himself.

  Seventh, though the victim had discussed suicide on a number of occasions, he had not initiated the conversations, according to the witnesses. His friends also said Mahan pointedly had dismissed suicide as “stupid.” He reportedly told one group, “If I want to kill myself, I’m not going to do it by hanging or suffocation. I’d blow my brains out.”

  The evidence was convincing to me. Patrick Mahan was not a suicide.

  I could not feel confident in concluding that Patrick Mahan had died as a result of dangerous autoeroticism, simply because both homicide and suicide seemed unlikely. I had to let the evidence persuade me that his death fell into this category. Having studied and written about the subject for two decades, I knew it was full of complexities. In assessing this possible explanation for Patrick Mahan’s death, I had eleven factors to consider.

  The first was the statistical profile of an autoerotic death. Victims of this type of fatality typically are of average or higher intelligence. They possess strong imaginations, are easily bored, and usually have no known history of sexual or mental disorders. The overwhelming majority of them are white males, and a significant number are roughly Patrick Mahan’s age. Also, what the police learned about his temperament suggested to me that the young man liked to take chances. Being a thrill seeker was also consistent with being a seeker of autoerotic gratification. In sum, Mahan matched the profile of a person who accidentally kills himself during dangerous autoeroticism.

  Second, I always examine suspected autoerotic death scenes for evidence that the victims provided themselves escape or release mechanisms.
They invariably do so. In this case, I could identify at least three:

  The ladder was mere inches from Mahan’s feet. All he had to do to relieve the cable’s pressure on his neck was step back and stand up.

  The bicycle cable’s odd loop around Mahan’s arm, unnecessary for simple suspension, would have been a very handy pressure-release device. All he needed to do was simply shift his arm.

  From the keyhole’s position, I believed Mahan deliberately placed the lock right in front of him to make it easy to open in an emergency. My opinion is that he was holding the key, and as he lost consciousness, it dropped from his hand into the sewer water below.

  So the question became: If he had all these safety options available, why didn’t he use one to save himself?

  The answer lies in the practice itself. The key element in dangerous autoeroticism by neck compression is restriction of blood flow to and from the brain. Hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, ensues, inducing one desired effect—euphoria. Hypoxia is associated with enhanced sexual sensation as well. The problem is, it also can impair a person’s judgment.

  Hypoxia clearly puts the autoerotic practitioner in a vulnerable, dangerous state. From the notes and diaries these victims leave, I have learned that they also concentrate intently on their fantasy—whatever it may be—even as the hypoxia alters their perceptions. In this condition, they eventually lose consciousness and slump into total suspension. Unless they are rescued, they will die due to asphyxiation.

  Third, Patrick Mahan was naked, which is consistent with autoeroticism, but not with homicide or suicide. Fully a third of the victims I studied with Park Dietz and Ann Burgess for our textbook, Autoerotic Fatalities, were discovered nude.

  Fourth, his hidden and protected location also was consistent with the sort of place that a practitioner of autoeroticism seeks out. In Mahan’s case, his age and relative immobility had to be taken into account, too. The site could be reached on foot. In addition, the victim was very familiar with the general area where he was found.

  Fifth, hanging is the most common method autoerotic practitioners use to induce hypoxia.

  Sixth, I believe the application of the duct tape to his eyes and mouth was meant to achieve sensory deprivation, a form of sexual bondage commonly associated with autoeroticism.

  Seventh, easily the most fascinating aspect of this sad case was the watch in Patrick Mahan’s mouth.

  Here are three plausible reasons for it:

  By securing it in his mouth, Mahan was making sure he would not lose or damage the treasured item.

  He may have kept track of time by it, measuring the minutes and seconds by the sensory sensation of the ticking against the sensitive interior tissues of his mouth. In other autoeroticism cases the victims used cooking timers, stopwatches, and even alarms to alert them to the passage of time.

  The ticking may also have enhanced the thrill of the experience, allowing Mahan to fantasize the dangers of his life literally “ticking away.”

  Reasons 2 and 3, I think, are the most likely explanations. The watch could have possibly had some other purpose altogether, a secret that died with Patrick Mahan.

  Eighth, the debris on the victim’s hands and feet strongly suggest that he climbed the drainpipe ladder on his own, which is consistent with autoeroticism.

  Ninth, his high perch didn’t make sense for either murder or suicide, but it may have added a thrilling extra element of danger to solo sex. Again, his fantasy was as important as any element in his decision to scale the ladder.

  Tenth, his elaborate preparations and equipment, position, props, and bindings suggested that Mahan had been perfecting his technique over time. That he had previously practiced autoeroticism seemed evident.

  Finally, a short while prior to accepting this case, I had become familiar with an oddly similar autoerotic death in England. A white male had crawled through a sewer pipe and, like Patrick Mahan, had hanged himself from the rungs of a ladder leading up a drainpipe. It, too, formed an inverted T with a horizontal main. I found these parallels too striking to ignore.

  After carefully weighing the pros and cons of each explanation, I presented the authorities with my opinion that Patrick Mahan died as a result of dangerous autoeroticism. I also provided them with a likely reconstruction of the events leading up to his death.

  His mother said he left home about 10:00 P.M. I believed he chose a familiar destination, knowing that the hidden subterranean drain would provide him both the necessary privacy and the thrill he sought in his autoerotic practice. He disrobed outside the horizontal sewer main and left his clothes there so that they would not become soiled in the dirty water flowing through the pipe. Remember, Patrick was a neat young man. He probably didn’t bother to hide his clothes because he planned to get dressed again at the same spot.

  After tearing off the length of duct tape, Mahan walked into the pipe carrying his grandfather’s watch and the bicycle chain and lock—all necessary props for what he intended to do.

  He then climbed nearly to the top of the twenty-five-foot vertical drain, where he placed the timepiece in his mouth and secured it with the length of duct tape, which he also used to cover his eyes.

  Next, he wrapped the plastic-coated chain around his arm and neck, making certain by sense of touch that the keyhole was facing him.

  With all these preparations in place, it was time for the fantasy to commence. I believe Mahan stepped gently off the ladder and soon was lost in his private dream world. He eventually lost consciousness, dropped the key, and expired in midair.

  The conclusions I reached in my equivocal death analysis allowed the authorities to close a case that had remained perplexingly unsolved for a year. Classifying it as a tragic episode of dangerous autoeroticism prevented any possibility of an innocent party being erroneously charged with a homicide. It relieved the family of the psychological burden that survivors of suicide victims typically experience. And since Patrick was a devout Catholic, it clarified his eligibility for burial in a church-sanctioned facility. Although the young man’s death was undeniably heartrending, the EDA brought some measure of closure to all concerned.

  Dying for Attention

  In the popular imagination the practice of dangerous autoeroticism is usually considered an exclusively male behavior. But in preparing an equivocal death analysis, it is important not to overlook any valuable avenues of research. In the case of a young woman, Maggie Thomas,* the possibility of autoerotic aspyhxia featured prominently in the investigation of her death.

  Maggie Thomas’s world was painful and joyless. Born out of wedlock, she was raised by her single mother to age thirteen, when an adult male took her is and forced her to become a prostitute. Over the next three years she repeatedly was in trouble with the law, and she became pregnant three times. The first two pregnancies ended with abortions. When she was sixteen, Maggie miscarried her third fetus after being committed to the California Youth Authority (CYA) facility at Ventura in February 1984.

  Ten months later, on December 13, she was discovered unconscious in her cottage room at CYA. She died after being rushed to the hospital.

  The case was brought to my attention when a difference of opinion arose as to whether Maggie Thomas had committed suicide or died by accident while practicing dangerous autoeroticism.

  As always, I analyzed all the information in the case, including investigative reports, toxicology results, hospital records, death scene photos, and questionnaires I prepared and distributed to those who knew Maggie at the CYA.

  Of particular interest was a psychiatric report, dated July 1983, in which she was diagnosed with histrionic personality disorder. According to DSM IV, (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th edition), the histrionic personality is typified by “a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking.”

  DSM IV lists the following behavior as common to the histrionic personality: “… an incessant need for attention, may do something dramatic to draw the focus of attention to
themselves, rapidly shifting and shallow expressions of emotion, often inappropriately sexually provocative or seductive, a craving for action and excitement, overreaction to minor events, and irrational, angry outbursts or tantrums.”

  Others tend to view the histrionic individual as shallow and fake, even if he or she is superficially warm and charming.

  “Clinical experience suggests that individuals with this disorder are at increased risk for suicidal gestures and threats to get attention and coerce better caregiving.”

  Witnesses reported that Maggie Thomas was involved in two separate lesbian relationships at CYA and was caught on one occasion in the boys’ dormitory. She reportedly used drugs while at the facility and had in the past made suicide threats.

  Maggie was described as moody, with low self-esteem. She was a behavior problem for the staff and consequently received far more attention from them than did the other girls in her cottage.

  In the spring of 1984, according to her grandmother, Maggie attempted suicide by slitting her wrists. The grandmother described the incident as a ploy to gain attention.

  The following October Maggie told her psychologist, “When I feel like nothing, I feel like killing (or hitting) myself.” Yet witnesses also reported that the following month the teenager had suggested that such life-threatening behavior was unacceptable to her because she had too much to live for.

  Two weeks before her death, Maggie reportedly slit her wrists once again. She told one associate that she was depressed over her poor relations with her mother and a recent breakup with a female lover. According to her psychologist’s notes, she said in early December that she was “giving up and didn’t want to go through the pain.”