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FACELESS: HIGH PROFILE MURDERS AND PUBLIC RECOGNITION
Abstract This paper reports on the outcome of an investigation into whether or not members of the public would recognise high profile victims and perpetrators and, if so, whom. The study was based on the premise that prominent media coverage would cause agreater number of perpetrators to be recognised than victims and that those victims who were recognised would be white children. Field research was conducted in a University and in non-University settings, such as fast food outlets, bus stops andshopping centres. All twenty images used were black and white headshots. Most photographs showed one person, but two photographs had two images. 103 people were surveyed. The majority of our sample (78%) were unable to name any victims orperpetrators. These results provide strong evidence to suggest that despite twenty- four hour rolling news and the prominence of high profile victims and perpetrators on the front pages of national newspapers, the public fails to remember who thesevictims and perpetrators are. We discuss why this may be so.
Key Words: High Profile, Murders, Public Recognition, and Media Coverage
Introduction
Robert Reiner questioned whether crime, as represented in the mass media, was concerned with “subversion, social control or mental chewing gum,” (Reiner, 2007: 302). In other words, reflecting a generation of intense academic debate, does the media’s representations of crime and criminals – both in fact and in fiction – have some effect on the audiences who consume these representations? Or, alternatively, do they have very little, or indeed no impact whatsoever? This is a good question to ask, especially in relation to violent crimes such as serial and spree killings, as well as about certain individual, high profile murders. These have become significant events which attract enormous media coverage and public interest (see Wilson, 2009, for a general introduction about serial murder and for the media interest in serial and spree murder Haggerty, 2009; Macdonald (ed), 2013). Images of the victims of these crimes
and the perpetrators when caught, arrested and charged and certainly during trials, feature on TV news bulletins, initially often as “breaking news”. They also appear on the front pages of all national newspapers; broadsheets as well as tabloids. Indeed, Greer and Reiner have further argued that a key feature of contemporary society “is the omnipresence of mass media communication, in rapidly proliferating new forums to the extent that a significant part of each day is devoted by most people to media consumption of various kinds” (Greer and Reiner, 2012: 245).
It has long been established that crime is one of the major components of this omnipresence of mass media communication (Williams and Dickinson, 1993; Ericson et al., 1991; Ericson, 1995; Pearson, 2002). The contemporary mass media, news agenda is also now increasingly accessed via online platforms, with rising numbers of younger people receiving news on the internet (Ofcom, 2014). This can be saturated with images of violent crimes and criminals. Here too we should note that crime news is not only consumed online but is reproduced, recycled and discussed in this digital environment, most notably through social media sites. One key example is Twitter, where the type of crime and the gender of the victim can have a significant impact upon how it is processed by users. Indeed, it has recently been suggested that “news about violent crimes with males as victims are being discussed more intensively than those with female victims” (Lampoltshammer et al., 2014: 65). However, we should also remember that even before the advent of the mass media and the development of online platforms and social media outlets, crime and the punishment of offenders has long been of interest to the general public. Crowds, for example, often gathered to witness executions or humiliate those placed in stocks or in a pillory. Additionally,
that the media do not publish or broadcast every criminal act that is within the public domain, but are selective of the kinds of crimes, criminals and circumstances upon which they report. Some criminal acts are chosen over others because of their ‘newsworthiness’ – in other words, those aspects of a crime that journalists argue make for a good news story. This judgment is, in turn, a product of their ‘newsroom culture’ (Scraton, et al., 1991: 111; see also Wilson et al., 2010: 154). It can mean that the “pursuit of market and organizational imperatives often results in crime coverage that is disproportionate to the reality of the crime problem” (Buckler and Salanas, 2009: 719).
In seeking to determine what constitutes a human interest story, Johnstone et al. (1994) set out what they referred to as the ‘Doyle criteria’. This arose from Doyle’s analysis that a human interest story is one that either a) involves a socially “prominent” or “respectable” citizen who is involved as either an offender or as a victim; b) the victim is an innocent or an overmatched target; c) the murder was either shocking or brutal, involved multiple victims and/or offenders, or in which a particularly brutal method of killing was employed; or d) the narrative generates mystery suspense, or drama.
Chermak (1995) considered that news organisations assessed newsworthiness of a crime based on (i) the violent or heinous nature of the offence, (ii) demographic factors of the victim and offender (age, race, gender, income, and socioeconomic status), (iii) characteristics of the incident producers (the news agency), (iv) the uniqueness of the event, and (v) event salience (for example, is the offence a local
event). Prichard and Hughes (1997) similarly thought that the unusualness of the event, the parties involved and the extent to which formally and informally established cultural norms and expectations were violated influenced newsworthiness of that crime for news organisations. For Buckler and Travis (2005), news organisations tended to focus their attention on homicides that are statistically deviant (e.g., involved female victims, multiple victims, unusual weapons, and were committed by strangers), involved a violation of strong cultural norms of behaviour (e.g., robbery-related and stranger-related homicides), and which commanded strong emotional reactions from the general public (e.g., those that involved multiple victims, minority offenders, strangers, and involve minority offenders who murdered non- minority victims).
In thinking about news values in the new millennium Jewkes (2004: 40–55) considered that 12 factors influenced judgements that journalists and editors make when assessing the level of public interest that a story will potentially generate. Wilson et al. (2010) summarised these as:
- Threshold: Asking whether a story is significant enough to be of interest to a national audience;
- Predictability: Vital resources are often committed to pre-planned events, ensuring their place on the running order;
- Simplification: A crime story must be ‘reducible to a minimum number of parts or themes’;
- Individualism: Stories must have a ‘human interest’ appeal and be easy to relate to;
Soothill et al. (2002) describe these as “Mega murders” and argue that they always attract ongoing media interest. They comment that these offences particularly offend society due to their horror, oddness, and the scale of the social disturbance. Peelo (2006) considers that such murders go on to occupy a powerful, symbolic place in our collective, cultural history. They could also be deemed ‘signal crimes’ (Innes, 2004), or offences that are seen as an index of the state of society and social order and illustrative of the way “in which the emotionality surrounding crime debates has moved up criminology’s agenda” (Peelo, 2006: 161). Indeed, reading and hearing about crimes can be considered “a collective, ritual experience. Read daily by a large portion of the population, crime news generates emotional experiences in individual readers, experiences which each reader can assume are shared by many others. Although each may read in isolation, phenomenologically the experience may be a collective, emotional ‘effervescence’ of moral indignation”, (Katz, 1987: 64). This clearly echoes Durkheim’s “collective consciousness”, where “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life” (Durkheim, [1893] 1933: 79). The media through their reporting additionally seek to assist the public make sense of these major crimes, to identify with the emotions of those who have been hurt by the killing and therefore to share in the event.
Haggerty has also suggested that a symbiotic relationship exists between the media and serial killers as serial killers offer “rich opportunities to capture public attention by capitalizing on deeply resonate themes of innocent victims, dangerous strangers, unsolved murders, all coalescing around a narrative of evasion” (Haggerty, 2009: 174).
With Ariane Ellerbrok, he has also described how “serial killers have become an inescapable point of reference in movies, television fiction, novels, true crime books and video games. This global system of mass media – again, a characteristic attribute of modernity – has made many citizens intimately familiar with the dynamics of serial killing and the lives of particularly notorious offenders” (Haggerty and Ellerbrok, 2011: 6).
In regard to spree killings, “when a spree-killer shoots or stabs multiple victims and secures a large number of fatalities, the story receives serious news coverage, and such coverage is exacerbated if the shooter remains at large and local police are issuing ‘active shooter’ notices to the public. TV news stations will usually drop the majority of their pre-planned stories and features in order to follow the ongoing tragic developments. That is simply how news works in the 24-hour age” (Jackson, 2014).
Additionally, individual homicides, especially if they are unsolved, can also attract sustained public interest. One example of this is the disappearance of Lord Lucan. He fled after being suspected of bludgeoning to death in 1974 his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, in the basement of the family home having been identified by his wife as the assailant who attacked her that same evening. There has also been more recently a fascination with the shooting of Reeva Steenkamp by the notable para- Olympian athlete Oscar Pistorius and whether this was an act of self-defence in a case of mistaken identity, or whether he knew that he was shooting at his girlfriend after she locked the bathroom door and hid in there. For an extended period, the inability of the police to apprehend the killers of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence caused
When it came to Britain’s most famous faces, fictional wizard Harry Potter, played by actor Daniel Radcliffe, was the most recognised. Britain’s most recognised real-life face belonged to the Prime Minister, David Cameron_._
But would the public be able to recognise high profile victims and offenders?
Research objective
The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the public’s ability to recognise and name high profile victims and perpetrators. This study hypothesised that the public would recognise the perpetrator, rather than the victim; but if the public did recognise the victim, that victim would likely be a white child.
Methodology
This study utilised press images from ten high profile cases and included separate images of victims and perpetrators (specific details of the victims and the perpetrators is provided below). All of the cases which feature in our sample were widely reported upon at the time of the murders themselves, the subsequent trials of the perpetrator(s) and some continued to make headlines several years after the perpetrator had been brought to justice. In other words, they had "news value" (Jewkes, 2004) and "newsworthiness"; these were the cases that were typically reported upon by newspapers, whether of the "broadsheet" or "tabloid" variety. To use Peelo et al's (2004) description, the cases that we have selected were "infamous",
rather than those which had gone unnoticed. They could also be considered ‘Mega murders’ with those convicted often now serving “a life sentence with a ‘whole life order’. This means that their crime was so serious that they will never be released from prison” (Sentencing Council 2014). A measure of this seriousness can be gleaned from the fact that at the end of June 2014, there were only 48 prisoners who were serving whole life sentences in England and Wales (Bromley Briefings, 2014).
We primarily chose recent cases to form the basis of our sample, with the trials of the respective perpetrators ranging from 1995 to 2014. We did not choose cases from the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s, such as those involving the so-called Moors Murderers and nor did we choose cases where a perpetrator has not been convicted. Cases were selected to obtain a balance of age, gender and ethnicity of perpetrator and victim, though the majority of perpetrators were white males. All images that we used were head shots, printed in black and white, which were then shown in random order to members of the public. They were not asked any further questions, for example, concerning news consumption or interest in the news. Interviews were undertaken by three of the authors of this paper.
Fieldwork was conducted between March-May 2014 in a University and also in a non- University setting which encompassed fast-food outlets, bus stops and a shopping centre. In the University setting undergraduates, postgraduates and members of staff were approached and asked if they would be willing to participate in this research project. At the shopping centre, fast-food outlets and bus stops members of the public who were approached were asked if they would be willing to participate in research
of participants to the images displayed were categorised as (1) No recognition at all; (2) Recalled name in full; (3) Recalled name partially; (4) Recognised image; (5) Recalled details of the case; (6) Confused image with another victim or perpetrator; (7) recognised image and recalled case details but did not recall name.
These categories were then collapsed into two groups. The first group being ‘Able to Recall name’, from the categories: ‘Recalled name in full’, ‘Recalled name partially’ and ‘Recalled details of the case’. We use this group to determine the ability of our sample to “recognise” the victim or perpetrator. The second group is described as ‘Not Able to Recall name’, which we constructed from the categories: ‘No recognition at all’, ‘Recognised image’, ‘Confused image with another perpetrator’. As such, it should be noted that “Recognised” has a rather loose and generous definition within our sample and here we might also note that 4 participants were not able to recognise any of the images used within our sample at all and 1 participant either was not able to recognise the image, or else confused it with another victim or perpetrator. There were no examples of anyone recognising the image recalling case details but not recalling the name. The percentage recall of individual victims and perpetrators is given below in Table 2. Full details of participants’ responses to the images shown are provided in Appendix 2.
(Insert Table 2 here)
The most recognised victims were Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, whom 72% of our participants recognised and then Stephen Lawrence at 64%. Milly Dowler was recognised by 26% of participants and Sarah Payne by 24%. Tania Nicol and WPCs Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone were recognised by 9% of participants, with the least recognised being Lukasz Slaboszewki, at 3%, followed by Lucy Partington, Chris Brown and David Bird – all of whom were recognised by only 2% of the participants.
In looking in more detail at the most recognised victims, 49% of participants were able to recall details of the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman; another 10% could remember their names in full; and a further 14% could partially recall their names. For Stephen Lawrence, 46% of respondents were able to recall his name in full; 12% remembered details of the case; and 7% partially recalled his name. A greater proportion of those who could recognise the image of Milly Dowler recalled her name in full (16% of participants) than were able to recall details of the case (7% of participants), a situation which was reversed for Sarah Payne (11% of participants were able to recall details of the case and 8% of participants her name). All five of the most recognised victims were under 20: Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, 10; Stephen Lawrence, 18; Milly Dowler, 13; Sarah Payne, 8; Tania Nicol 19. While 6 of the victims were female and 4 male, 4 of the 5 most recognised victims were females.
The perpetrators who were the most recognised were Ian Huntley, whom 51% of participants recognised; Raoul Moat at 41%; Rose West, 40%; and Joanne Dennehy at 34% of our participants. Dale Cregan was recognised by 19% of participants, Levi Bellfield by 12% and Steven Wright by 10%. The three least recognised participants
Discussion
Peelo et al. (2006: 171) suggested that newspapers invite readers to identify with victims and victimhood as a way of engaging them in ‘human interest’ stories and as such "researchers need to explore the nature of the reader-newspaper dialogue at a micro level" so as to make sense of the public narratives that surround homicide. From the findings presented above, an examination of the micro dynamics of media reporting about perpetrators and victims would suggest that the public make sense of these narratives by largely and very quickly forgetting them after their consumption. Despite the high profile of the murders that formed the basis of our research, one of which had only weeks before dominated the news agenda, our most marked research result was a lack of knowledge about these victims and perpetrators. Victims and perpetrators were regularly misidentified to the extent that they had, in effect, become “unseen” (Wilson et al., 2010). Lucy Partington, murdered as part of the serial killings perpetrated by the Wests; Chris Brown, murdered by Raoul Moat; and David Bird, murdered by his twin brother Derrick as part of his spree killings in Cumbria, were all recognised by only 2 people in our sample, despite the very loose and generous way that we constructed our category “recognised”. Indeed, we would suggest that Lukasz Slaboszweki, who had been murdered by Dennehy, was only slightly more recognised than Lucy Partington, Chris Brown and David Bird, because his case had been more recently reported upon by the media.
While these victims were not recognised their perpetrators, with the exception of Derek Bird, were. Indeed, Rose West, Raoul Moat and Joanna Dennehy were the most
recognised perpetrators, with the exception of Ian Huntley. What was therefore remembered by the public from the portrayal of these offences in the media was the notoriety of those who committed these murders. Indeed these could all be considered what Soothill et al. (2002) termed Mega murders as they met the threshold for offending society through the horror, oddness, and the scale of the social disturbance of their crimes. Rose West, for example, was involved with her husband, Fred West, in the murder of nine women. She also killed Fred West’s daughter while he was in prison. Prior to strangling and suffocating their victims, Fred and Rose would sexually abuse, rape and torture their victims, often over days with elaborate and sadistic bondage acts being an aspect of these assaults.
Similarly, Joanna Dennehy offended society through the horror, oddness, and the scale of the social disturbance of her actions. She pleaded guilty to stabbing to death her three victims and injuring two others, one of whom subsequently died 18 months later. The images of her with a star on her check and a wide serrated machete also caused much consternation.
The offences West and Dennehy committed also met the Doyle newsworthiness criteria (Johnstone et al., 1994) of brutal murders involving multiple victims that shock the public along with Chermak’s (1995) criteria of violent or heinous offences which are considered unique events.
Here we might note that two women are amongst the four most recognised perpetrators. This may also be due to the rarity of female murderers, acting against
Huntley in Soham in Cambridgeshire, (for a good introduction to this murder and its wider impact see Gerrard, 2004). Huntley was sentenced in December 2003 to two terms of life imprisonment with a minimum term of 40 years for the murder of the two school girls who had been best friends. Their bodies were found two weeks after their disappearance, following intensive police activity and mass media interest in the case. The photograph circulated of the two girls, taken only hours before they went missing was of them both wearing Manchester United replica football shirts and it was this photograph which was used in our sample.
In relation to this finding about the Soham case we might note that it satisfies a number of Jewkes’s (2004: 40-55) 12-point criteria of ‘news values for a new millennium’ in that the case involved, at least, child victims, sex, violence and the photograph seemed to serve to create a wider connection to the public. Or, as Gerrard (2004: 12) has described it, in Soham there was a single narrative from which wider meanings could be extrapolated and which, in turn, allowed the public to “make meanings, give beginnings and endings, because we cannot bear a world or self without them”. This perhaps takes things too far. After all, whilst these were the most recognised images, a significant proportion of our sample were still unable to identify Holly or Jessica in their Manchester United football shirts, or even Huntley, although we should also note the importance of striking photographs or film footage in the reporting of criminal events, such as the CCTV shots of James Bulger being led away by his killers (Jewkes, 2004: 56-57).
These two murders seem therefore to have entered the collective conscious in a way that the other high profile murders did not with the exception of Stephen Lawrence. Something then about the victims Holly Wells, Jessica Chapman and Stephen Lawrence along with the perpetrator Ian Huntley resonated with the general public at a deeper level than the other high other profile victims and perpetrators included in this research. The murder of Holly Wells, Jessica Chapman and Stephen Lawrence could therefore be deemed as a ‘signal crimes (Innes, 2004), an offence seen as an index of the state of society and social order. Rather than just being another murder in a wave of media reporting of ‘newsworthiness’ individual, serial and spree murders, the killing of two young girls as they walked past the home of the school caretaker who lived with the teaching assistant they were fond of, a relationship that was reciprocated, and the murder of Stephen Lawrence “killed because of the colour of his skin” (Laville and Dodd, 2011), deeply disturbed the general public. For, perhaps more than anything else, we might infer, the general public want to live in a society in which children can trust those who work at the school they attend or who are not targeted simply because the colour of their skin is not white. This suggests something about the priorities of the general public in the way in which they would like the society in which they lived to be ordered. Fundamental to that is the role of those who have a responsibility for the care and protection of children and for all members of the public, regardless of the colour of their skin, to be able to safely walk the streets and wait at a bus stop without being attacked by others simply because they were members of a minority race or ethnic group.
