Crimes of Impulse - Murders of Jealousy and Rage
Impulse crimes are commonly referred to as ‘crimes of passion’ or acts carried out in the ‘heat of the moment’. Often the ‘passion’ concerns a romantic or sexual relationship, or may simply mean no more than any strong emotion one is experiencing such as rage or anger.
Broadly speaking, crimes can often be broken up into two defined categories: expressive and instrumental. Expressive crimes, or our crimes of impulse, are contrasted by instrumental crimes; those preceded by planning, and carried out with malice aforethought. Certain motives behind crimes are judged as more understandable and forgivable; others as vile or inhuman.
When things go wrong in the sphere of love, we may find jealousy - and where we find jealousy, to an extreme enough degree, serious crimes including murder can occur, many as acts of spontaneity and in the heat of ‘passion’. Jealousy can be understood as an extreme emotional state, hardwired in our brains over centuries of evolution, to safeguard what we consider to be most precious to us. Our susceptibility to jealousy is shared by near all of us, and is why we so often find it in the works of art and literature - from Shakespeare’s Othello to Euripides‘ Medea. Of course, not all spontaneous violence and murder relates to jealousy - violence during brawls or in the course of an argument are often spurred by feelings of intense anger and rage.
Jealousy Murders
George Skiadopoulos
In 1999, George Skiadopoulos was convicted of the murder of 31-year old Julie Scully. A former model, Julie met George, a Greek sailor, while on a cruise in the Caribbean. Bored in her marriage to her current husband, Julie and George began an affair, following which Julie divorced her husband and began to live with George. An intensely jealous man, George often spied on Julie’s private phone calls and became increasingly argumentative, in one instance going so far as to choke Julie’s mother. After charges forced him to return to Greece, Julie, who had returned with him and grown weary of both George and her new life, insisted on returning to the United States. George lured Julie to a remote spot and strangled her, before proceeding to dismember the body and dispose of it in the Aegean Sea.
Clara Harris
Clara Suarez Harris, the only child of an affluent family, lived an upscale and flourished life in Houston, Texas with her husband, David Harris, both of whom shared in the profession of dentistry. Busy with both motherhood and a successful practice, David felt sidelined by Clara, and soon began an affair with his receptionist, Gail Bridges. However, the affair soon become known to Clara, who, after hiring a private investigator, traveled to the hotel David and Gail were staying in. Upon them emerging from the lobby, Clara proceeded to mow down her husband with her car, driving over him a further two times in order to kill him.
Jeremy Akers
Born to a working-class family in Mississippi, Jeremy Akers was the typical all-American overachiever - a straight-A student, bodybuilder and highly competitive individual; graduating law school before serving in Vietnam. Upon his return, Jeremy married Nancy Richards, to whom he was brash, domineering, jealous and possessive. The marriage soon began to deteriorate. Depressed after the birth of her third child and feeling unappreciated by her husband, Nancy struck up an acquaintance with truck driver, Jim Lemke. The pair shared an appreciation of writing and soon became lovers. Having already suspected the two’s infidelity, Jeremy’s feelings only escalated upon Nancy suing for divorce. Using the pretext of discussing divorce details, Jeremy lured Nancy back to their house, where he shot her to death with a .38 before turning the gun on himself.
Impulse Murders: Emphasis on Rage
Robert Rowe
Robert was born one of two brothers raised in a Protestant family. Married to a Catholic woman (despite the protests of his mother) to whom he had two sons with: Bobby and Chris, who was born blind and deaf due to his wife’s early contraction of rubella during pregnancy. Robert was described as unusually stoic in the face of his son’s condition, forming a support group for other couples in similar situations. When he was forty, he and his wife adopted a young girl. Three years later, Robert’s mother passed away, but not before humiliating him by admitting she wished she had aborted him before he was born, as she had with her first two pregnancies. She considered Robert as nothing more than a lowly bureaucrat and a fake, and disinherited him in a final act of spite. Robert soon became seriously depressed, suffering recurrent dreams in which his mother urged him to kill his family. Receiving psychiatric treatment for his depression, Robert was unable to continue work as an attorney and took up a job as a New York cab driver. However, not long after, his cab was stolen and Robert was unwillingly reduced to a house husband while Mary worked. Upon discovering his other child, Bobby, had developed a congenital hip disease that may render him wheelchair bound, Robert ceased taking his medication and slipped further into depression. The suggestion to place Chris in the care of an institution was raised by Robert, but ultimately dismissed by his wife, further deteriorating the situation. The culmination of these events came about in 1978, wherein Robert took a baseball bat to his three children, bludgeoning them to death. Upon her return home, Robert instructed his wife to put on a blindfold as he had a ‘surprise’ for her - the surprise being him proceeding to bludgeon her to death with the bat as well. Robert then attempted suicide by way of the gas from his oven, but was rescued by a neighbor.
Susan Wright
Susan Wyche worked as a go-go dancer at the local discotheque, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Jeff Wright. An affair soon ensued, the result of which was Susan falling pregnant to Jeff, who, to Susan’s irritation, delayed in marrying her until she was eight months along in her pregnancy. While Jeff’s job as a fairly successful salesman afforded them the ability to live in relative comfort, he was addicted to both cocaine and other women - avocations ruinous to both their finances and their marriage. In 2003, Susan’s anger having reached a tipping point, she enticed Jeff into their bedroom under the pretext of engaging in bondage activities, allowing himself to be restrained to the four corner-posts of their bed. In a burst of rage, Susan mutilated his genitals and stabbed Jeff near two hundred times. Panicked, Susan dragged the body to their yard before disposing of it in a pit, dug earlier by Jeff for an unknown reason. Susan had planned to tell people Jeff had simply ‘disappeared’, however this would prove to be in vain, as their dog dug up the body only a few days later.
Dr. Bruce Rowan
Idaho-born to a large family, of which he was the youngest, Bruce Rowan was depressed for most of his life, grappling with feelings of unworthiness and suicidal idealisation. During the course of his academic studies as a medical student, Bruce continued to suffer from suicidal thoughts, for which he was temporarily hospitalised. Debbie, Bruce’s girlfriend, stood by him during this time, partly due to her love for him, partly out of the fearful belief that were she to leave, he would attempt to kill himself. The pair married and spent considerable time traveling the world and doing charitable work in various countries before returning to the United States to settle down. Bruce was still determined to travel, to provide aid to the needy, in hopes this would alleviate his continual feelings of unworthiness. Following their adoption of a young girl, Debbie was often preoccupied with caring for their baby, and Bruce, saddled with chores and finding himself with less quality time with Debbie, began to grow resentful. In 1998, Bruce’s resentment turned to rage, and he murdered Debbie using an axe. Bruce then placed the body in their car before pushing it down a hill in an attempt to convey the appearance of an unfortunate accident. At trial, Bruce was ultimately found not guilty by way of mental illness.
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