Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives by Marilee Strong 
This is a fascinating and compulsively readable look into the dark abyss of the psychology of a seemingly new breed of men--like Scott Peterson, Mark Hacking of Salt Lake City, and more than forty others who are not 'household names'--who cleverly and in cold blood plan and carry out a complex killing of their wives/partners in order to "erase" these women from the face of the earth.
Though many of the cases are drawn from the headlines, dozens of others are completely new. All are disturbing. Author Strong--a journalist who has won awards for writing about issues where psychology crosses over with social problems--argues convincingly that the media has fed us with sometimes endless headlines on only a very few of these cases but without digging into the real issue of motive. What makes these apparently normal men do this?
Strong draws on a wealth of research in forensic psychology--especially the study of psychopaths and some of the closely related "cousins" of psychopathy which make up what researchers have called the "dark triad" of negative personality traits--including Machiavellianism and clinical narcissism. While the book is not a textbook, Strong skillfully weaves in just as much psychological background as we need in order to understand this crime.
Many of us who have followed these crimes have had the nagging feeling that "there must be something going on here." Strong is the first person to provide an answer, a new psychological profile, a 'match' with forensic psychology, a consistent motive (hint: it isn't money and it isn't even 'the other woman.') It's the psychologically twisted nature of the crime--what these men are really trying to do--that inspired her to call it "eraser killing."
Strong makes the straightforward argument that since no one has bothered to look at these killings as a group, this insidious crime hasn't even had a name yet, and without a name, no serious discussion would ever happen. (I remember the time when 'identity theft' didn't have a name but it had happened to a friend of mine...it was incredibly frustrating.)
But beyond the name, Strong goes over the stories of famous and never-heard-of cases to "tease out" the creepy set of consistent personality traits these men have (for example, compulsive and 'guilt free' lying, need to control, often living a 'secret life', emotions seem 'flat', seem quite normal on the surface, secretly (or not so secretly) feel very threatened about having children, always more concerned about themselves even though they 'fake' interest in others to serve their own ends.)
Interestingly, Strong traces the crime back a century ago to what was apparently a major headline case in the early 1900's which involved a young man who killed his pregnant girlfriend and then staged a boating accident to cover it up. That case went into history when writer Theodore Dreiser used it as the core story for his American Tragedy novel.
The book is packed with these fascinating insights and cases involving women of every social background, every race, and every part of the country. (Contrary to what the media has sometimes snarkily said, this secretive form of wife killing is not just something that happens to "pretty young white women"--whatever that might mean).
I think that the first step in naming and identifying a crime is very challenging. I know from reading that it took quite a struggle for the people from the FBI Behavioral Science Unit to establish the whole idea of profiling, and to come up with a rough definition of a serial killer. Those killers had been around for centuries but never had a name and were never studied as a group until 30 years ago. (Even today no one knows how many people are killed by serial killers every year. It will be a long time before we know how many are killed by erasers.)
It is interesting, however, that several of the most renowned "graduates" of the FBI "profiler" unit--people who consult on criminal cases for the police across the country--have "discovered" Strong's book and endorsed the findings. These include people like Roy Hazelwood (one of the original 'old guard' at the FBI, and author of The Evil That Men Do), and Clint Van Zandt (crime analyst frequently on TV in these cases, originally an FBI profiler.) Since Ms. Strong does venture boldly into the waters of forensic psychology, I was pleased to see that even some of the "heavy weights" who are not household names are recommending her book--people like psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone from Columbia, who has been studying criminal psychopaths for decades.
You don't have to have read the many individual case crime books in order to appreciate the magnitude of what Marilee Strong is proposing in this groundbreaking work--she summarizes many of the cases in short form, but uses other cases, especially Scott Peterson, as the ultimate case study to illustrate the "sane on the outside, but completely narcissistic and remorseless on the inside" psychology she argues is at the core of all of these cases. Why do they do it? Are they any warning signs? Why don't they just get a divorce? Can they ever prosecute someone whose committed this kind of crime if they never find the woman's body? If you've been obsessed with these kinds of questions the way I have, you'll absolutely love this book.
Though many of the cases are drawn from the headlines, dozens of others are completely new. All are disturbing. Author Strong--a journalist who has won awards for writing about issues where psychology crosses over with social problems--argues convincingly that the media has fed us with sometimes endless headlines on only a very few of these cases but without digging into the real issue of motive. What makes these apparently normal men do this?
Strong draws on a wealth of research in forensic psychology--especially the study of psychopaths and some of the closely related "cousins" of psychopathy which make up what researchers have called the "dark triad" of negative personality traits--including Machiavellianism and clinical narcissism. While the book is not a textbook, Strong skillfully weaves in just as much psychological background as we need in order to understand this crime.
Many of us who have followed these crimes have had the nagging feeling that "there must be something going on here." Strong is the first person to provide an answer, a new psychological profile, a 'match' with forensic psychology, a consistent motive (hint: it isn't money and it isn't even 'the other woman.') It's the psychologically twisted nature of the crime--what these men are really trying to do--that inspired her to call it "eraser killing."
Strong makes the straightforward argument that since no one has bothered to look at these killings as a group, this insidious crime hasn't even had a name yet, and without a name, no serious discussion would ever happen. (I remember the time when 'identity theft' didn't have a name but it had happened to a friend of mine...it was incredibly frustrating.)
But beyond the name, Strong goes over the stories of famous and never-heard-of cases to "tease out" the creepy set of consistent personality traits these men have (for example, compulsive and 'guilt free' lying, need to control, often living a 'secret life', emotions seem 'flat', seem quite normal on the surface, secretly (or not so secretly) feel very threatened about having children, always more concerned about themselves even though they 'fake' interest in others to serve their own ends.)
Interestingly, Strong traces the crime back a century ago to what was apparently a major headline case in the early 1900's which involved a young man who killed his pregnant girlfriend and then staged a boating accident to cover it up. That case went into history when writer Theodore Dreiser used it as the core story for his American Tragedy novel.
The book is packed with these fascinating insights and cases involving women of every social background, every race, and every part of the country. (Contrary to what the media has sometimes snarkily said, this secretive form of wife killing is not just something that happens to "pretty young white women"--whatever that might mean).
I think that the first step in naming and identifying a crime is very challenging. I know from reading that it took quite a struggle for the people from the FBI Behavioral Science Unit to establish the whole idea of profiling, and to come up with a rough definition of a serial killer. Those killers had been around for centuries but never had a name and were never studied as a group until 30 years ago. (Even today no one knows how many people are killed by serial killers every year. It will be a long time before we know how many are killed by erasers.)
It is interesting, however, that several of the most renowned "graduates" of the FBI "profiler" unit--people who consult on criminal cases for the police across the country--have "discovered" Strong's book and endorsed the findings. These include people like Roy Hazelwood (one of the original 'old guard' at the FBI, and author of The Evil That Men Do), and Clint Van Zandt (crime analyst frequently on TV in these cases, originally an FBI profiler.) Since Ms. Strong does venture boldly into the waters of forensic psychology, I was pleased to see that even some of the "heavy weights" who are not household names are recommending her book--people like psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone from Columbia, who has been studying criminal psychopaths for decades.
You don't have to have read the many individual case crime books in order to appreciate the magnitude of what Marilee Strong is proposing in this groundbreaking work--she summarizes many of the cases in short form, but uses other cases, especially Scott Peterson, as the ultimate case study to illustrate the "sane on the outside, but completely narcissistic and remorseless on the inside" psychology she argues is at the core of all of these cases. Why do they do it? Are they any warning signs? Why don't they just get a divorce? Can they ever prosecute someone whose committed this kind of crime if they never find the woman's body? If you've been obsessed with these kinds of questions the way I have, you'll absolutely love this book.
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