GENERAL: PSYCHIATRY & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

ABSTRACT: There have been few documented comparisons of serial murder cases committed in the United States with cases occurring inter-nationally. The authors contrasted two unique serial murder series: one in Italy and one in the United States by examining the details of both series,including the M.O., motivation, crime scene interactions, sexual act s performed, and the general backgrounds of both offenders. The comparisonrevealed a number of similarities. Both offenders specifically targeted el derly women, who were attacked in their residences. The two series involv edsexually motivated crimes, although the sexual interactions were different . Both offenders stole objects from their victims after the murders and e achkept newspaper accounts of their crimes. In addition, both offenders claimed to have abusive upbringings, including sexual abuse. KEYWORDS: forensic science, serial murder, elderly victims, sexually motivated murder, cross-cultural, sexual homicide Serial MurderThere has always been great interest in serial murder from lawenforcement, the medicolegal community, academicians, and thegeneral public. This interest has generated numerous academicstudies as well as a plethora of books, movies, and articles (1).Despite the intense interest, seri al murder is a relatively uncommonoccurrence, comprising <1% of all murders committed in theUnited States (1–3).Although serial murder historically has occurred all over theworld, the majority of studies concerning serial murder were basedon cases that have occurred in the United States (2). There havebeen, however, a number of other studies on serial murder in coun-tries outside of the United States, including England, Germany, Can-ada, South Africa, and The Netherlands (4–8). Throughout all ofthese studies, serial murder has been defined in a variety of ways,including the number of murders required, temporal aspects, andmotivations of the offenders. The shared components of all thesedefinitions include two or more victims, killed in separate events,and committed for a number of different motivations (1,4–8).Sexually Motivated Serial MurderThere are a variety of different classification systems used bylaw enforcement, academicians, and members of the mental healthcommunity to identify and analyze serial murders and the offenderswho commit these crimes (1,2,9,10). These classifications divideserial murder into different categories and most include sexualmotivation (1,2,4,10). As a result, sexually motivated murder isconsidered by many experts to be a distinct subset of serial murder(2,3,10).Murder of the elderly is a rare event, occurring in <3% of allhomicides committed in the United States (11). Among those mur-ders, there is a smaller set of murders that are sexually motivated(11). Serial sexual murder of the elderly is an even smaller subsetwithin the category of serial sexual murder (11).Ben Mohamed Ezzedine Sebai Case HistoryBen Mohamed Ezzedine Sebai was born in 1962, in Tunisia,Africa. In 1990, he immigrated illegally to northern Italy. In 1991,he was charged with attempted murder and rape by the Policeheadquarters of Bolzano in northern Italy, and they issued anexpulsion order. Sebai fled before trial and relocated to the Prov-ince of Foggia, located in southern Italy, where he worked occa-sionally as a farm laborer.Between 1996 and 1997, there were 12 homicides of elderlywomen over the age of 70, in the A pulia territories of southernItaly. The chronological distribution of the victims were three in1996 and nine in 1997 (Fig. 1). All of the victims were found intheir own apartments, all of which were located on the ground