Pettler's Staging Taxonomy
Copyright Laura Pettler
Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy
The story of Jacob and Joseph from Genesis 37 demonstrates that people have been trying to get away with violent crimes against others since ancient times. However, even though there are several empirical and anecdotal historical references to crime scene staging overtime, they pale in comparison to other areas of crime scene investigation and forensic science. Until the past two decades at best, the phenomenon of “crime scene” staging has received relatively no attention by the criminological or law enforcement community. While some notable authors have mentioned staging or have written about staging within the body of their works, the phenomenon of specifically crime scene staging has gone profoundly under-researched. In addition, empirical examination of staged crime scenes is virtually uncharted territory.
Many types of crimes can be staged, such as financial crimes, larcenies, and the like; however, LPA’s focus is on staged murders. This means that LPA solves death cases 98% of the time using The Murder Room method, which helps determine the correct manner of death and if the event is normal or staged. Homicide and murder are not interchangeable terms in the medical community, but most of us use them in in conversation as meaning the same. Homicide means one human kills another human. Murder means one human killing another human was unlawful. Not all homicides are criminal.
In 2014, Dr. Pettler wrote the world’s very first book on the dynamics of staging in homicide cases. At that time, Dr. Pettler defined staging behaviors as purposeful acts exhibited by an offender who intends to misdirect an investigation by manipulating physical or verbal evidence to make it appear that his or victim died legitimately in attempt to conceal the evidence that might prove the victim was actually murdered by the offender. In 2021, Dr. Pettler expanded her original definition in the form of the world’s first proposed taxonomic arrangement of staging behaviors for moving forward towards filling the gap in the literature by drawing eclectically using a multidisciplinary approach to broaden our understanding of this overarching behavioral pattern.
According to Merriam-Webster (2021a), communication is defined as, “a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior” (para. 1). Additionally, Merriam-Webster (2021b) defines staging as, “the act of putting on a play” (para. 2). How fascinating… “the act of putting on a play” (Merriam-Webster, 2021b, para. 2)…and how profoundly accurate. So, it is not crime scene staging, too narrow, it is STAGING. And it’s not limited to the crime scene or the death scene or to just words or physical manipulation of evidence or body language (Hazelwood & Napier, 2004). Staging includes all of the latter and more. Staging is communication. Staging is the offender playing Shakespeare or a “Hollywood Director”. The murder of the victim is "produced" like a producer or screen writer produces a scripted television show or movie. Staged murders come with a cast of characters, with props, and a script. It’s like watching a fictional show or movie. The offender is "on stage" front and center…acting. Investigators and experts are his or her captive audience. Staging is a mind game; a mind game produced and played by the offender and for the purpose of meeting his or her needs entirely.
Figure 3. Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy
Figure 3 is a diagram of Pettler’s 2021 Staging Taxonomy. For the purpose of the following explanation and at its broadest point, staging is the purposeful act of deceptive behaviors aimed to misdirect the victim’s death investigation solely for benefit that in totality meets the needs of the offender. Staged murders can be monothematic or simplistically staged. In contrast, murders can be polythematic or elaborately staged by the offender. Some offenders link unrelated ideas or themes together to justify their positions. Arguably, physical evidence might be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about staging, and while the American criminal justice system is firmly seated on physical evidence often being what tips the scale in the courtroom during murder trials, physical evidence is not always present in every case. In Dr. Pettler's 21 years of experience solving and clearing murder cases, she coined the phrase, "people die the way they live and live the way they kill", which means killers normally don’t deviate much from their normal ways of life when they decide to take the life of another. And in order to get the payoff (i.e., the benefits from killing the victim), some offenders engage in staging behaviors to not only make sure they acquire those benefits, but to get away with murder. Therefore, Dr. Pettler's Staging Taxonomy categorizes staging behavior into one of three behavioral clusters (a) Linguistic Staging, (b) Visual Staging, or (c) Nonverbal Staging (think “communication”: staging is the way offenders communicate.).
Type 1: Linguistic Staging
According to Merriam-Webster (2021c), linguistics is defined as, “the study of human speech including the units, nature, structure, and modification of language” (para.1). Therefore, a working proposed definition of Linguistic Staging is the offender’s use of speech as a contributory mechanism towards purposefully misdirecting the victim’s death investigation solely for the purpose of offender benefit and towards meeting offender needs in totality. Linguistic staging can be qualified as major, moderate, or minor linguistic staging. Linguistic staging can be qualified as major when the offender completely departs from the actual fact pattern of the case by creating a narrative separate and apart from the evidence and/or reality of which is known to be true. Major linguistic staging most often includes lots of details that can create cognitive overload for the offender. Sensational linguistic staging is the easy to detect because in true there is no way to explain his or her wild account of events (Vrij, 2008). One of my “famous quotes” is “There’s a fiber of truth in the thread of every lie”, which helps to explain the concept of Moderate linguistic staging: one part lie, one part truth. One of the reasons offenders get away with lying is because normal people are not looking for him or her to lie to them (Vrij, 2008). Like Major Linguistic Staging, offenders often end up in cognitive overload because they’re exaggerating details, embellishing the facts, while trying to interweave part of the truth with their lies. In stark contrast to Major Linguistic Staging, Minor linguistic staging is the most difficult qualification to detect (Vrij, 2008). Offenders who employ Minor Linguistic staging omit information, conceal information by hiding details or even huge pieces of incriminating information. Minor Linguistic Staging is often what occurs when investigators ask direct questions. Offenders’ answer, but they leave out tons of information. Unless investigators really know the victimology and the case really well, offenders have a great chance of getting away with Minor Linguistic Staging more often than major or moderate.
Oral and Written are subtypes of linguistic communication that can be qualified as major, moderate, or minor. The term “verbal staging” was coined by Hazelwood & Napier in 2004. For the purpose of Pettler's Staging Taxonomy, Oral Staging is the purposeful act of oral communication that includes stating false information, misleading information, the omission of critical facts, or the concealment of incriminating information that in part meets the needs of the offender. Hazelwood and Napier (2004) argued that verbal staging, or the purposeful acts exhibited by the offender to contact authorities regarding the victim’s whereabouts and wellbeing when the offender has already murdered the victim and disposed of his or her body, and the type of lies related to covering up the murder of the victim in general are also very important to investigate and bring forth. Oral Staging in murder cases often is discovered in 911 Calls, subject statements (i.e., interviews), and voicemail for examples. The second subtype of Linguistic Staging is Written Staging, which can be operationalized purposeful act of penned communication that includes stating false information, misleading information, the omission of critical facts, or the concealment of incriminating information that in part meets the needs of the offender. Written Staging in murder cases is often discovered in notes like fake suicide notes, letters, receipts, legal documents, banking documents, in digital evidence like text, instant, and messages, and in cyber-staging by posting text and graphics and commenting in social media. All Linguistic Staging is subject to the aural effects of language. Offenders who employ Linguistic Staging as part or in whole may stage the tone of the mechanism, their idiolect, word choice, and sentence structure. Idiolect is “the language or speech pattern of one individual at a particular period of life” (dialect is a language spoken by a group of people) (Merriam-Webster, 2021d, para. 1). Imagine the offender writing or speaking in his or her own personal idiolect manipulating tone, specifically choosing words, and organizing the words to form sentences to meet his or her needs specifically.
Type 2: Visual Staging
The second type of staging behaviors is Visual Staging. The ways an offender can stage a murder are endless and are only limited by his or her imagination, creativity, ambition, enthusiasm, and physical abilities in relation to the physical stature and condition of the victim (Schlesinger et al, 2012). Killers can stick to one theme across the board to stage the murder of the victim or get more elaborate by integrating multiple themes to stage their vision of the perfect murder. Just as an offender can physically stage a murder, an offender can easily orally stage a murder as well. Oral staging often supports the offender’s work in the crime scene, but its Dr. Pettler's experience that at some point, the lies overwhelm some offenders, they cannot remember what they did, what they did not do, what they need to say, what they should not say, what they did say, what they did not say, etc., sometimes all within the same conversation with investigators, family, friends, or other relevant parties. This phenomenon is called “cognitive overload” in relation to staging behaviors. This is why it is so important to be ready, willing, and able to capture all information. Innocent people behave totally differently from guilty ones and the more that is known about the dynamics of human behavior and communication the better investigators will be at identifying staging behaviors and solving murders (Douglas and Munn, 1992).
Visual Staging is not mindless or random work on the part of the offender. As mentioned above, murders can be simplistically or elaborately staged, but the vision the offender has of what the murder should look like is what drives his or her behavior for visually staging the murder from beginning to end. Offenders can add, subtract, or destroy to make their perfect death scene to fake a suicide, accident, natural death, missing person, abduction-murder, botched home invasion-murder, fire-related death and arson, autoerotic death, medically related death, burglary gone wrong, or even to frame someone else. Micro-Subtype 1: Subtraction Visual Staging includes removing evidence, cleaning up and concealing evidence. Micro-Subtype 2: Addition Visual Staging includes planning the murder and creating evidence to plant in the death scene. And Micro-Subtype 3: Destruction Staging includes using fire, water, and breaking evidence to visually stage the death scene or in other locations. Like Linguistic Staging is subject to aural effects, Visual Staging is subject to the effects of spatiality. Spatiality of Visual Staging includes how the offender arranges the scene to meet his or her needs, how and with what the offender occupies space visually in the scene, and his or her use of space in the death scene.
Type 3: Nonverbal Staging
Most communication is actually involuntary and staging behaviors are deceit by design. Stagers are shapeshifters. They reframe and reshape their own thought distortion into something more useful like linguistic, visual, and non-verbal elements of murder to meet their needs. The third type of Staging in Pettler's Staging Taxonomy is Nonverbal Staging. Nonverbal staging is gestural, meaning the offender’s use of time, proxemics, body language, touch, physical characteristics, and artifacts that are either present or absent from his or her nonverbal behavior. Time refers to how the offender chooses to manipulate time to meet his or her needs. Some call 911 immediately, some wait to call 911. Proxemics refers to how close or far apart the offender stays from other people. Some offenders get very close to other people so much so that they break cultural norms for personal space. Body language includes facial expressions like showing emotion or restraining emotion for example. Some offenders show anger, sadness, and other emotions, some keep those feelings to themselves. Some generate pseudo-emotions to stage how they feel. Touch refers to how the offender employs physical contact with another person to meet his or her needs. Some offenders touch others to try to build report and familiarity. Some offenders will be standoffish and some don't want to be touched or don't want to touch others at all. Some offenders will show their physical characteristics like tattoos, scars, etc. and some conceal them because it meets their needs towards staging, they are not the killer. And artifacts of the murder like cuts, bruises, scratches, stab wounds, gunshot wounds and the like can be manipulated by the offender to meet his nonverbal communication needs as well.
When it comes to qualitative characteristics of staging, Dr. Pettler does not adhere to strict dichotomies because staging is not static. Throughout Dr. Pettler's career and research, she has observed mixed levels of variables all in one murder (e.g., organization, sophistication, anger, power, and control). At LPA, staging behaviors range along spectrums or continuums from nominal to ratio level of measurement. The first continuum is Unsophisticated to Sophisticated. The second is Disorganized to Organized. The third is Devoid of Anger to Enraged. The fourth is a spectrum Dr. Pettler developed is called the Power and Control +Anger or -Anger Spectrum. Intimicides or intimate partner homicides are always centered on Power and Control, but some like the murders of Lacy Peterson and her unborn son are minus Anger types while some appear to be the plus Anger type like in the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
Death scenes in murder cases are the totality of the paradoxical vivid interaction of the genoevirosocioculturalistic aggregation of the victim-offender relationship that results in death scene characteristics and dynamic interrelationships combined with all elements of the homicidal pattern, which gives rise to the offender profile. All of this culminates into what Dr. Pettler calls “Divergent Dualism” …or in short murder. Staged murders can be perplexing to the untrained eye…and to the untrained mind. Pettler's Staging Taxonomy helps the eye, the ear, and the mind understand and categorize staging behaviors towards increased solvability and clearance and decreased missed staged murders and cold case homicides.
References and Additional Readings:
Douglas, J. E., & Munn, C. (1992a, February). Violent crime scene analysis: Modus operandi, signature, and staging. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 61(2), 1-10.
Eke, A. W. (2007). Staging in cases of homicide: Offender, victim, and offence characteristics (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Proquest. (1390310091)
Ferguson, C. (2011). The defects of the situation: A typology of staged crime scenes. Gold Coast, Queensland. Bond University (Unpublished doctoral thesis).
Ferguson, C. (2014b, July). Staged homicides: An examination of common features of faked burglaries, suicides, accidents, and car accidents. Journal Police Criminal Psychology. Springer publishing doi: 10.1007/s11896-014-9154-1
Ferguson, C., & Petherick, W. (2014, October 13). Getting away with murder: An examination of detected homicides staged as suicides. Homicide Studies. Doi. 10.1177/1088767914553099
Frye v. United States, 1923 Gardner, R. M. (2005). Practical crime scene processing and investigation. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group.
Geberth, V. J. (1996). The staged crime scene. Law and Order Magazine, 44(2), 45-49.
Geberth, V. J. (1996a). Practical homicide investigation: Tactics, procedures, and forensic techniques (3rd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group.
Geberth, V. J. (2006). Practical homicide investigation: Tactics, procedures, and forensic techniques (4th ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group.
Gross, H. (1924). Criminal Investigation. London, England: Sweet & Maxwell.
Hazelwood, R. R., & Napier, M. R. (2004). Crime scene staging and its detection. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 48(6), 744-759. doi:10.1177/0306624X04268298
Keppel, R. D. & Weis, J. G. (2004). The rarity of unusual dispositions of victim bodies: Staging and posing. Journal of Forensic Science, 49(6), 1-5.
Merriam-Webster. (2021a, para. 1). Communication. Retrieved on February 25, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communication
Merriam-Webster. (2021b, para. 2). Staging. Retrieved on February 25, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/linguistics
Merriam-Webster. (2021c, para. 1). Linguistics. Retrieved on February 25, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/staging
Merriam-Webster. (2021d, para. 1). Idiolect. Retrieved on February 25, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiolect
Schlesinger, L. B., Gardenier, A., Jarvis, J. & Sheehan-Cook, J. (2012, April). Crime scene staging in homicide. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 29(1), 44-51.
Turvey, B. E. (2002). Criminal profiling: An introduction to behavioral evidence analysis (2nd ed.). London, England: Academic Press.
Turvey, B. E. (2011). Criminal profiling: An introduction to behavioral evidence analysis (4th ed.). London, England: Academic Press.
Vrij, A. (2008). Detecting lies and deceit: Pitfalls and opportunities, 2nd ed. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
