Thesis (M.A.(Practical Theology)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-77).

Thesis (MA(Criminology))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Abstract in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

On August 28, 1955, Emmett Louis Till was abducted from the home of his uncle, Mose Wright, near Money, Mississippi. A body was recovered three days later in the nearby Tallahatchie River, which divides Tallahatchie and Leflore Counties, and the body was closer to the Tallahatchie bank of the river. A week later the Grand Jury of Tallahatchie County indicted J. W. Milan and Roy Bryant on separate counts of murder and kidnapping. On September 198, 1955, in Sumner, Mississippi, there began a trial destined to be the most publicized kidnap-murder trial since the Bruno Hauptman case, seventy reporters covered the trial, representing newspapers and magazines from all over the United States and from some foreign countries. Nearly every newspaper in the country gave the case and trial front-page play, as did many of those published in other countries. / Typescript. / A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 1963. / "August, 1963" / Includes bibliographical references. / Marion D. Irish, Professor Directing Thesis; William W. Rogers, Committee Member; Malcolm B. Parsons, Committee Member.

Several justifications exist for the death penalty, yet it is only recently that the concept of “closure” has come to serve as a rationale for American capital punishment. This contemporary justification promises murder victims’ families that the execution of their loved one’s murderer should provide them with “closure”—a contested word that typically denotes an end to the pain associated with their loved one’s murder. How and when this new narrative came about has garnered little scholarly attention, particularly as murder victims’ families begin to challenge closure as relevant to their healing. The goals of the current study seek to: 1) elucidate how closure entered the American death penalty debate; 2) illustrate the myriad meanings assigned to closure, identifying how various stakeholders have trafficked in the term’s use; 3) examine how closure has been used politically to legitimize death penalty practices and the state’s right to take life; and 4) critically analyze claims that closure has “symbolically transformed” the American death penalty today. The study employs discursive textual analysis of nearly 2500 American newspaper stories from 1989 to 2008, legislative hearings, legal case histories, academic and popular sources, and archival materials from American death penalty and victims’ rights groups during this twenty year period. The findings illustrate that closure entered death penalty discourse in the late 1980s, and reached a tipping point in news coverage in 2001 with Timothy McVeigh’s execution. While the term was used in nearly every way imaginable, the findings illustrate it was most prominently used in supporting secondary victims’ “right to view” the executions of their loved ones’ murderers and in justifying Timothy McVeigh’s execution for his role in the Oklahoma City Bombing. I argue that the media’s sensational portrayals of such historical moments allowed them to serve as “galvanizing events” ushering in closure as a powerful symbol in justifying the state’s right to take life and the view that executions are a form of “therapeutic justice.” Despite closure being used to support certain death penalty practices, the analyses presented here provide little support for the notion that closure has “symbolically transformed” American capital punishment today as has been suggested by some scholars. Closure is a small blip in print news coverage and does not resonate strongly with Americans’ support for capital punishment in national opinion polls. The study concludes with a critical examination of the role of closure as a contemporary, and empirically unchallenged, justification for the death penalty—one that serves as an empty promise for murder victims’ loved ones. / text

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007 / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-64).

Thesis (M.A. in Sociology)--Washington State University, May 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Apr. 23, 2010). "Department of Sociology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-69).

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2005. / Denise Donnelly, committee chair; Ralph LaRossa, Elizabeth Beck, committee members. Electronic text (110 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 12, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 102-108).

For most of the past century, the positive outcome of grief in the West was characterized as the relinquishment of the bond to the deceased. Phrases such as "let go", "move on", and "get over it" were, and continue to be, common to the language of this pursuit. This 'breaking bonds' perspective does not take into account other means of grief resolution, nor does it consider historical or cultural findings. Consequently, reports of bereaved parents who indicate resolution of grief yet maintain a continued relationship with their deceased child were not given much attention until the 1990s. This research employed a Durkheimian approach, taking the social bond as the starting point of inquiry and examined continuing bonds of parents to their murdered children. How these bonds were related to the parents' attitudes of re-investing in life and their level of grief was measured. The relationship between the parents' level of grief and their life attitudes was also assessed. The sample consisted of 46 parents living in North Texas whose child had been murdered three or more years ago. A triangulated methodology was utilized and the data were collected by means of participant observation, unstructured interviews, and a mailed questionnaire which obtained information on continuing bonds, level of grief, life attitudes and demographic variables. Multiple regression techniques were utilized to analyze the quantitative data. Parents on the Continuing Bonds Scale reported high levels of bonds with their deceased child. Contrary to expectation, the level of continuing bonds parents maintained with their children was found to be independent of other variables in the study. The relationship between parents' level of grief and their life attitudes was inverse in that higher levels of grief were associated with lower levels of re-investing in life. The finding of the independence of the Continuing Bonds Scale indicates the parent's level of grief and life attitudes are not related to continuing bonds; the bonds exist regardless. The relationship between level of grief and life attitudes points to a crisis of meaning.

This essay aims to investigate how female murder victims are portrayed in Swedish newspapers. By analyzing how the murder of the two Swedish women, Tova Moberg and Kim Wall, are portrayed in four of Sweden’s biggest newspapers; Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet we aim to understand if, and how, they differ. Four research questions have therefore been conducted: 1) What are the similarities and differences between Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet’s way of portraying female murder victims? 2) What meaning does the genre, for example type of newspaper, the editorial department and type of article have in the depiction of female murder victims? 3) What meaning does the production of the male suspects (in these two specific cases) have for the portrait of the female murder victims? And lastly 4) How can our results be connected to previous research, in terms of media representations of women as crime victims? The theoretical framework was used to answer these four questions, and involves the social constructionism perspective, genre theory, gender theory and a combined chapter of media rethorics, media logic and media dramaturgy. The material consists of articles from the four newspapers, and the chosen method is textual analysis. The results show, that there are explicit examples, and implicit tendencies of victim blaming in both murder cases, but not in all four papers. In conclusion, the tabloids tend to write in a way to intrigue and interest, while the daily newspapers seem to write in more of an objective and neutral manner. This essay is partly built upon previous studies on victim blaming in british newspapers. Previous research about the phenomena of victim blaming or ideal victim has not been conducted in swedish press and this essay can therefore serve as a contribution to the scientific field of media and communication and journalism in Sweden.

A sample (N = 428) of university students was introduced to a stranger that fit the public persona of either John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy in a vignette. The meetings between students and strangers in vignettes were similar to those in which serial killers might entrap victims. In addition to varying criminal type (Gacy or Bundy), the race and gender of the strangers were also varied in the 2 x 2 x 2 experiment. Differences among subjects in their ratings of personality traits of the strangers and how subjects expected to behave toward these persons were examined by ANOVA. Focus group discussions provided further insights about how individuals size up and react to "respectable" strangers who fit the public personas of well-known serial killers. Results suggested that young adults in the 1990s are highly vulnerable to victimization by serial murderers. / Department of Sociology