Cruise Bruise Blog
January 1, 2009
January 1, 2008
There Has Never Been A Conviction, Or Even A Trial, For A Murder At Sea

It is this statement, used to convince those with very small minds, that the U.S. can not, and doesn't need to pass legislation to govern foreign flagged ships, where crimes are not committed in our waters, though they are committed against our citizens, on ships that embarked and returned to our ports. The first thing you need to know, is that claim is false. This article will show beyond a doubt, murders do take place on cruises, and there have been convictions for some of them.

You can ask any educated, experience homicide detective in America, "who, if anyone, the police suspect first, when a spouse is missing or found murdered?", and they will tell you, nearly every time, it is the surviving spouse who is normally suspected, because that is what the evidence proves, time after time. It is not written in stone.

For women, the percentage is fairly high,  33% (in 2005) of women are killed by their mate. On the flip side, only 3% of men are killed by their partners (both female and male). Statistics: DOJ. Since there were 16,692 known murders in 2005, this shockingly means that 5,508 women were murdered by their mate in 2005, or 15 each and every day. Statistic: FBI

These figures in no way account for women missing, presumed dead, body never found, or women who died, but cause of death could not be determined. Some cruise ship deaths fall into this later category. On land, spouses who murdered their partner tend to claim the person just walked away, and is alive, out there, somewhere. Since this defense doesn't work well on a cruise ship, more has to be done to conceal foul play, than is required on land. They have to get rid of the body, and leave no crime scene behind.

In looking at those high percentages, if we consider the hundreds of passengers who have simply disappeared while aboard a cruise ship, some only to be found floating at sea, weeks or months later, simple logic tells us, some of them HAVE to be murders.

I would like to say that it comes as no surprise to me, in many of the cases of passengers missing at sea both with suspected suicide as well as with suspected murders, the person had previously been the victim of domestic violence, not necessarily by a mate. Not only are these prior victims more likely to commit suicide, but they are more likely to be revictimized, not necessarily by the same individual who has victimized them before.

More of these incidents might have been proven to be murder, had the cruise line involved not had their crew work feverishly to clean up any evidence left behind.  It certainly does make it difficult to determine if there has been a crime committed, when the crime scene has been completely sanitized, before investigators arrive.

Looking at the known murders, those I have on the site at this time, there are 21 proven cases of cruise ship murder on Cruise Bruise and they run the full gambit, that homicide detectives see everyday. They include: the husband convicted of killing his wife, a mother convicted of killing her baby, an employee convicted of killing his employer, a crew member who killed a passenger,  an adulterer who shot his mistress, terrorists who killed  passengers in two different incidents, a mental patient who admitted he killed a fellow female passenger (just for the fun of it).

Murders have been taking place on cruise ships, as far back as records document them, just as they have on land. I  will give the pro-industry crusaders that. But, murders that take place on a cruise ship do not have the high rate of conviction as they do on land. That is where the movement to put legislation in force comes into place.

The real difference in the evolution of cruise ship murder, over the years, is the manner in which people are killed. In the far distance past, there was normally a body aboard the ship. In more recent times, murder has been proven after the body has been recovered from the sea.

Getting Away With Murder - The Real Statistics

Cruise ship murders are the 'almost' perfect crime. It is suspected, if we just look at the odds that many murders aboard ships are not reported and that many of the cases left as mysterious disappearance have something to do with rejection of affection, adultery, habitual domestic violence, perceived loss of control over the mate which also includes jealousy or pure greed where insurance policies or financial gain come into play. Those are quite simply, the primary, documented reasons one spouse or mate murders another.

We all remember the thumb print of the suspect, coated in the victim's blood,  on the fence at the home of the famous California murder victim. It could not be entered into evidence, and a killer walked free. Sometimes a single piece of evidence leaves no doubt in the mind of a rational person as to what happened and who did it, but for legal reasons, the evidence never makes it to trial. This is not to say a murder did not take place. What it does say is either the police were incompetent in their investigation, the suspect was too smart to get caught or a combination of the two.

One has only to look at serial killers, a person who murders usually three or more people,  to prove that theory. There are thousands of known victims by the top 100 serial killers. On average, they have killed dozens of people each. Yet, they had out-smarted law enforcement up until the last victim that tripped them up. Had they each killed only one or two persons, none would have been caught. But, as public  have found out in hindsight throughout history, if you murder someone and get away with it, the lure of a second kill becomes too great to resist, especially when you look at the FBI profile of a typical serial killer.

Serial killers are normally single, white males, often very intelligent, with IQs in the "bright normal" range, despite their high IQs, they do poorly in school, have trouble holding down jobs, and often work menial jobs. They tend to come from unstable families and their families often have criminal, psychiatric and alcoholic histories.

It is common to find that as children, they were abused—psychologically, physically and/or sexually—by a family member. From an early age, many are intensely interested in voyeurism, fetishism, and sadomasochistic pornography.

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