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and print media alike. Ninety percent of the stories about the project
referred to NHI as "an old time police term," i.e., a bit of folksy nostalgia
without contemporary currency.
Lewis' claim
that officers don't use NHI is refuted by published accounts of police
officers who admit to using the term. In 1990, the Sacramento Bee
quoted a San Diego police officer: "These were misdemeanor murders, biker
women and hookers. we'd call them NHI's-no humans involved." While the
exhibit was open, a police officer and a paramedic both wrote comments
in the gallery book acknowledging ongoing use of NHI. Calling himself
an investigator of misdemeanor murders, the police officer said he had
been trained to disregard the humanity of victims from the "darker side"
of life.
The media
coverage of the project perpetuated the myth that all the slain women
were prostitutes, drug addicts, and transients. Again, the overwhelming
majority of TV news and print stories routinely referred to NHI‹No Humans
Involved as
a project about the "prostitute murders" although we repeatedly emphasized
the diversity of the victims-beauticians, waitresses, homemakers, a word
processor, nurse, stock supervisor, grocery clerk, hospital kitchen aid,
and a writer. Less than half the slain women were known sex workers. However,
public perception of the murders was framed by this generalized labeling
of all of the victims as "bad girls."
While the
media was sympathetic to the concept of presenting
a human face to the murdered women coverage of the project tacitly reinforced
what Linda McCabe, a legal advocate, has called a "nationwide pattern
of denial." McCabe states, "If we can find some fault with the victim's
behavior or demeanor, then we can rest assured that we are invulnerable
to such attacks."
Because of
the specter of police involvement with a number of the murdered women,
San Diego officials-from the mayor to the district attorney to the police
chief-did little to refute the idea that these forty-five women deserved
to die because of how they lived.
This message
can be contrasted to that surrounding another series of murders that took
place in San Diego in 1990. In this case, all of the victims were brutally
sexually assaulted and murdered by an intruder who entered bedrooms in
a quiet, middle-class neighborhood, and killed five women. The largest
manhunt in San Diego Police Force history stopped him. Police held daily
press briefings from a special command post set up in the neighborhood
and a city councilman went door-to-door warning residents to take extra
precautions. The press and police emphasized that one of the women was
a college student who worked at a sporting goods store. They de-emphasized
the fact that she also worked part-time as a nude dancer. Nude dancing
was not an occupation that fit this particular victim profile.
When asked
by a reporter to compare the speedy resolution of the murder of Cara Knott,
a college coed found strangled in San Diego in 1986, to the foot-dragging
occurring in the growing 'prostitute murder series," a sheriff responded,
"It's hard to evoke as much empathy for a prostitute as there is for a
pretty little college coed."
Selective
law enforcement reinforces social double standards and promotes a belief
that bad girls get what they ask for. But the lines separating "good girls"
from "bad girls" is mutable and any one of us could appear to be a "bad
girl" at any time. Nancy Allison White, the twentieth victim in the San
Diego "prostitute murder series," was a stock clerk from Santa Ana, California,
whose car broke down at night along the 1-8 corridor where a number of
the murdered women's bodies were dumped. According to Detective Tom Streed,
the initial lead investigator in the cases, "White's clothing was not
inconsistent with what would arouse a person involved in the other cases."
White's casual summer attire of shorts and a tank top on the evening of
her murder placed her in jeopardy. Detective Streed's dangerous appraisal
of Nancy Allison White's demeanor is representative of the insensitivity
exhibited by law enforcement in their investigation of these forty-five
murders.
It is also indicative of a larger social reflex to blame the victim. This
attitude increases the danger every woman faces when out alone for any
reason.
The purpose
of NHI-No Humans Involved was to humanize the victims and demonstrate
that violence against any woman is unacceptable. The gallery exhibition
literally lent a face to the forty-five murdered women. From 1985, when
the killing began, until 1992, images of only seven of the women appeared
in the local press. The police refused to release photographs of the others
on the grounds that their publication might hinder the investigation.
When we were unable to obtain photographs of all of the actual murdered
women, we asked women from the community to act as stand-ins for thirty-seven
of the women for whom we could not get images. The stand-ins were educators,
homemakers, administrators, therapists, social workers, writers, artists,
lawyers, scientists, ranchers and entrepreneurs. The use of stand-ins
provided a message of solidarity with the murdered women and all women
in the community. It was a public acknowledgment that violence against
one woman is a threat to all women, and that to brand victims of violent
sexual assault as prostitutes, drug addicts and transients stifles genuine
public concern and gives a false sense of assurance to other women.
The NHI
project created a moment of public awareness and a broader sense of community
in San Diego. It gave a voice to Pat Riccio, mother of one of the slain
women. Pat spoke with great courage and eloquence about the neglect, disrespect,
and callousness of the authorities investigating the death of her daughter.
The project provided a place for the family of Linda Christine Marler
to join together to remember their lost sister. Speaking about the series
of murders within a public art context allowed San Diegans to examine
seriously the issue of violence against women. People were genuinely astonished
to learn of the magnitude of the series of murders and the depth of police
involvement with the crimes. Through the project we were able to assert
that no woman deserves to die the brutal death these women suffered: "The
punishment for prostitution is not execution" (Linda Barker-Lawrence,
National Victim's Center, Dallas, quoted in the San Diego Union,
February, 12, 1989).
However,
somebody is still getting away with murder. The task force created to
investigate the murders has disbanded. There is an attempt to pin multiple
murders on men who had been in jail for a number of years at the time
the murders were continuing. Law enforcement successfully used the stigma
against prostitutes to cover up their own corruption. Sadly, the police
are a reflection of the society they serve. Hopefully, NHI-No Humans
Involved shed light on the danger faced by all women in a society
that denies the true culprits in the "wages of sin," favoring the comfort
of the false dichotomy created by the good girl/bad girl label.
—Elizabeth
Sisco
Paper
first delivered at the symposium, "Critical Condition-Women on the
edge of violence," San Francisco Cameraworks, 1993.
Published
in:
Critical Condition–Women on the edge of violence
Edited by Amy Scholder
City Lights Books, 1993
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