The search for finality: Serial killing, the narration of sexual injury, and the promise of consolation

Abstract

This article explores the search for finality that arises in response to crime. Its focus is not simply upon how this search for finality functions, but on both the centrality of narrative within this and the question of consolation that arises when such cases officially remain unresolved. Examined by reference to one particular case – specifically, the deaths of five males in the South Australian city of Adelaide between 1979 and 1983 – the article explores the central role of cultural anxieties or phobias that often underpin infamous or iconic crimes. It examines the way in which the narrative of this case reveals particular anxieties associated with homosexuality and paedophilia as a means through which to investigate the complex way in which consolation is ultimately left wanting in spite of the presence of a narrative of culpability. In its entirety, the article attends to the enduring manner in which anxieties associated with sexual difference persist, and the haunting spectre that arises as a result of an unrealised search for finality.