The Case of Dr. Buck Ruxton

Analyze the Case of Dr. Buck Ruxton

Introduction

In 1935 in Britain, Dr Buck Ruxton murdered and then surgically dismembered his wife and housemaid. Dr Ruxton went to considerable trouble to destroy fingerprints and more significantly teeth before dumping the bodies. He was most unfortunate in that the remains of the two women were linked with the missing persons report filed by the housemaid's mother because of one in a million chances. Identification was achieved using a superimposition technique where an ante-mortem photograph was matched with a radiograph taken of their skulls. This is probably the first recorded case of superimposition and was adjudged sufficient at that time for Dr Ruxton to hang.

During the widely publicized case of Buck Ruxton, who killed his wife and maid, chopped up the body parts, and deposited them in different parts of Scotland, a group led by Glasgow professor John Glaister (1892-1971) used forensic methods to incriminate Ruxton (1899-1936). The variety of methods, from blood samples to X-ray techniques, helped to promote the use of multidisciplinary forensic teams rather than single individuals.

The physical and chemical sciences helped to determine the properties of materials used in crimes. In 1939, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States received a directive from the president to coordinate activities against espionage and subversive activities, thus widening the scope of investigation to include a host of cases in which crimes were secret or had not yet been committed. This resulted in an extraordinary volume of information that consistently poured into the FBI from various sources.

Discussion

Criminology is a field that is very rich in academic imagination. To a level, this variety of theorizing reflects the discipline's irresponsibility and its incapability as of yet to develop a single standard which is so empirically better than its competitors that it earns the devotion of most scholars. (Huesman 1984, 66)

Criminology, however, is prepared in a different way. There are many theories or “schools of thought.” To be truthful and precise, criminologists do not agree on why crime occur, thus making it a drawback of the field. But the richness in thinking within the criminology also is a demonstration of the difficulty of its subject matter (Turney, 1999).

Like lot of social behaviors, crime is wide-ranging and it is potentially formed by a variety of factors that operate within and outside the individuals, which exist on the macro level and even on the micro level, and that have effects across various points in the life cycle of any person. Revealing that what exactly causes crime is thus an overwhelming task that benefits from various efforts to view the origins from many angles (Weaver, 2008). The reason of this degree is to confine the range of thoughts on crime factor and that now lies within criminology.

During the widely publicized case of Buck Ruxton, who killed his wife and maid, chopped up the body parts, and deposited them in different parts of Scotland, a group led by Glasgow professor John ...