Citation

Skilbrei ML. Crime Media Culture 2013; 9(2): 136-152.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1741659012461040

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In 1999, three people were found dead on a farm in the Norwegian countryside. Two pensioners and their middle-aged daughter were victims of a brutal murder that in the coming three years filled the Norwegian news media. Four people, two women and two men, were charged and convicted of the crime. The perpetrators were the son of the murdered pensioners, his wife, her sister and her sister's boyfriend. As is the case in many countries, women are rarely involved in planned and brutal homicide for gain in Norway, and this makes it interesting to investigate how such cases and female defendants are represented. This article investigates how cultural assumptions about gender and class influenced how the case and the four defendants were represented in media and court, and concludes that the two women were constructed as opposites in a variety of ways, a finding in line with studies elsewhere on female offenders. Differently from much of the research literature, the male perpetrators were not represented as the brains and muscle of the crime, but rather as dominated by two women who in ways related to class were described as dangerous femme fatales.

Language: en