Confess Your Flesh

Dismemberment

Dismemberment refers, in general terms, to the act of cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise relieving the limbs from a living thing. It has been practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, especially in connection with regicide, but can occur as a result of a traumatic accident, or in connection with murder, suicide, or cannibalism. As opposed to surgical amputation of the limbs, dismemberment is often fatal. In criminology, a distinction is made between offensive dismemberment, in which dismemberment is the primary objective of the dismemberer, and defensive dismemberment, in which the motivation is to destroy evidence.In 2019, Michael H. Stone, Gary Brucato and Ann Burgess proposed formal criteria by which “dismemberment” might … more »