Carl Williams Ideal Victim Analysis

Carl Williams the ‘former gangland kingpin’ was murdered in Barwon’s High Risk and Maximum Security Prison on the 19th of April 2010. At the time, he was serving a life sentence with a non-parole period of 35 years for ordering the murder of 3 people and the conspiracy to murder another (Butler 2010). Prominent news articles from Moor (2010), Butler (2010) and Stewart (2010) highlight Williams’ death in a perspective which allows the analysis of Williams’ victimisation in relation to Christie’s (1986) ‘Ideal Victim’ Theory and the consequence for such a representation of victims.

Many headlines in the days following his murder painted Carl Williams as a villain and a killer, calling for no sympathy with “Don’t Shed Any Tears” (Moor 2010).

William’s was referred to as “Fat-boy Carl” by many articles (Kent 2010). While others used phrases like “kingpin”, “drug-dealer” and “murderer” in their description of Williams. They paint him as a character who, in accordance with Christie’s (1986) ‘Ideal Victim’, is beyond weak and frail and instead was someone capable of vicious illegal and cruel acts. These phrases also be interpreted to add blame for Williams in his demise. The media are quick to note that Williams ordered the murder of at least four major ‘kingpin’ drug-dealers to which he was convicted and imprisoned for. They suggest that such heinous and ‘vicious’ crimes during the gangland wars would see Williams with countless enemies (Stewart 2010; Moor 2010). Moor suggests that his cowardice murders had him acting as if it was his right killed. Such descriptions of Williams paint him in a stark contrast to that of Christie’s (1986) ‘ideal victim’, as there is a definite suggestion that William had only himself to blame for his own death and that he was in no way completing a ‘respectable activity’, or an innocent victim. The theory is further contrasted in descriptions of Williams’ killer as a ‘trusted inmate’ or ‘trusted mate’ (Milovanovic & Webb 2010; Moor 2010). Butler (2010) detailed in The Daily Telegraph that there had been no prior incident and that the ‘bludgeoning’ of Williams was an ‘ambush’ from one of most dangerous inmates, to which he had ‘no chance’ of surviving. Butler’s statements highlight the last two requirements of Christie’s (1986) theory, in that the killer was a big bad villain sustaining one requirement for Christie’s theory, but that he wasn’t an unknown killer having a known friendship with Williams. This contrasts the final requirement for an ‘ideal victim’ in that he was not a stranger. Of the five requirements for