Tamela Dutcher studied adolescents who kill — decades before her own murder

DELAWARE — Tamela Dutcher co-authored a scientific paper examining violent and homicidal adolescents more than two decades before her own murder.

The 2002 paper has taken on new significance following the 55-year-old Delaware woman’s death on Aug. 14 — and the aggravated murder charge subsequently filed against three young people, including her 18-year-old daughter.

Bryanna Dutcher, 18; Christian Evans, 20; and Dajameous Payne, 21, are charged with aggravated murder in her death.

Bryanna Dutcher and Payne have pleaded not guilty. Evans has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Tamela Dutcher’s paper explicitly cautions against trying to predict who may become violent.

“No matter what we, as clinicians, would like to think, we are simply not able to predict the future,” wrote Dutcher and Daniel L. Davis, both Ph.D.s, in “The violent and homicidal adolescent. Hearts darkened before time.”

Tamela Dutcher earned a master’s degree in social work from The Ohio State University and a doctorate from Union Institute, according to her obituary.

The obituary provides few details about Dutcher’s career, but states that she “greatly enjoyed serving her patients and their families.”

PubMed, a database of biomedical and life sciences literature maintained by the National Library of Medicine, lists the 2002 paper as Dutcher’s only indexed publication.

At the time the paper was published, Dutcher’s affiliation was with Behavioral Systems in Columbus, while Davis was affiliated with Tennenbaum and Associates and Ohio State University’s College of Medicine.

The 16-page paper reviewed existing research on adolescents who commit homicide, described research-based types of adolescent murderers through case studies and proposed approaches for clinicians treating violent youth.

“Although it is most certainly true that the best predictor for future behavior is past behavior, we simply cannot be aware of all the potential influences upon a person to the degree that we can, with any reasonable degree of scientific certainty, predict that behavior,” they wrote.

The paper was published in the International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health in 2002, six years before Bryanna Dutcher was born.

Delaware Source purchased the paper from the publishing company De Gruyter Brill on Aug. 24.

Female adolescents who kill more likely to target family members

Dutcher and Davis wrote they were motivated to examine adolescent violence by the growing number of young people being killed or killing others.

According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, between 1,180 and 1,320 juveniles were arrested annually for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter from 2000 through 2002.

More than two decades later, the numbers remain similar, ranging from 1,160 to 1,240 arrests annually from 2022 through 2024.

While the authors reported adolescent homicide was relatively rare, they noted a majority of adolescents who kill are typically males.

However, Dutcher and Davis identified a side-trend in adolescent females.

“Those few girls who kill tend to kill family members,” they wrote.

But Dutcher and Davis also cautioned throughout the paper against searching for one profile that could explain adolescents who kill.

“There is no one single type of homicidal adolescent,” they wrote.

Researchers found no single profile for adolescents who kill

Much of the paper examined previous studies looking for characteristics that differentiated homicidal adolescents from other young people.

The results were varied.

Some studies cited by Dutcher and Davis found higher rates of neurological impairments among homicidal adolescents, including head injuries and other documented neurological abnormalities.

For example, one study examined 14 juveniles sentenced to death and found all had symptoms consistent with neurological impairment, according to Dutcher and Davis.

A paper from 1990 titled “Adolescents who kill” compared 71 adolescents convicted of homicide with 71 nonviolent adolescents and identified four key traits that separate the convicted group from the nonviolent group:

1. Criminally violent family members.
2. Gang affiliation.
3. Severe educational difficulties.
4. A history of abusing alcohol.

Another study cited by Dutcher and Davis found that children who killed and had “death wishes toward parents” had experienced inconsistent parenting, witnessed violence, suffered physical abuse and experienced rejection.

But other research failed to identify a consistent psychological profile.

The factors varied substantially among cases, leading Dutcher and Davis to reject the idea of a single profile.

Ultimately, Dutcher and Davis described three broad categories of adolescent homicide: killings associated with psychosis, those committed during another crime and those arising from interpersonal conflict.

How interpersonal conflicts can escalate into homicide

Dutcher and Davis paid particular attention to adolescents who killed during interpersonal conflicts.

They cited cases involving bullying, family dysfunction, abuse and access to weapons. Adolescents in this category often struggled with social and problem-solving skills, impulse control, self-esteem and school, they wrote.

One case involved a 12-year-old boy who shot another student in a school cafeteria after reporting that the student had bullied him.

But those characteristics alone could not explain why one young person committed homicide while another did not.

“In many respects, they are no different from multitudes of youth who present on a daily basis to child mental health clinics,” Dutcher and Davis wrote.

The circumstances surrounding the individual also mattered.

“Violence is not only the result of the psychology of the individual but is also a result of the cues in the environment and availability of weapons,” they wrote.

Their paper argued that clinicians needed to understand the type of violence, the young person’s circumstances and the environment surrounding the behavior before determining how to respond.

Paper warns against labeling violent adolescents

Dutcher and Davis argued that treatment needed to differ depending on the circumstances behind a young person’s violence.

An adolescent whose violence stemmed from psychosis, for example, required treatment for the underlying mental illness. A young person whose violence occurred as part of broader criminal behavior required a different approach.

Based on the reasoning above and other findings, Dutcher and Davis questioned the effectiveness of traditional talk therapy because these adolescents lack verbal skills or the imagination necessary for talk therapy.

Instead, Dutcher and Davis proposed incorporating art and other creative therapies with cognitive behavioral treatment.

For example, the adolescents could create “sequential drawings,” or a multi-framed process/image that depicts a scenario, to explore the consequences of violent behavior in a safe way.

Dutcher and Davis also recommended teaching anger management, conflict resolution, negotiation, compromise and other social skills.

The authors emphasized that treatment should not remove responsibility for violent behavior — however, they challenged clinicians to recognize dangerous behavior without creating a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by deciding what a troubled young person would become.

“We must be careful about the labels we place upon our youths, especially adolescents,” they wrote.

The paper identifies patterns researchers had observed among adolescents who committed homicide — but it also repeatedly explains why those patterns could not tell clinicians what any particular young person would eventually do.

Dutcher and Davis concluded by emphasizing the possibility for change.

“If we do not expect them to grow and change, then they will not,” they wrote. “If we do not see them as human beings capable of growth, affirmation, and reconciliation, then neither will they.”