Robert D. Keppel

Time and Distance as Solvability Factors in Murder Cases

There is no empirical research on solvability factors in murder investigations. This paper analyzes data collected in the first study to provide such, focusing specifically on the extent to which information on time and distance among locations of a murder incident are related to solvability. The results show that the more information on the times and distances separating where the victim was last seen, the location of the original contact between the victim and the killer, where the initial assault occurred, the murder site, and the body recovery site the more likely a murder case will be solved. These findings have profound implications for the management and conduction of murder investigations.

The Rarity of “Unusal” Dispositions of Victim Bodies: Staging and Posing

The act of leaving a victims body in an unusual position is a conscious criminal action by an offender to thwart an investigation, shock the finder and investigators of the crime scene, or give perverted pleasure to the killer. The unusual position concepts of posing and staging a murder victim have been documented thoroughly and have been accepted by the courts as a definable phenomenon. One staging case and one posing case are outlined and reveal characteristics of those homicides. From the Washington State Attorney Generals Homicide Investigation and Tracking Systems database on murder covering the years 1981–2000 (a total of 5,224 cases), the relative frequency of unusual body dispositions is revealed as a very rare occurrence. Only 1.3% of victims are left in an unusual position, with 0.3% being posed and 0.1% being staged. The characteristics of these types of murders also set them apart: compared to all other murders, in staged murders the victims and killers are, on average, older. All victims and offenders in the staged murders are white, with victims being disproportionately white in murders with any kind of unusual body disposition. Likewise, females stand out as victims when the body is posed, staged, or left in other unusual positions. Whereas posed bodies are more likely to include sexual assault, often in serial murders, there is no evidence of either in the staged cases. Lastly, when a body is left in an unusual position, binding is more likely, as well as the use of more “hands on” means of killing the victim, such as stabbing or cutting weapons, bludgeons, ligatures, or hands and feet. Erratum to this paper appears in 49(6).

The Archetypal Serial Killer Task Force Investigation: The Yorkshire Ripper Case

This chapter outlines United Kingdoms longest running serial killer case―a complex serial murder investigation. The case is prototypical in the sense that the killer was active for a number of years, killing more than 10 prostitutes and assaulting others, before the police discovered his identity. The Yorkshire Ripper Task force experienced all the typical ills of investigating an ongoing serial killer case—numerous victims, thousands of suspects, poor control and coordination of incoming leads, inexperienced personnel to investigate or supervise, improper media relations, investigations conducted on tangents, ill conceived procedures in prioritizing investigative leads, and inadequate filing procedures of the case materials. The Yorkshire Ripper cases are atypical because the British Parliament conducted a major review critical of the investigative procedures; a procedure unprecedented in United States criminal investigations. The product of the review was the discovery of a multitude of investigative errors and the establishment of the HOLMES system, a central repository of case information in major cases. That kind of database, along with the ability of investigators to draw on the data contained therein, goes a long way to solve many of the information disconnects that plague interagency task force investigations, particularly the cases involving serial offenders such as killers and sex offenders.

Profiling the Serial Killer: The Efficacy of Profiling

This chapter discusses the magic, myth, and reality of profiling and emphasizes how profiling relates to the core of the serial killer task-force investigation. Profiling is a central operation because in a serial killer task force investigation, especially one that is very quickly overwhelmed by information, is very public, and is heavily covered by the press. Profiling can be central to a task forces ability to understand the nature of the offender they are looking for. Unfortunately, profiling can usually be a disaster, leading investigators on the wrong trails and prolonging the investigation. When profiling is used to refine the crime assessment, the probability of success is greatly enhanced. The efficacy of this approach is validated by police-generated case facts instead of abstract and, sometimes, disconnected behavioral indicators. Here, the crime scene itself becomes the initiation point for pattern recognition, evidence collection, decision making for follow-up, and strategy planning for interviews with suspects. If the category for a particular rape-murderer is identified correctly, the perpetrator can be his own accuser.

Taking Control of Denial and Defeat

This chapter gives an account of false reality that plagues serial killer task force investigations. The failure to recognize that the enormity of the task is not an impossibility but a surmountable obstacle, is worse than the job itself. In fact, even inexperienced investigators rarely shrink from the job, but might shrink from the false reality of the impossibility of the job. Denial and defeat debilitate the task force operations from within by luring task force personnel, from senior commanders to clerical assistants, away from the reality of the task at hand, into a false reality. United States developed a multiagency investigative team approach, which established a set of guidelines and procedures for how task forces should operate. It is a kind of playbook, a manual which gives task force members and the agencies they work for, a drill or set of instructions to pursue the investigation from its inception to the filing of charges.

Recognition and Acknowledgment of Serial Murder

This chapter focuses on the recognition and acknowledgment of serial murder. It discusses the main factors that decide how investigators survive the psychological rigors of investigating serial murder cases. Investigation may, right from the outset, lag behind the ongoing events of the case, if the investigators are unaware that there have been previous victims of the same killer. This happened in the Ted Bundy cases in the Pacific Northwest in 1974. Two young women went missing from Lake Sammamish State Park in July. These cases were within the King County Sheriffs jurisdiction. In reality, a string of six disappearances and killings had already begun as early as January of that same year in Oregon and Washington prior to any involvement from the King County Sheriffs detectives, or at least before a positive connection had been made among any of the law enforcement agencies in the area. The inability of the officers to link murders or missing persons to the same offender is referred to as “linkage blindness”, which occurs when police administrators and investigators refuse to admit or do not know that a serial killer is operating.

Anatomy of an Investigation

The anatomy of the Yorkshire Ripper case indicates not just that the investigation failed in all three critical areas of recognition, acknowledgment, and control but also how it failed. It is a case study of how a failure in procedure leads to a failure of the process, which in turn results in the loss of group morale, decline in the performance of individual team members, and a failure in the collective performance of the group. Sutcliffes eventual identification during one of the ongoing task force operations designed to identify potential suspects, is a testament to the efficacy of the concept of the operation. However, the fact that Sutcliffe was identified so late during his serial murder career, after the area sightings had been in operation for years, also underscores the failure of the task force. This was a clear and obvious example of how collective denial in the face of actual success turned that success into failure. Because even senior management was not aware of its own success, it could not communicate that success to the personnel along the chain. The suspect had been identified, interviewed, and even arrested. Yet, because no one knew or believed that the system was working, the suspect was released back into his pool of victims, which had deadly results.

The Paul Bernardo Case

The Canadian Police authorities have been severely criticized by the public and the media, and they have also faced severe criticism from within their own organizations for the handling of the investigations into the Paul Bernardo case. When there is a systemic failure in an investigation , the collective psychological reaction on the part of task force members is that the killer grows in his ability to elude detection and the police are diminished in their abilities to find the killer. In such a case, the report suggests that the killer had fallen through the cracks, but in reality, the cracks were of the task forces own making because of the inability of the different law enforcement agencies to pool their information and cooperate effectively. The chapter extensively discusses the errors that were committed on the part of the authorities involved in the investigation of the Paul Bernardo case and the way the errors were common to a few other case investigations.

The Consulting Detective

Publisher Summary Even though some types of consultants have been useful in understanding some aspects of serial murder investigations, the most valuable is the consulting detective. This chapter gives an account of how consulting detectives were used to help the investigators in the Atlanta child murders and the El Paso desert murders. In the Atlanta child murders, police connected 28 murder cases and 1 missing persons case, most of which had children as victims. These cases were dubbed by the national press as the “Atlanta Child Murders.” The commissioner assembled a group of highly touted ”supercops” as consultants. They were investigators who had previously handled some of the most notorious and high-profile murder cases in the nation, and their image was overhyped by the media, who represented them as the “seven samurai” aiming to solve the cases for the Atlanta police. The second case involved the El Paso Desert Murders, a serial murder investigation with six prostitute victims and one prostitute who had escaped from that same killer.

9 – Best Practices

Publisher Summary This chapter summarizes the best practices gleaned from cases and consultations across the country. The most important practice would be to catalog everything, including the decisions investigators make, and rely on the records and the good faith efforts of field detectives and the strategies pursued. Most, if not all, investigations usually produce the name of the suspect within the first 30 to 45 days. It is often what happens inside the management procedures and information filing systems of the task force that obfuscates what the investigators learn from their field work. Task forces can work if the task force learns how to simplify its procedures, stay out of its own way, and consistently review all the records relating to each of the victims, the murder sites, the contact sites, and any other relevant sites associated with the cases. The suspects name is already there. All the task force has to do is find him or her.