Lessons For Law Enforcement

Following is a list of guidelines that emerged from the successful resolution of these cases of serial murder. While not exhaustive, it’s a start. Hopefully it will inspire both dedication and invention in current and future investigations.

1. Read widely in fields that might seem relevant but have not yet been used in law enforcement. It was a police officer not a scientist who introduced the discrimination of animal and human blood, DNA analysis, and brain fingerprinting into an investigation. This requires creative thinking and awareness of what’s available.
2. Be proactive. Detective William King kept planting items in newspapers, even years after the crime was committed, in order to bait the offender who’d kidnapped Grace Budd. Finally, his effort paid off. The Allentown police set up a sting operation, and Viktor Burakov read up on the FBI’s profiling methods, despite rebuke, to try to stop Chikatilo.
3. Become educated about psychological angles on criminal behavior, which get updated with research on a regular basis. This arena is not reserved for profilers or psychologists. Most good detectives already have a sense of criminal psychology, but psychopathic serial killers require greater savvy. No officer should believe he already knows enough from what he’s picked up on the streets.
4. Be flexible and, in particular, prepare to be wrong. In the Village Path murders in Britain, the interrogators were certain they’d nailed the man who’d killed two young girls, but they were wrong. It’s possible that their misplaced confidence influenced this suspect’s false confession. DNA analysis exonerated him and pointed to another man, but had this case happened only two years earlier, an innocent man would have gone to prison.
5. Be persistent. With cold cases, go over old ground and get a fresh perspective from others not familiar with the crime. Blind spots can trip up investigators who won’t let go. No investigation belongs to a single cop; it’s always a coordinated effort and others might contribute in surprising ways.
6. Be meticulous. Perhaps no case was more painstaking than the Pickton investigation, with all the forensic personnel sifting through piles of dirt and manure and underneath every building to locate fragments of human remains that would yield DNA.
7. Anticipate the future. Future investigations will involve cooperation among seemingly unrelated fields, especially the fields of technology and informatics.

Source: The Devil’s Dozen. How Cutting Edge Forensics Took Down 12 Notorious Serial Killers (2009) by Katherine Ramsland, Ph. D.

Good advice. The boldface highlights are mine.