I tried to clean them up, to make them a bit more coherent. These were my notes taken from Bob Keppel's lecture yesterday, all written down pretty much verbatim. They were all set up nicely with bulletted and numbered lists in Word, but I doubt that will carry over to here. Lots of talk of murder, and a one story that could disturb people, as it involves a young girl.

Mostly it's talk of investigative techniques and the actual process of solving homicide cases. In the 'Personal Stories' section, there's bits about Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgeway.



Time and Distance as Solvability Factors.

Investigative factors of murder.

Theory of murder and its investigation.

1981 beginning of sessions that were planning the VICAP program in the FBI. VICAP: Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Serial Murder Tracking program of FBI.

Come up with characteristics you’d use to identify and compare murders. No one had done research prior. No one thought to try and look at similar cases to catch a criminal. What is there about murder cases that indicates that they’re all alike? Compare characteristics and get similar cases - connect the cases.

The big catch: All murders are different. The details are always different.

Why bother with a system to group together/connect murders if they’re all different?

Look at:

MO
Signature of murder - root of characteristics that would land compared cases.

It’s easier to find similar MO and signatures, so those get looked at first.

The thing that‘s always the same: The approach toward an investigation. The start of the investigation is always the same. 17 out of 3000 have no body found. There is almost always a body site. Body site is protected with yellow tape. Is the killer on the inside of the yellow tape? If he’s not inside, it’s time to get your ass outside.

“I figured I could take her and bury in a place far enough away, there was no way they’d go find her or go looking for her there. I was right.” - Jesperson, The Happy Face Killer.

Separate the abduction site and the body site.

“And even if a body is found, Jesperson and Kondro know that paying attention to matters of time and distance can mean that police don’t always determine who that body belongs to, or who did the victim in.”

Major Components of a Murder

Body Recovery Site
Murder Site
Initial Assault Sire
Initial Contact Site
Victim’s Last Seen Site


Killer has control of four of the sites. No matter what, these five things occur. All murders have these sites.

Solvability.

Solved:

Cleared by Arrest
Exceptional Clearance
Open - Arrest Warrant Issued

Unsolved:

Open
Inactive

Inactive cases can be reopened at a later date. There is nothing about conviction - separate category. Conviction doesn’t mean anything. If someone’s acquitted, still counts as solved case technically.

When There Is No Separation Of Sites

Body Recovery Site
Murder Site
Initial Assault Site
Initial Contact Site
Victim last Seen Site

When all sites occur at the same place at the time: Solvability rate = 73%. 27% unsolved. Time elapsed between murder and discovery, identity clues of the killer, identification of victim. Most leads come from the victim. Some sites mean more to solvability than others. Not enough viable proof is the number one reason they aren't solved. (Lousy police work. Police making stupid mistakes and the killer getting off on a technicallity. It happens all the time. Police need better training.)

When Sites Are Separated

Body Recovery Site
Murder Site
Initial Assault Site
Initial Contact Site
Victim Last Seen Site

When all sites are separated in time and distance but all sites are known = 98% solvability rate. Killer does detectives a favor. Be careful when killing someone! It’s easy to screw up. 38% of cases, evidence connected to the killer was found within three miles of the crime scene.

Searching is important!

Evidence found by pedestrians/joggers/regular citizens by accident most of the time. How much higher would the solvability be if police forces did routine searches of al site areas?

Solvability by Knowledge of Murder Components

If all you had was one site, how would that affect overall solvability?

Which is the most important site to solvability?

Solvability rate for all cases: 73%
Body recovery site: 73%
Murder site: 80%
Initial Assault Site: 86%
Initial Contact Site: 88%
Victim Last Seen Site: 73%

Most important site is: Initial Contact Site.

Jaw bone is found. Jaw bone will be examined and compared to dental records of all missing persons. Victim’s last seen site is 30 miles away. Two sites. Body recovery and last seen. No info on initial contact, assault or murder.

Solvability 4%

Time one month. Distance 1 ½ miles. Any case with time more than a month or more than 1 ½, the odds of solving the case drop to 4%. The initial distance of 35 miles and the time of a year and a half immaterial. Luck is a big part.

Close distance, lower time, higher solvability.

Site:

Is this a murder?
Did the murder take place here?
Can we determine where the other sites are?

Crime scene reconstruction. Pay careful attention to details. The position of the body, location, condition of the surrounding area. Look at bottom tracks first, police step on the important things all the time. They don't look. (Examples shown: an officer's footprint nearly completely obscuring the foot prints of the killer, and the officer's tire track parked over the tire track of the killer's vehicle.)

Always take a body by the feet.

Locarre’s Theory: whenever a criminal enters a room, he’s going to leave evidence of himself. When he leaves, he will take evidence with him.

Personal Stories:

“I was visiting a mid western state, and they had this open case that had gone unsolved for eleven months. It was destroying everyone involved. They were getting angry, drinking, screwing up their own families, and one guy even committed suicide. They couldn’t take what this case was doing, and the components of the case. It was an eleven year old girl who’d gone missing one day. Got on the school bus and wasn’t seen again. That’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Or every sibling’s. That a relative will be gone. She was found a week or so later. She was murdered, strangulated, nude, and raped.

“I said ‘well, why don’t we take a look at the body site?’ and they said ‘right now?’. I said ‘yes, right now’. And it was about two o’clock, three o’clock in the afternoon. We got there around four thirty. I looked at the site and said ‘well, where did you search?’ and they looked at me and I said ‘you couldn’t have just searched right where the body is!’ Turns out they had. So I say alright, we’re gonna look right now. They grumble and groan and say ‘it’s been eleven months, we’re not gonna find anything!’ but I have them down there anyway. We can comb the ditch on one side of the road, go up it a ways, and come back down on the other side. We get started, and they’re grumbling and groaning and giving me dirty looks. We hadn’t been looking for fifteen minutes, when guess what we found?

“Well, if you’re a killer and you’ve dumped a body and you’re leaving the site, you look over and you see you’ve got the victim’s clothes on the seat next to you. You pull over and no one’s coming, so you toss them out. We found the little girl’s clothes, all in a wad there. So the team starts jumping into action, doing all the stuff you see on those CSI shows, and bagging things. And what’s under the clothes? A credit card receipt. You can guess who that belonged to.

Eleven months, because no one bothered to search.”


“The weirdest thing about the Riverman movie was seeing someone play yourself. And they changed things. Bob in the movie did things I didn’t do. I was never caught with a prostitute in my car. Hell, at that point I’d had hundreds of prostitutes in my car for questioning. But let me tell you, that Cary Elwes, he researched his role. He was an amazing Ted Bundy. It was almost creepy, watching it. But it was weird, the whole thing was just weird.”

“I think Ted Bundy would have confessed to every open murder case we had. He kept his execution off, since we had to interview him. And that can take years. He didn’t want to die. And he could get more famous. Oh yeah, there’s things I wish I’d asked him now. I think what I really want to know is ‘why’. We still don’t know why. Never will, I guess. People have all these theories, but I don’t know where the hell they come from. They say he was beaten as a child, and he was putting knives in his sister’s bed. Where the hell do they come up with this stuff? No one said any of that. It’s bullshit.”



One theme I noticed repeatedly: Bob Keppel isn't too keen on the police. It was, altogether, an absolutely amazing experience and I am thankful to have been able to have it.