Unsolved Crimes Research Articles

Making machine intelligence less scary for criminal analysts: reflections on designing a visual comparative case analysis tool

A fundamental task in criminal intelligence analysis is to analyze the similarity of crime cases, called comparative case analysis (CCA), to identify common crime patterns and to reason about unsolved crimes. Typically, the data are complex and high dimensional and the use of complex analytical processes would be appropriate. State-of-the-art CCA tools lack flexibility in interactive data exploration and fall short of computational transparency in terms of revealing alternative methods and results. In this paper, we report on the design of the Concept Explorer, a flexible, transparent and interactive CCA system. During this design process, we observed that most criminal analysts are not able to understand the underlying complex technical processes, which decrease the users’ trust in the results and hence a reluctance to use the tool. Our CCA solution implements a computational pipeline together with a visual platform that allows the analysts to interact with each stage of the analysis process and to validate the result. The proposed visual analytics workflow iteratively supports the interpretation of the results of clustering with the respective feature relations, the development of alternative models, as well as cluster verification. The visualizations offer an understandable and usable way for the analyst to provide feedback to the system and to observe the impact of their interactions. Expert feedback confirmed that our user-centered design decisions made this computational complexity less scary to criminal analysts.

TRACES, INDENTIFICATION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE FOOTPRINTS TAKEN AT THE CRIME OCCURANCE SITE

The paper discusses main problems related with identification and comparative analysis of shoe prints and outlines the ways to increase the efficiency of the shoe prints inventory database use. Special focus is given to the activities of forensic departments and their work with shoe prints taken from the crime site. Forensic science plays a very important role in the struggle against crime. Forensic studies make a system of knowledge about objective laws and principles of collecting, investigating, assessing and use of the evidence. Crime traces are a part of the evidence. Their appropriate use has always occupied an essential place in forensic studies. The most typical crime traces that may be present on a crime site are the prints of fingers, hands, footprints, traces of break-in implements, vehicle tracks and biological marks. Footprints occupy the first position in the list followed by fingerprints. Investigation of footprints during a visual inspection of the place where a crime occurred permits the investigator to identify the conditions at the crime moment with the way it was committed, elicit the number of criminals and make some judgments on the criminal (-s) including sex, approximate height, movement speed and directions, presence of handicaps and the shoe type. The analysis of the shoe prints structure and inter-positioning of the footprints can help to identify the criminals’ actions and the direction of their movements. Thus the footprints make a solid informative basis of evidence to clear and prove the crime. Appropriate utilization of the footprints data as well as their subsequent identification depend on the professional skills of the crime scene team and the thoroughness of their visual inspection ways, as well as on the organizational and methodological support of all activities at the preliminary investigation stage and the quality of criminal records. The growth of crime during the last five years as well as increasing number of unsolved crimes in Russia present a serious challenge for all forensic services of the Ministry of Home Affairs and demand better efficiency of traces investigation, availability of targeted technical means and expertise in the area of crime prevention and investigation.

Internal validation of the DNAscan/ANDE™ Rapid DNA Analysis™ platform and its associated PowerPlex® 16 high content DNA biochip cassette for use as an expert system with reference buccal swabs

Rapid DNA platforms are fully integrated systems capable of producing and analyzing short tandem repeat (STR) profiles from reference sample buccal swabs in less than two hours. The technology requires minimal user interaction and experience making it possible for high quality profiles to be generated outside an accredited laboratory. The automated production of point of collection reference STR profiles could eliminate the time delay for shipment and analysis of arrestee samples at centralized laboratories. Furthermore, point of collection analysis would allow searching against profiles from unsolved crimes during the normal booking process once the infrastructure to immediately search the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database from the booking station is established. The DNAscan/ANDE™ Rapid DNA Analysis™ System developed by Network Biosystems was evaluated for robustness and reliability in the production of high quality reference STR profiles for database enrollment and searching applications. A total of 193 reference samples were assessed for concordance of the CODIS 13 loci. Studies to evaluate contamination, reproducibility, precision, stutter, peak height ratio, noise and sensitivity were also performed. The system proved to be robust, consistent and dependable. Results indicated an overall success rate of 75% for the 13 CODIS core loci and more importantly no incorrect calls were identified. The DNAscan/ANDE™ could be confidently used without human interaction in both laboratory and non-laboratory settings to generate reference profiles.

UNSOLVED AND LATENT CRIME: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES

УДК 343 Purpose of the article is to study the specific legal and informational nature of the unsolved crime in comparison with the phenomenon of delinquency, special study and analysis to improve the efficiency of law enforcement. Methods of research are abstract-logical, systematic, statistical, study of documents. The main results of research. Unsolved crime has specific legal, statistical and informational na-ture as the crime phenomenon, which is expressed in cumulative statistical population of unsolved crimes. An array of unsolved crimes is the sum of the number of acts, things of which is suspended and not terminated. The fault of the perpetrator in these cases is not proven, they are not considered by the court, it is not a conviction. Unsolved crime must be registered. Latent crime has a different informational nature. The main symptom of latent crimes is the uncertainty for the subjects of law enforcement, which delegated functions of identification, registration and accounting. Latent crime is not recorded. At the same time, there is a "border" area between the latent and unsolved crimes, which includes covered from the account of the crime. In modern Russia the majority of crimes covered from accounting by passing the decision about refusal in excitation of criminal case. Unsolved crime on their criminogenic consequences represents a significant danger to the public is higher compared to latent crime. It is conducted in the article a special analysis of the differences and similarities in the unsolved latent crime for the first time in criminological literature. The analysis proves the need for radical changes in the current Russian assessment of the state of crime and law enforcement to solve crimes. The article argues that an unsolved crime is a separate and, in contrast to latent crime, poorly understood phenomenon. However unsolved latent crime and have common features and areas of interaction.

Mirta Yáñez’s Dystopic Vision of Havana

In her 2010 novel Sangra por la herida, the Cuban novelist, poet, and essayist Mirta Yáñez constructs a panoramic view of metropolitan Havana, following the model of Latin American fiction starting in the 1980s based on a revised version of the detective novel. Sangra por la herida functions best as a narrative that juxtaposes a dystopic vision of several neighborhoods in the city, with multiple narrative voices, mostly female, depicting the everyday experience of people surviving in Habana del Este, Vedado, and Alamar. The novel allows the detective format to recover the memory of Cuba’s utopian dreams of the early 1960s, a period that, according to the novel, was already showing signs of corrupting those dreams. The novel structures its narrative around the unsolved crimes against two women, yet the author is ultimately concerned with the disintegration of popular memory around violence to women during the last decades of the twentieth century. Yáñez emphasizes the novel’s capacity to recover that memory through a chorus of voices recorded for the reader in a melodramatic, humoristic manner.

Elephants in the Station House: Serial Crimes, Wrongful Convictions, and Expanding Wrongful Conviction Analysis to Include Police Investigation

In this article we advocate that the study of miscarriages of justice be expanded to view the entirety of police crime investigation as a source of wrongful convictions. We set this proposal in a framework of how the inductive innocence paradigm was developed and analyze how the term “causation” is used in legal, scientific and case analysis. We then explore a subject not yet addressed by wrongful conviction scholarship but that may confront an investigator: whether an unsolved crime is the work of a serial criminal and whether a suspect is the serial criminal. We examine a convenience sample of forty-four exonerees convicted of crimes committed by thirty serial criminals. The analysis is aimed at opening up a discussion of the kind of complexity that investigators face in hard-to-solve cases.

The presence and future of the use of DNA-Information and the protection of genetic informational privacy: A comparative perspective

DNA-Information is used to solve a criminal case or to establish a match between the suspect of a particular criminal case and other unsolved crimes. However, DNA-Information on its own is not entirely reliable evidence as this scientific technology produces errors with a certain probability. The use of DNA-Information in criminal proceedings is in conflict with the protection of individual's genetic informational privacy. Although England and Wales, Germany and South Korea have different legal provisions on the use of DNA-Information, in all these legal orders there are similar problems. Therefore, there is a need for appropriate legislative criteria which balance the protection of individual's genetic informational privacy relating to DNA and the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in a society which employs all the available modern forensic technologies.

The Mysterious Suicide of François Lemoyne

On 4 June 1737, the celebrated painter François Lemoyne committed suicide in one of the most gruesome episodes of eighteenth-century French art history.1 Lemoyne's death is anecdotally familiar to most art historians of the period: at the zenith of his career, supposedly wracked with jealousy and unfulfilled ambition, Lemoyne took his own life by stabbing himself with his sword. The archivist Jules Guiffrey transcribed and published several documents relating to the case in the late nineteenth century, providing the sources for this general summary recounted since in most literature on the artist.2 But beyond the familiar synopsis, the actual details of Lemoyne's death are less well known and on closer inspection not at all straightforward.3 Police records and eyewitness accounts offer a perplexing picture of a death as strange as it was violent – a grisly howdunit locked-door mystery. The case encountered in the archives is not a cold case. Despite the almost unfathomable physical feat that Lemoyne achieved that day in his apartments, no one ever doubted that Lemoyne himself was responsible or raised the question of murder. Thus the intention of this article is not so much to solve an unsolved crime as to resolve a mystery, fleshing out the narrative of Lemoyne's death in a forensically inspired art-historical investigation that tells us more than we might expect about the art world of eighteenth-century Paris.

Case rethinking: a protocol for reviewing criminal investigations

Mistakes in decision-making have been identified as the most common type of error in police investigations. Consequently, wrongful convictions and other types of criminal investigative failure may require a complete case ‘rethinking,’ particularly when new evidence disrupts the existing theory. A rush to judgment resulting in a premature shift from an evidence-based to a suspect-based investigation can produce a number of problematic thinking errors. Faulty assumptions, tunnel vision, groupthink, and other cognitive biases and organizational traps hinder evidentiary interpretation and evaluation. This article outlines a protocol for reviewing evidence and rethinking a wrongful conviction or unsolved crime when the existing investigative theory appears to be incorrect. The protocol involves four stages: (1) evidence; (2) interpretation; (3) patterns; and (4) analysis.

Partially Supervised Spatiotemporal Clustering for Burglary Crime Series Identification

SummaryStatistical clustering of criminal events can be used by crime analysts to create lists of potential suspects for an unsolved crime, to identify groups of crimes that may have been committed by the same individuals or group of individuals, for offender profiling and for predicting future events. We propose a Bayesian model-based clustering approach for criminal events. Our approach is semisupervised, because the offender is known for a subset of the events, and utilizes spatiotemporal crime locations as well as crime features describing the offender's modus operandi. The hierarchical model naturally handles complex features that are often seen in crime data, including missing data, interval-censored event times and a mix of discrete and continuous variables. In addition, our Bayesian model produces posterior clustering probabilities which allow analysts to act on model output only as warranted. We illustrate the approach by using a large data set of burglaries in 2009–2010 in Baltimore County, Maryland.

Have thirteen beggars been killed by a serial killer?

Introduction: From 2010-2011, several murders of beggars were reported from Colombo and suburb. The motive of such killings was not obvious and some parties suspected an attack targeting beggars by an organized group. Objective: To analyse the medico-legal aspects of the series of killing. Methods: Data of beggars who had been killed, serially, under similar circumstances in Colombo and suburbs were collected from January 2010 to December 2011. Results: There were 14 murders (12 males) in 9 towns. The bodies were left on the location of killing without being moved. The causes of death had been blunt force trauma to head. No suspects were arrested. Sole eye witness confirmed the presence of ‘rituals’ and ‘cooling-off period’ in suspect. In November 2011, a beggar was arrested while attempting to kill another beggar when the latter was a sleep. The suspect was produced for medico-legal examination and later referred to a Psychiatrist. He was diagnosed to have anti-social traits. On a subsequent day, he admitted that he had murdered altogether 14 beggars. He had shown all the crime scenes to the investigators. He was sent for inward psychiatric treatment and is awaiting trial. Conclusions: Usually serial killers are males with past criminal records who kill strangers, perform ‘rituals’, leave ‘signature’, display the dead bodies and remove souvenirs. All above characteristics except the last two were evident in this case. Fourteen independent, planned murders with potential “cooling-off periods” indicate that the suspect could be the highest 'potential serial killer' in Sri Lanka. The importance of the establishment of a National Criminal Investigating Centre is suggested to investigate such unsolved crimes. Galle Medical Journal, Vol 18: No. 2, September 2013;Page 17-21 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/gmj.v18i2.6196

Joel S. Miller

Angewandte Chemie International EditionVolume 52, Issue 41 p. 10688-10689 Author Profile Joel S. Miller First published: 09 August 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201305568Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Graphical Abstract “My favorite piece of research is ‘the current potential of electrochemistry’. If I were not a scientist, I would be a detective solving unsolved crimes by sifting through evidence for non sequiturs and clues …︁” This and more about Joel S. Miller can be found on page 10688. Volume52, Issue41October 4, 2013Pages 10688-10689 RelatedInformation

The likelihood property in general retrieval operations

Probabilistic models of information retrieval rank objects (e.g. documents) in response to a query according to the probability of some matching criterion (e.g. relevance). These models rarely yield an actual probability and their scoring functions are interpreted to be purely ordinal within a given retrieval task. In this paper we show that some scoring functions possess a likelihood property, which means that the scoring function indicates the likelihood of matching when compared to other retrieval tasks. This is potentially more useful than pure ranking even though it cannot be interpreted as an actual probability. This property can be detected by using two modified effectiveness measures, entire precision and entire recall. Experimental evidence is offered to show the existence of this property both for traditional document retrieval and for the analysis of crime data where suspects of an unsolved crime are ranked according to the probability of culpability.

An “Estimate & Score Algorithm” for simultaneous parameter estimation and reconstruction of incomplete data on social networks

Dynamic activity involving social networks often has distinctive temporal patterns that can be exploited in situations involving incomplete information. Gang rivalry networks, in particular, display a high degree of temporal clustering of activity associated with retaliatory behavior. A recent study of a Los Angeles gang network shows that known gang activity between rivals can be modeled as a self-exciting point process on an edge of the rivalry network. In real-life situations, data is incomplete and law-enforcement agencies may not know which gang is involved. However, even when gang activity is highly stochastic, localized excitations in parts of the known dataset can help identify gangs responsible for unsolved crimes. Previous work successfully incorporated the observed clustering in time of the data to identify gangs responsible for unsolved crimes. However, the authors assumed that the parameters of the model are known, when in reality they have to be estimated from the data itself. We propose an iterative method that simultaneously estimates the parameters in the underlying point process and assigns weights to the unknown events with a directly calculable score function. The results of the estimation, weights, error propagation, convergence and runtime are presented.

Behavioural case linkage with solved and unsolved crimes

Offender behaviour is used to distinguish between crimes committed by the same person (linked crimes) and crimes committed by different people (unlinked crimes) through behavioural case linkage. There is growing evidence to support the use of behavioural case linkage by investigative organisations such as the police, but this research is typically limited to samples of solved crime that do not reflect how this procedure is used in real life. The current paper extends previous research by testing the potential for behavioural case linkage in a sample containing both solved and unsolved crimes. Discrimination accuracy is examined across crime categories (e.g. a crime pair containing a car theft and a residential burglary), across crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing a residential burglary and a commercial burglary), and within crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing two residential burglaries) using the number of kilometres (intercrime distance) and the number of days (temporal proximity) between offences to distinguish between linked and unlinked crimes. The intercrime distance and/or the temporal proximity were able to achieve statistically significant levels of discrimination accuracy across crime categories, across crime types, and within crime types as measured by Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. This suggests that behavioural case linkage can be used to assist the investigation, detection and prosecution of prolific and versatile serial offenders.

The Urban Shift of The Western: Inscriptions of Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s 'No Country for Old Men'

The aim of this paper is to analyse of the function (s) of violence in Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men as well as in its 2007 highly praised screen adaptation. The analysis of the use of violence in these works starts from the premises of the embedded, inherent violence of the western genre, seeking to speculate on its contemporary developments and adjustments as well as on its conflicting conventions. “Collapse” seems to be the leitmotif of the novel a s it defines both the structure and the substance of this modern western that, infused with elements of detective fiction – an unsolved crime, moral ambiguity, violence, and an action-driven narrative, epitomizes the urban shift of the genre. The paper will also briefly tackle issues connected to the conventions of the western genre so as to delineate a context for the centrality of stark violence in the modern western.

Cold cases: New technologies for DNA analysis allow the reopening and solution of unsolved cases

In recent years considerable progress in the field of forensic science (latent prints, ballistics and biology) have occurred, causing the reopening investigation of old unsolved murders, called “Cold Cases”, especially when findings can still be analyzed and/or re-analyzed taken into account new technologies and new scientific methodologies. The UDI working group (Unsolved Crimes Unit) of the Italian National Police, which collects scientific and technical expertise and investigators, deals to assess which unresolved cases could be selected in relation to new investigative hypotheses or/and in the presence of not analyzed samples. During last two years about 30 cases, occurred between 1985 and 2005, were selected. In particular, in eight cases the DNA analysis led to the identification of one or more genetic profiles that are considered of great interest from the investigative point of view, allowing the identification of the murderers in three different cases.

A Test of Case Linkage Principles with Solved and Unsolved Serial Rapes

Case linkage involves identifying crime series on the basis of behavioral similarity and distinctiveness. Research regarding the behavioral consistency of serial rapists has accumulated; however, it has its limitations. One of these limitations is that convicted or solved crime series are exclusively sampled whereas, in practice, case linkage is applied to unsolved crimes. Further, concerns have been raised that previous studies might have reported inflated estimates of case linkage effectiveness due to sampling series that were first identified based on similar modus operandi (MO), thereby overestimating the degree of consistency and distinctiveness that would exist in naturalistic settings. We present the first study to overcome these limitations; we tested the assumptions of case linkage with a sample containing 1) offenses that remain unsolved, and 2) crime series that were first identified as possible series through DNA matches, rather than similar MO. Twenty-two series consisting of 119 rapes from South Africa were used to create a dataset of 7021 crime pairs. Comparisons of crime pairs that were linked using MO vs. DNA revealed significant, but small differences in behavioral similarity with MO-linked crimes being characterized by greater similarity. When combining these two types of crimes together, linked pairs (those committed by the same serial offender) were significantly more similar in MO behavior than unlinked pairs (those committed by two different offenders) and could be differentiated from them. These findings support the underlying assumptions of case linkage. Additional factors thought to impact on linkage accuracy were also investigated.

The impact of data degradation and sample size on the performance of two similarity coefficients used in behavioural linkage analysis

In order to determine whether a series of unsolved crimes has been committed by the same offender, the police often must rely on an analysis of behavioural evidence. When carrying out this task, some type of similarity coefficient is typically relied on to assess the degree of behavioural stability and distinctiveness that exists across a set of crimes and questions inevitably arise as to which coefficient to use. In cases of juvenile sex offences, research has suggested that a taxonomic similarity index outperforms the most commonly used metric at the moment, Jaccard's coefficient, especially under conditions of data degradation (missing data). However, recent research has failed to replicate this result in cases of serial homicide and burglary, especially when relatively large sample sizes are used. The current study provides further support for these recent findings using adult serial sexual assault data. Across a range of conditions, the current study demonstrates that Jaccard's coefficient slightly outperforms the taxonomic similarity index on a measure of linking accuracy. Potential explanations for the results are provided, implications are discussed, and future research directions are presented.

The promises and pitfalls of forensic evidence in unsolved crimes

Criminology & Public PolicyVolume 9, Issue 2 p. 405-410 The promises and pitfalls of forensic evidence in unsolved crimes Kevin M. Beaver, Kevin M. Beaver Assistant professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.Search for more papers by this author Kevin M. Beaver, Kevin M. Beaver Assistant professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.Search for more papers by this author First published: 08 April 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2010.00636.xCitations: 14 Direct correspondence to Kevin M. Beaver, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 634 W. Call Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306 (e-mail: [email protected]). AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume9, Issue2May 2010Pages 405-410 RelatedInformation