Establishing Guilt and Innocence with Crime Geography: Preventing and Resolving Cold Murder Cases

• In Event: The Texas State University Cold Case Investigations Project: Research, Training, and Operational Support

Abstract

According to routine activity theory, for a direct-contact predatory crime to occur, the paths of the offender and victim must intersect in time and space within an environment appropriate for criminal activity. While seemingly obvious, this requirement for a spatial-temporal intersection is sometimes overlooked. Though much is known within the environmental criminology perspective on the geography of crime, this knowledge is not always utilized appropriately in police investigations or wrongful conviction reviews.
Case studies of operational support provided to police agencies are introduced throughout this presentation to introduce relevant geography of crime research and principles, and to illustrate the importance of spatial-temporal analysis in criminal investigations and exonerations. Geographic profiling, crime site types, crime parsing and location sets, journey-to-crime travel, cellular phone analysis, and the application of crime scripts for verification purposes are examined within the context of actual murder investigations. Implications for cold case resolution and prevention are discussed.

Author

• Kim Rossmo, School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Texas State University