Serial Murder Investigation

A serial murder investigation is generally initiated by an agency or group of agencies following the identification of a series or probable series of related homicides. This occurs in four different situations:

• 1.
  One or more unsolved murders are connected to the original case by victims, crime scenes, attacks, geography, or any actions or situations that convince investigators that they are dealing with a series. This was certainly the case when people were shot in and around Washington, DC, in the fall of 2002. That series of murders quickly became known as the “DC Sniper case.”
• 2.
  A non-law enforcement source places enough pressure on an agency or group of agencies for a formal serial murder investigation. In the case of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, relatives of homicide victims convinced the police to check for similarities of DNA among the victims, which resulted in the arrest of Derek Todd Lee, who has been linked to seven homicide victims.
• 3.
  Through happenstance or a fluke, a serial murderer is revealed through routine police work in response to a seemingly unrelated criminal event. Ted Bundy was pursued in a stolen car and arrested [Page 423]in Pensacola, Florida. Also, two Milwaukee police officers, on the evening of July 22, 1991, checked out a reported assault and handcuffing of a man, and had no idea what they would find in Jeffery Dahmer's apartment.
• 4.
  The event under investigation is considered unique, singular, and nonsequential until the suspect alerts the police to multiple acts by confessing to a number of homicides. When Henry Lee Lucas was arrested in Montague County, Texas, for violation of parole and suspicion of killing an 84-year-old woman, he began confessing to the killing of scores of people across the country and was subsequently convicted of 10 homicides.

Regardless of how a serial murder is identified, the undertaking of such an investigation poses numerous problems for the investigating agency.