Death Investigation Training Academy Blog
Russian Roulette – Accident or Suicide?
By: Darren Dake D-ABMDI, CI, CCI No matter your initial opinion of the title question, give me a minute to break down a few thoughts. I was recently a part of an online forum conversation where this question was posed, and there were mixed opinions. Many were hardline...
Was it Really a Suicide?
Practical tool for cops offers a way to interpret suspicious 911 calls. Not everyone who calls 911 to report a fatal accident or suicide is a concerned party – or is concerned in the right way. Some are killers hoping to deflect attention from...
Cold Cases and Serial Killers
Cold case investigations link more unsolved cases to known serial killers. When William Clyde Gibson was sentenced for the murder and mutilation of three women, he claimed that there were many more. The police “might have a tenth of it,” he stated. Although we know...
Female Predators
More women who prey on others have shown up in recent media. In South Africa, Sheree Prince, 19, broke into the home of 74-year-old Sandra Malcolm, waking her. When Malcolm threatened to call police, Prince pretended to be hurt and in need of help. Malcolm invited her...
Power Assertive Murder
Punitive anger sparks violence in killers like Todd Kohlhepp. Kala Brown and Charlie Carver went missing on Labor Day weekend. Their friends looked frantically for them, but found no trace. Odd items popped up on their Facebook pages, but no one actually heard from...
Stupid Stuff that Stopped a Serial Killer
When someone says serial killers have high IQs, I recall these sorry stories. The myth that serial killers are smarter than the average person is based on a study that used unscientific methods with a small, unrepresentative sample. In fact, serial killers range from...
Sexual Quests Gone Wrong
Some sexual practices increase the risk of exposure, arrest, or even death. During a welfare check, a young man was found dead in his apartment. He was fully bound in duct tape from his mouth to his ankles. The windows and doors were locked. Because the ends of the...
Shame and the Serial Killer
Humiliation’s influence on criminal behavior needs more attention. I recently watched a special on the ID Network about South Carolina serial killer Todd Kohlhepp. He pleaded guilty to the mass murder of four people at a motorcycle shop in 2003, as well as the murders...
Professional Suicide
It’s jarring when accomplished people end their own lives Sir Bernard Spilsbury was among the most famous of British pathologists during the early 1900s. He performed the autopsy in the sensational case of Hawley Harvey Crippen. In January 1910, Crippen’s wife Cora...