How does an LKA profiler assignment work?
First, the team meets with those responsible at the relevant district police authority and checks whether the assignment is feasible. A date is then agreed on when the results should be available.
How early are you involved?
It is advantageous if the LKA profilers are involved in the investigation as soon as possible. The first important decisions have to be made immediately after the crime. Success or failure depends on this. The necessary information is provided by crime scene officers and autopsies.
What decisions need to be made?
How many personnel are needed? Which experts should be involved? At what point should press and public relations work be carried out to accompany the investigation? How and by whom should mass data be processed and information from the public be recorded and prioritized? Which suspects will be investigated and in what area? Where do search measures to find victims, bodies, victim clothing or evidence begin and end? And much more.
They then begin with the so-called "operative case analysis". What exactly happens here?
At the beginning, we collect as much objective information about the victim as possible. This is important in order to be able to understand the case. From this, we gradually work out the clues that will help the investigation.
In the next step, we analyze the available data. Which of it is reliable? Only reliable findings guarantee reliable, consistent hypotheses about the course of the crime and the motive. All other data is disregarded.
We then work out details about the victim, their injuries and the crime scene itself. We visit the crime scenes and talk to autopsy experts to have the existing injuries assessed. We then highlight the findings that are likely to be decisive for the further analysis process.
What happens with the results?
We use the analysis to formulate all conceivable hypotheses. At the end of the analysis process, only those that are probable and those that cannot be ruled out remain. All hypotheses are assigned a degree of probability.
What criteria do you use to assign the degree of probability?
For this purpose, the event is reconstructed: This means that we look at the crime in individual sequences, analogous to the decisions made by the perpetrator. Which behavior is typical or atypical for the crime in the overall view? What was the offender's primary motive for committing the crime and what skills did he display in doing so? These questions are answered here and are incorporated into the results. They allow conclusions to be drawn about the perpetrator's physique, psyche, appearance in everyday life, dangerousness (risk of repetition), relationship to the victim, occupation, marital status and living environment.
Is there a difference between your work in current cases and "cold cases" (unsolved homicides)?
In cold cases, an LKA profiler team only becomes active after the investigation has been completed. This means that the responsible district police authority only approaches us afterwards or we suggest a collaboration. Together with the investigators, we then look for starting points to resume the investigation. These could be murder characteristics, for example. Because murder is not time-barred.
1. the "comparative case analysis" (to examine a serial connection)
In the case analysis examination of the serial connection in question, similarities between several cases are examined, deviations are evaluated and a statement is made as to whether the corresponding acts can be attributed to a person or group of persons from a case analysis perspective.
In order to ensure objectivity, it is necessary for methodological reasons to first carry out independent case analyses of the individual offenses in connection with the examination of the serial connection in question, especially in the case of homicides.
For this purpose, different analysis teams are usually deployed to ensure the independence of the individual analyses in terms of content.
2. "Geographical case analyses" ("the search for offender anchor points")
Geographical case analyses are used to derive statements on possible local connections of the offender (anchor points) in order to focus the investigations on the localities prioritized in this way. Anchor points of the offender refer to locations that have a certain significance for the offender, especially in the context of his current or former routine activities.
These include, for example,
- current or former places of residence of the offender or his family,
- locations that are related to current or former professional activities or leisure activities of the offender.
Among other things, it is examined whether the spatial behavior of the offender in the offence is consistent or (partially) contradictory to empirical basic assumptions on the choice of crime scene/distances to anchor points, in order to highlight either the spatial behavior in the offence as a classic or as a very special geo-profile of the offender.
With the help of a geographic information system (GIS), complex facts with a spatial reference can be abstracted in such a way that they can be represented in a way that is comprehensible to humans with the help of information technology. In other words, these are tools that can be used to record, but also to process, organize, analyse and present facts with a spatial reference.