More than an Offender Location Tool: Geographic Profiling and Body Deposition Sites

Abstract

In homicide cases, it is difficult to provide resolution for the bereaved or to obtain a successful criminal conviction of the guilty party when no body is found. Since the mid-nineteenth century, geographic and environmental patterns have been used to better understand the relationship between crime and its environment. Now known as geographic profiling, practitioners in this field amalgamate criminological, psychological, and geographical knowledge, as well as aspects of mathematics, statistics, and physics to identify spatial patterns associated with criminal behaviour as a means of locating anchor points of an offender (where they live, or work). The same techniques can also be used to locate the covert body deposition sites of their victims. This paper aims to (1) provide a brief summary of criminal behaviour and the environment and how understanding their relationship can be helpful to geographic profiling, (2) amalgamate the available literature on the application of geographic profiling in locating clandestine graves (as most documented uses are to locate offender residences), and (3) include a geographic profile of Ivan Milat, an Australian serial killer (officially) active from 1989 to 1992, demonstrating how geographic profiling techniques can help to identify additional victims and potential body deposition sites. The information in this review will be helpful to law enforcement and practitioners to improve missing persons investigations and searches for clandestine graves.

Drone sensing volumes

“…While clandestine graves are typically visually discerned through a range of environmental, covering and scavenging ‘signs’ (Kalacska et al, 2009, p. 159) and/or with the assistance of witness and informant testimony, such practices form part of a wider process of ‘geographic profiling’. As Berezowski et al (2021, p. 1) write in the context of homicide cases, geographic profiling refers to the ‘amalgamation of criminological, psychological, and geographical knowledge’ with the aim of ‘identifying spatial patterns associated with criminal behaviour’ in order to ‘locate’ both the offender and ‘the covert body deposition sites of their victim(s)’. Given that ground‐based visual detection is both resource intensive and risks the potential ‘destruction’ of scenes (Murray et al, 2018, p. 45), aerial approaches have been pursued in seeking to identify clandestine graves.…”

“…Manned aircraft, however, remain costly. As such, researchers are increasingly experimenting with drones as tools that at once enable the searching of wide areas ‘in a short amount of time’ with ‘reduced person power’ (Berezowski et al, 2021, p. 6), and are comparatively more affordable and accessible (Murray et al, 2018). Therein, researchers are equipping drones with increasingly diverse sensors—including thermal, infrared, near infrared, hyperspectral, and red‐green‐blue—each seeking to differently apprehend, make identifiable, and render visible different aspects of the ‘environmental fingerprint’ left by the act of burial (Murray et al, 2018, p. 50; see also Bodnar et al, 2019).…”

The suitability of using domestic pigs (Sus spp.) as human proxies in the geophysical detection of clandestine graves

“…Not only does locating these graves facilitate the judicial process [2, 3], but it can also provide the family of the missing person with answers about their loved one's death [4, 5]. The most commonly used methods to locate clandestine graves are foot searches [6] and cadaver dogs [7, 8], however, depending on equipment and expertise availability, techniques such as geographic profiling [9–14], and various remote sensing methods, such as satellite [15], infrared [16], thermal [17], and aerial imaging [18] (including with a drone and other unmanned aerial vehicles [19–22]), light detection and ranging (LiDAR) [12, 23, 24], and near‐surface geophysical techniques [25–28] can also be used. See Ruffell and McKinley [29, 30] and Donnelly and Harrison [31] for a more detailed look into grave location techniques.…”