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Homicide Studies: Ten Years After Its Inception Homicide Studies: Ten Years After Its Inception Proceedings of the 2007 Homicide Research Working Group Annual Symposium Minneapolis, Minnesota June 7-10 Edited by Katharina Gruenberg Lancaster University And C. Gabrielle Salfati John Jay College of Criminal Justice 1 Acknowledgements 2 The Homicide Research Working Group (HRWG) is an international and interdisciplinary organization of volunteers dedicated to cooperation among researchers and practitioners who are trying to understand and limit lethal violence. The HRWG has the following goals: to forge links between research, epidemiology and practical programs to reduce levels of mortality from violence; to promote improved data quality and the linking of diverse homicide data sources; to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary research on lethal and non-lethal violence; to encourage more efficient sharing of techniques for measuring and analyzing homicide; to create and maintain a communication network among those collecting, maintaining and analyzing homicide data sets; and to generate a stronger working relationship among homicide researchers. Homicide Research Working Group publications, which include the Proceedings of each annual Intensive Workshop (beginning in 1992), the HRWG Newsletter, and the contents of issues of the journal Homicide Studies (beginning in 1997), may be downloaded from the HRWG web site, which is maintained by the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research, at the following address: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/HRWG/ Suggested citation: Lin Huff-Corzine Katharina Gruenberg, Gabrielle Salfati (Eds.) (2007). Homicide Studies: Ten Years After Its Inception. Proceedings of the 2007 Meeting of the Homicide Research Working Group. Minneapolis, MN : Homicide Research Working Group. The views expressed in these Proceedings are those of the authors and speakers, and not necessarily those of the Homicide Research Working Group or the editor of this volume. © Homicide Research Working Group 2007 All rights reserved. 3 OVERVIEW AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The 18th Homicide Research Working Group (HRWG) intensive workshop participants met at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from June 7th to 9th, 2007, to explore the theme, Homicide Studies: Ten Years After Its Inception. This volume includes the proceedings resulting from that workshop. The HRWG is best described as an interdisciplinary and international group of homicide academicians and practitioners, who first met in 1991 with the goals of: forging links among research, epidemiology, and practical programs to reduce levels of mortality from violence encouraging more efficient sharing of techniques for measuring and analyzing homicide promoting improved data quality and the linking of diverse homicide data sources fostering collaborative, interdisciplinary research on lethal and non-lethal violence creating and maintain a communication network among those collecting, maintaining and analyzing homicide datasets, and generating a strong working relationship among homicide researchers HRWG members from a variety of disciplines, e.g., criminology, criminal justice, sociology, nursing and political science, attended the three-day workshop. As the culture of this group requires, presenters offered up their preliminary research papers in 10-15 minute sound bites that participants then chewed up and spit out in the form of questions for approximately 15-30 minutes per paper. This method allows authors to gather input from experts in the field prior to completion of their research project and is the strength of the HRWG‘s annual workshops. The success of the Minneapolis meeting was due, in large part, to the Center for Homicide Research. Both Dallas Drake and Joe Shulka, as well as their student interns from the Center, who served as the Local Arrangements Committee, provided a setting that was conducive to the hard work that proves to be the norm of HRWG Annual Meeting participants. For the second year, members had the opportunity to continue their discussions and form collaborative relationships at a Hospitality Room in the conference hotel. Attendees will remember Hospitality Room events such as celebrating Tom Petee‘s birthday, ―Trunk Monkeys,‖ and the ―Save Paris Hilton‖ movement. A highlight of this meeting was a ―field trip‖ to the Mall of America. There was no shopping, but that wasn‘t the purpose of the trip. Instead, we toured the sophisticated security system at the Mall and learned that nearly all public areas are videotaped at all times that the Mall is open and that that surveillance could drill down to the point of allowing the camera viewer to read a book held by a person waiting for the bus outside the Mall. It was a truly impressive security system and an enjoyable event. In addition to the main program, a pre-conference focusing on cold case murders was also presented by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension personnel. For those of 4 us who chose to attend this event, we left with a greater understanding of cold cases and homicide investigation. The most essential contribution to these proceedings was provided, of course, by the Workshop participants. The papers in this volume are the primary products of the HRWG Annual Meeting. This year the program included papers on serial murder; crime spikes and dips; the development and use of new datasets, e.g., NIBRS; the exploration of methods to handle missing data; and a variety of other important topics, which have been compiled for you in this volume. As the program chair, I want to thank all of the authors, who provided their papers to Gabrielle Salfati, the editor of these proceedings, and Katharina Gruenberg, who also worked on these proceedings. As this is being written, the HRWG is planning the mid-year meeting, which is held each year at the American Society of Criminology. As always, we will have a reception focused on attracting new HRWG members and collaboration among current members. We are also actively setting up next year‘s Annual Workshop to be held in Huntsville, Texas, at Sam Houston University. The focus of this meeting will be on offenders. Thus, enduring progress is being made by HRWG members, who will continue to develop important questions related to lethal and non-lethal violence, find answers to many of those questions, and link the answers to practical strategies for intervention and prevention. Lin Huff-Corzine Program Chair 5 Chapter One: ................................................................................................................................. 9 Pre-conference Workshop: Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) – Three Case Study Murder Investigations .............................................................................................. 9 Katie Poirier Murder Investigation ........................................................................................... 10 Terry Smith ........................................................................................................................... 10 Serial Killer Joseph Ture .......................................................................................................... 11 Everett Doolittle .................................................................................................................... 11 Dru Sjodin Murder Investigation .............................................................................................. 12 Dan Ahlquist ......................................................................................................................... 12 Session 1: The History of Homicide and Homicide Investigation. ......................................... 13 MASS LEGAL EXECUTIONS IN THE AMERICAN WEST ............................................... 14 Paul H. Blackman ................................................................................................................. 14 Vance McLaughlin................................................................................................................ 14 Robeson County, North Carolina Homicides: 1916 to 1941 .................................................... 19 Vance McLaughlin................................................................................................................ 19 History of Offender Profiling: The Role of Criminologists, Psychologists, Consulting Detectives, Medical Examiners, Forensic Experts, and the FBI ............................................... 25 Kristen Welch, ABD ............................................................................................................. 25 Robert Keppel, PhD .............................................................................................................. 25 Discussion Notes. ...................................................................................................................... 35 Chapter Three: .......................................................................................................................... 38 Session 2: Continuity and Change in Homicide. ...................................................................... 38 Homicides in Orlando, 2000-2006:........................................................................................... 39 A Descriptive Report* .............................................................................................................. 39 Jay Corzine,..........................................................................................................................
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