ABSTRACT
If the late Pierce Brooks and other highly skilled detectives from the preInternet days could see the research tools available to today’s investigators, they would be astounded. Yet Brooks and his colleagues at the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1950s researched a lot of cases without the online access that we take for granted today. How did they do it? Our predecessors used what we now call “old-fashioned police work”: they climbed the steps of county courthouses, where they searched public records, traced names, and determined relationships. Today, most-but not all-of this same investigative work can be done online.
