ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), a national network used for linking crimes with similar signatures and modus operandi (MOs), identifies John Does who died violently and links offenders with victims. The agents also designed a protocol for these interviews, in an attempt to standardize them, and looked up details about 118 victims. In May 1985, under the auspices of the National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Pierce Brooks was named the first ViCAP director. FBI analysts still review incoming cases for quality and consistency of the data and prepare reports for specific requests. The goal for this report was to provide investigators with situational factors that have been associated with past serial murder, based on specific behaviours gleaned from dumpsites. Besides ViCAP, there are other useful databases, and some provide data for a better interpretation of linkage analysis. In the past, experienced clinical judgment was generally accepted as sufficient for the final evaluation.
