ABSTRACT
The problems of definition and identification in serial murder are issues best left to discussion by law enforcement and criminology experts. It is of note, however, that serial murders are identified at a point where a threshold of awareness is broken at the interface of the commu nity and its police force. For example, a serial murder was identified retrospectively and prospectively when two separate reports of missing girls were entered with one police department, thereby initiating the “Ted Case” in Seattle. These two cases of missing persons were inactivated for lack of other suspects after Bundy’s conviction for murder in Florida. It is typical in these cases for investigative doubt and confusion to persist for months concerning the actuality of a single murderer’s responsibility for
multiple victims over time and multiple police jurisdictions. The current Green River serial murder case in Washington State may span years and multiple states as did the “Ted” case which allegedly included Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Florida. When an apprehension is made, unsolved murders going back decades may be brought to investi gative light once the neighborhood of the suspect has been discovered.
