ABSTRACT
Chapter 18 covers aspects of a serial offender, wherein the same offender has committed several crimes. These are especially difficult for police because of the agency, media, and public pressure to find the offender. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of these cases is to admit that there is a serial offender, sometimes operating within multiple agency jurisdictions. Cases can often be attributed to a common offender through their exhibited behaviors before, during, and after the event and their interactions with the victim. A link matrix can be used to identify these behaviors and it is a simple but powerful analytical tool to identify those common behaviors. Other common tools include timelines, criminal investigation analysis, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and National Crime Information Center offline requests. Serial offender investigations often require establishing task forces made up of various agencies working for identifying a common offender.
