Linkage Blindness

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify and clarify the issues facing our society resulting from the phenomenon of serial murder. It will be argued that the extent and prevalence of serial murders in our society today is an indirect effect of the almost total lack of sharing or coordination of investigative information relating to unsolved murders and to the lack of adequate networking among law enforcement agencies in this country. This lack of coordination and networking will be referred to as linkage blindness. This inability of law enforcement to link unsolved murders to a serial pattern greatly increases the probability that this serial sequence of murders will continue until the murderer makes a mistake...