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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 757
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 25, 2005 - 4:11 am: | 
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We have discussed at length how DNA or profiling could have made a difference had it been around in 1888.
I just read how the police used a new technology to catch BTK.
It was a sophisticated database, commercially developed, which lent itself very well to the cataloging of various leads, evidence, etc.
It does not seem very remarkable that they were able to connect the evidence from the Home Depot security tapes with the evidence from the floppy disk till you think about the fact that they were probably dealing with a gazillion leads, scraps of evidence, etc.
Those two disparate items were very likely processed by different people at different times. Neither one by itself would have been enough. In the precomputer age if the two individuals involved had not compared notes, nothing would have happened.
The security tape showed a vehicle owned by Rader's son in the parking lot. How many other vehicles did it also pick up? Every one would have had to be run through the DMV. Plus Rader's son couldn't be BTK because he was too young.
The floppy disk had been in the Lutheran Church's computer. The police asked the pastor for a list of everyone with access to the computer so I'm sure that even in a small church the list would have had more than one or two people on it.
The set of people with cars in that parking lot at a given time had to be cross checked with the set of people who had access to the computer and with who knows how many other false leads. That is a lot of sifting and comparing.
Ten or fifteen years ago those two disparate scraps might not ever have been linked with each other.
I'm thinking that we may have a long forgotten tidbit, perhaps something that was posted on the boards five years ago, that if it was linked with another scrap posted yesterday might be significant.
Are there any geeks among us who could suggest how we could set up a database?
What could we set it up to track? Names? Dates and Times? Affiliations? Places? Commonalities?
(Message edited by diana on August 25, 2005) |
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