Recently in Suspects Category

For my book report for this course I am reading Mind Hunter by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.  In the book, Douglas describes his interviews with criminals in the prison system in order to develop profiles for serial killers as part of a huge research project.  This was part of an effort to develop a Psychological Profiling Program, to make it easier for investigators, police, and the FBI to catch criminals faster and easier, by being able to "get inside their heads" and track their next moves. This got me interested in criminal and psychological profiling so I decided to google it.  I came across digital physiognomy software and free downloads.

 

 

Digital Physiognomy was developed as entertaining software, allowing people to create a portrait of a person and then provide a description of the person's character, traits, preferences, likes and dislikes, etc. You can choose different facial features and put them together, similar to the composite software that we can borrow from Dr. Maclin for our projects and what police use to make sketches of suspects. 

Testing out digital physiognomy or composite software gives us a real life account of creating a "picture" of a suspect.  I checked out the composite software from Dr. Maclin and found it difficult to do.  Difficult for the "witness" to come up with a description and difficult for me to choose accurate features from the extensive list.  Of course composites are biased to either the witness's perception or memory and the composite creator's training and expertise; however, both are useful in coming up with a tangible idea of the suspect. 

A free demo version is available at http://www.uniphiz.com/.  I did not have a chance to download it or see if it works, but I encourage people to check it out and see what it is all about!

 

 

I was reading this news story and found it rather comical. There was a man who was trying to burglarize a woman at 2am. He tried to unlock the door with keys, but when that didn't work he just kicked the door down. Turns out the champ of a woman was prepared. She was waiting by the door with a knife. She stabbed the man in the shoulder, and then the man took off running. The victim chased after the man (suspect) with the knife. The cops then said that they had to 'save the suspect from the victim'. I bet the thief didn't know what he had in store for him that night!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2010100041_burglar_rescued_by_police_afte.html

This case is from my hometown and is suprising to me because I personally know this kid and my brother was good friends with him. Bryce Gully was being charged with first degree murder and robbery after supossibly shooting a man during a drug deal and bragged about it and sent pic messages with a gun and money. There are cameras in place in "crack ave."  in pleasent valley (down the street from where i live) that the police were using for surveillance on the drugs. It went to court and he was going to be charged as an adult at 15, but was found not guilty. T he reason for this was a combination of things. They had a bunch of  kids from the neighborhood come in and say so an so  did it and there was no clear descritption between all of them but there was a concensus from the people who were in the car with matt huffman when he was shot. This kid had a long string of criminal charges prior and they found him hiding under a bed. The second reason he was not convicted was because they had a minor error in the evidence and gully kept pushing for a trial since you can never be tried for the same crime twice. He bragged about being unstoppable afterwards until  he was later charged with an unrelated crime a felony for stabbing another kid. Hmmm.. I'm pretty sure he has a patern going on here    here are some of the links you can find info. on http://www.whotv.com/news/who-story-gully-trial-051209,0,4798942.story http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=11920122 or just google his name . So why do some guilty people go free is it because of other variables such as age etc.. The victims family even forgave him and the jury said they didn't want to possibly put an innocent kid behind bars?

The ever so popular TV show, The First 48 on AE.TV is one that you can count on for truth and facts. The first 48 is a show about homicide detectives that respond to a crime and try and solve it within the first 48 hours. These are real cases with the real people...no actors or replaying of a scene. What you see is what you get!
This show focuses mostly on people that go from suspicion to suspect, eye witnesses, and the interrogation, or interviewing. This really helps you see what a detective does from the moment they get that call.
You can also get a sense of how they figure out what happened and who was involved. They start with the facts that they have off hand and work their way down from there. The one thing that I have started to notice sense we have talked about it in class is the interrogations done by the detectives. In class we learned that a detective will tell you anything you want to hear. They will exhaust you mentally and physically, they will lie to you. Basically they will do anything to get you to confess or turn on anyone. If you notices, in most shows, the detective will either try and play friend, or yell and scream and lie to get them to crack. I find it interesting to watch, now that you really know what is going on.
I have posted the link to the First 48 TV shows. The one on the link I am posting is about a homeless man who is murdered, and a 911 call that has gun shots firing in the background. I urge you to watch the whole show and really pay close attention to the detail that goes into being a detective, especially the ones that do the interviews.
If you are interested after watching this show, you can watch many other episodes with different stories. They get very interesting!

http://www.aetv.com/the_first_48/video/index.jsp?paidlink=1&vid=AETV_SEM_Search&keywords=first%2B48&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=first%2540&utm_term=first%2048

http://www.aetv.com/the_first_48/video/index.jsp?paidlink=1&vid=AETV_SEM_Search&keywords=first%2B48&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=first%2540&utm_term=first%2048 

After going through some of the older blogs, I remembered an event that happened in my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa. At Hempstead High School, the assistant principle, Shane Oswald, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old student and also giving her prescription drugs (hydrocodone) and alcohol. When word of this got out, Oswald fled and ran away to Florida, where he was arrested. Oswald plead not guilty to these accusations but the 17 year old girl was able to draw diagrams of the inside of his home. His $50,000 bail was posted last week by his father. His trial is set to start April 15. Since I live in Dubuque, I've heard many stories about this case such as Oswald would sneak the girl into his basement while his family was upstairs to have sex with her. I've also heard that Oswald would give the girl hydrocodone before she went to school. I find this whole situation rather disturbing and it really makes me wonder why and how some people do the things they do.

The website below has several articles on the case.

http://interceder.net/news/shane-oswald

The article below has a very detailed description of what has been accused of Oswald.

http://www.kwwl.com/global/story.asp?s=11888266