Computer Program Can Track Serial Murders

A computer program that can track serial murders and provide a personality profile of the killers has been developed by a team of researchers.

The program uses information provided by an expert in the field to distinguish serial killings from other homicides, then helps identify similar murders, said Paul M. Gutwald, who helped develop the program while attending the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., last spring.

“In other words, you create a computer that would be a serial killer,” said Gutwald, who worked on the three-month project with William A. Wallace, chairman of the school of management at the institute.

The idea for the program came about because of problems for law enforcement concerning serial murders, including too much information, not enough coordination among agencies and a lack of experts in the area.

“The biggest problem is they don’t share information,” said Gutwald, noting that even neighboring jurisdictions sometimes do not share murder information.

The researchers used past and present serial murder cases nationwide in their work, but they did not actually use the program on an ongoing case.

Gutwald said he knew the program was a success when a New York serial murder investigator said, “What good is this system when it can only do as well as I can?”

The point, Gutwald said, is for it to serve as a computer network for serial murder investigations. He said the service, if developed, could help agencies without an expert on serial murder, with a computer disk filling the void.

Gutwald said the program was developed as a research tool for the institute and would not be marketed. However, he said a New York detective who assisted in the research intends to use some of the computer knowledge he acquired to help him in his investigations.

New York detective and serial murder expert Steven Egger stated in a paper presented by Gutwald that in the last seven years, homicides with unknown motives have increased 20%, compared to an increase overall of 12% for murders.

Gutwald presented his paper at the seventh international conference on Decision Support Systems in San Francisco. The event is sponsored by the Institute of Management Sciences, which consists of professional managers, management scientists and educators holding managerial, technical and teaching positions in business and industry, government and universities nationwide.