Researchers found that behavior of serial killers may adhere to a pretty strict mathematical formula called the “Devil’s Staircase” – serial killers work to a ‘rhythm’ driven by neurons in their brains, suggesting that police could someday predict when another strike could occur.

Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury, electrical engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, modeled the behavior of Andrei Chikatilo, “The Butcher of Rostov,” who was one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. Between 1978 and 1990 in the Ukraine, he committed at least 52 murders before he was caught, tried and executed. The pattern of his murders was irregular. There were long periods of no activity, interrupted by several murders within a short period of time.

What the authors used as the basis of their analysis was the hypothesis that “similar to epileptic seizures, the psychotic affects, causing a serial killer to commit murder, arise from simultaneous firing of large number of neurons in the brain.” Accordingly, they based their model on neuronal firing – the fact that, once a neuron fires, there’s a refractory period that has to pass before it can fire again. When it does fire, it can trigger other neurons to fire if they’re ready to. As you can imagine, though, those firings aren’t always in sync. So what the authors suggest is that there must be a threshold – that is, when a certain number of neurons fire, the serial killer becomes driven by an overwhelming urge to kill.

Killers are more likely to strike again directly after a murder, and their ‘murder probability’ falls during long quiet periods — but it adheres to a broadly predictable pattern of killings.
The researchers think that the neural impulse to kill overwhelms the killer even after the ‘sedative’ effect of killing — leading to ‘bursts’ of murderous activity.

The authors also note that the murders do appear in clumps, with the killer more likely to kill after another murder. However, the killings eventually have a sedative effect, pushing the neuronal activity below the ‘killing threshold’ – which is why there are large intervals of time between groups of murders.

“We cannot expect that the killer commits murder right at the moment when neural excitation reaches a certain threshold. He needs time to plan and prepare his crime.”

The researchers acknowledge that prediction measurements need to be refined, but in doing so, they believe it could improve prediction capabilities for law enforcement tracking serial killers.

-articles by Alex Knapp and Liz Klimas rewritten and adapted by admin-

Scientist from ChemImage and Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered a field portable system that can detect, so far invisible, latent fingerprints on human skin. Whether to stop them from fleeing, immobilize them, or dispose of them, murderers often grab their victims, and so the crucial evidence linking the perpetrator to the victim is often right there, but until recently, attempts to retrieve those prints rarely met with success.

The skin posses a number of distinctive characteristics, that make lifting latent prints really hard. Skin tissue grows and constantly renews itself, shedding old cells that might contain the imprint of an assailant’s grip. As the skin regulates the body’s temperature and excretes waste matter through perspiration, latent prints can be washed away. In spite of the obvious difficulties, scientist have been looking for a reliable method throughout history (dating back in the 1970.) And all that research led to development of a workable method for developing identifiable latent prints on human skin.

Two methods that proved useful so far are: glue fuming device that spreads glue fumes over the skin and special brands of fingerprint powders. The new system though, takes advantage of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based agents to visualize latent prints. A team led by Linda Lewis of ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division is working with ChemImage to identify fingerprint components that are SERS active – those components that give a Raman emission when using a SERS reagent.
The ORNL team has identified a novel dielectric nanowire coated with silver as the SERS agent of choice.

All these methods for developing latent print on human skin work only if the body is examined soon enough, and give better results if the body was deceased when handled. Under ideal laboratory conditions prints could be obtained (one way or the other), but by inventing this method researchers wanted to make sure that practitioners in the field could obtain similar results. In real life though, victims are usually not found immediately, bodies are starting to decompose, various elements and harsh conditions influence the longevity of latent prints on skin. Even though, as we can see with all that’s been said, the chances might be small, it is highly recommended that if forensic scientists believe that perpetrator might have touched the victim, they should try to recover any possible latent prints on the victim’s skin.

-article by Ivan Ross Futrell updated from Science Daily, rewritten and adapted by administrator-

A new bullet-tagging technology that could help forensic teams fight against the crime has been developed in the UK. A breakthrough, invisible to the naked eye coating for cartridges transfer nanotech tags to gun offenders and thus improve the capture of the DNA evidence.

Those tags are really tiny – just 30 microns in diameter and they attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone handling the cartridge and are very difficult to wash off completely. But there is more to it. Most evidence is usually destroyed after a gun is fired, because of the heat generated but this coating has been designed to avoid such damaging and can also remain on the cartridge even after it has been fired. This should help forensic scientists and detectives to link the crime with the offender.

‘The tags primarily consist of naturally occurring pollen, a substance that evolution has provided with extraordinary adhesive properties,’ said Prof Paul Sermon from Surrey University, who led the research.
He added: ‘It has been given a unique chemical signature by coating it with titanium oxide, zirconia, silica or a mixture of other oxides. The precise composition of this coating can be varied subtly from one batch of cartridges to another, enabling a firm connection to be made between a particular fired cartridge and its user.’

Prof Paul Sermon also said, ‘We’re currently focusing on understanding the precise requirements of the police and cartridge manufacturers. But our work clearly could make a valuable contribution not only to solving gun crime but also to deterring criminals from resorting to the use of firearms in the first place.’

Can we agree with all that’s been said here? In my humble opinion, I don’t think anyone planning to commit a crime and get away with it would use those cartridges. Even if there was no way to get clean ones, one could probably use some chemicals to remove the coating. Still, we can only hope that not all criminals are that careful and that this breakthrough will prove useful.

-article from SceinceDaily rewritten and adapted by administrator-

Forensic scientist discovered a brand new method that could help them understand the way serial killers’ minds work. They believe that the way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers. “Most murders happen close to the killer’s home, but not in the area directly surrounding a criminal’s house, where crimes are less likely to be committed because of the fear of getting caught by someone they know,” explained Dr Raine.

This method that works very well with bees, is called geographic profiling, and is originally developed by Rossmo back in the 1980′s. GP, as it’s known, has since been adopted by police forces across the world and has been applied in such high profile cases as the BTK Killer and the D.C. Sniper.
Geographic profiling works on the premise that the location of a crime site can provide the police with vital information. It assesses and predicts the offender’s most likely place of residence, place of work, social venues and travel routes etc. GP works on the assumption that, like bees, serial killers don’t work right next to their homes and instead travel to a more distant locations to commit crimes, creating a buffer zone around their home or work. “They want to operate in a comfort zone, close to an area they know but not where everyone knows them,” said Rossmo.

Instead of using information about the distribution of flowers visited by bees to explain the insects’ behaviour, criminologists’ models will use details about crime scenes, robbery locations, abandoned cars, even dead bodies, to hone the search for a suspect.

However, as Dr Raine said, “Bees have much simpler brains and so understanding how bees are recruited to flowers is much easier than understanding the complex thoughts of a serial murderer”

I’d suggest you see those other two videos from BBC as well (for those of you with fast broadband connection and further interest in this methodology):

• How bee foraging can help police
• Brainy Bees Get Radio Tagged

This all sounds very exciting, but will this discovery really be able to shed some light on the way serial killers’ minds work? Maybe after some more scientific researches it’ll prove efficient. As for now, we can’t be sure about that, but this method definitely deserves to be explored.

-articles written by  Jennifer Carpenter, BBC and  Eric Bland, discovery news, rewritten and adapted by administrator-

Scientist have developed a new, better way of lifting fingerprints on bullets and fragments of explosives even if a criminal has tried cleaning/wiping the evidence. This new technique has been discovered by John Bond, a British physics, whose method British and US authorities have already used to re-open three cold cases.

Fingerprints are a crucial evidence and the conventional method of taking fingerprints has been around for more than 100 years and involves creating a chemical reaction with the sweat left behind on an object to produce an image police can use. However, if a criminal wipes away the surface and thus clean the sweat, there is little left to react with the chemical and regular methods are useless, Bond said in a telephone interview.

This new technique, however, allows the police to produce a fingerprint even if there is no sweat impression to work with. So how exactly does this new technique work? Forensic scientist John Bond of the Northamptonshire Police, in the United Kingdom, developed the technique after discovering that certain metals, including copper and brass, corrode very slightly when touched, leaving behind a faint but indelible fingerprint. This is due to the ionic salt present in fingerprint residue that corrodes the metal surface producing an image that can only be removed by abrasive cleaning of the metal.

Scientists cover the metal with a fine powder and apply a strong electrical charge that makes the dust stick to the corroded areas, producing a potential fingerprint, Bond said. “That very fine powder only sticks to the metal where it is corroded, which means it is only sticking where the fingerprint is and means you see the image of the fingerprint,” said Bond, whose team has published its findings in the Journal of Forensic Sciences and the Journal of Applied Physics. The technique is not foolproof and some people do not secrete enough salt in their sweat to corrode the metal to the point police can get a print, he added.

“The advantage of the new technique is its permanence,” says Ron Singer, crime-laboratory director for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner Crime Lab, in Fort Worth, TX. “It is looking for the minute amount of etching that takes place in the metal–the physical change that has occurred to the surface.” Singer says that the technique could prove more resilient than conventional methods. “If you don’t get it right the first time, you can do it again,” he adds. “One of the major issues in fingerprint analysis is how much of the print is necessary before you can reliably say it is someone’s fingerprint,” says Singer.

I believe that this is a fantastic discovery with a very bright future, that will definitely make solving cases much easier. At least until criminals come up with the way to hide those prints. Although, as far as forensic science is one step ahead, things are under control.

-article by Michael Kahn, rewritten and adapted by administrator-