Recovering a missing murder weapon is a major coup for law enforcement. Even with a confession, every bit of physical evidence adds weight to the prosecution’s case. The murder weapon often provides DNA for both the victim and the accused or evidence such as matching...
Murders
Cold Case Murder in Alabama Solved by Local Law Enforcement’s Use of the CVSA
If a murder isn’t solved within the first few days, it becomes increasingly more difficult to resolve as time goes on. Potential witnesses or suspects can disappear or even die. If re-interviewed, they may forget important details. Unless DNA is collected at the crime...
Suspect Interview Strategies: What To Do When Your Subject Makes Contradictory Statements
Most murderers aren’t keen to confess their crimes and go to prison, so it wasn’t surprising when Jay Jones Baird provided police with inconsistent statements while being questioned about the death of his roommate. After all, investigators are often faced with...
Comparing the CVSA and the Polygraph in the Investigation of a West Virginia Murder
There are plenty of challenges working in the mines of West Virginia, where men and women regularly risk their lives for a paycheck. In the past few decades, there have been over a hundred accidents listed on the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health Safety and...
Solving Cold Case Murders Through CVSA Analysis of Old Recordings
Voices from the past have stories to tell, but sometimes those stories are only fables. If those voices are recorded on audio or video files—whether analog or digital—we can go back and reexamine them for the truth. The lies told on those tapes may have never been...
CVSA vs the Polygraph: Clearing Innocent Suspects in the Murder of Jessica Lunsford
As a parent, it’s difficult to even approach a topic like a child’s murder without feeling it in the depths of our beings. No human being ever wants to imagine such horror. To add to the unbearable anguish of losing a child, suppose you became the prime suspect in...
Using CVSA to Identify Unlikely Suspects in Family Centric Murder Investigations
Not much happens in the sleepy town of Eaton, Ohio, so resident Timothy Johnson’s disappearance raised a red flag. Jeannie Heltsley, Timothy’s aunt, alerted Preble County Sheriff’s office Chief Deputy Terry Snowden and Detective Dean Miller on January 26, 2007....