What the Police Mean by the Term Victimology

When homicide squad detectives say they are engaged in vic- timology, they mean piecing together clues and leads from the dead person’s life in order to help discover the killer’s identity. Police investigators want to find out as much as possible about the deceased from interviews with the next of kin and eyewit- nesses, e-mail messages, diaries, banking deposits and with- drawals, computer files, and records of telephone calls. Detectives look into the victim’s associates (by compiling lists of contacts, including friends, family members, acquaintances, rivals, and enemies), social background (lifestyle, occupation, education, marital status, secret lovers), criminal history (any prior record of arrests, convictions, and incarcerations plus any cases in which the departed served as a complainant, plaintiff, or witness against others), financial situation (sources of income, debts owed, investments, and who is next in line to inherit any property), and health issues (drinking habits, substance abuse, and other problems). Autopsy findings shed light on the final meal, the presence of any traces of recent drinking and drug taking, the cause of death, and the approx- imate time interval when the fatal confrontation took place.

For example, if a drug dealer is found shot to death in an alley, detectives would construct a timeline of his last known

whereabouts and activities. What were his known hangouts (bars, clubs, parks, etc.)? Investigators would seek clues to determine whether he was killed by someone above him in the hierarchy of drug trafficking or someone below who worked for him or bought controlled substances from him. Was he recently embroiled in any disputes or court cases, and did he secretly serve as a confidential informant? Who had a motive and an opportunity to slay him? (NYPD homicide detectives, 2008). When police discovered the scattered remains of a number of young women in a stretch of deserted sand dunes near a pop- ular beach, their victimological inquiries soon established a common thread: that they all had been prostitutes apparently slain by a serial killer (Swartz, 2013).

Clearly, whereas victimologists want to uncover trends, patterns, and regularities that hold true for many injured par- ties in general, police investigators seek to establish in great detail everything that can be unearthed about the life and death of a particular person. “Forensic victimology” in this very pragmatic and immediate sense is undertaken to increase the odds of solving a case, apprehending a suspect, and testifying in court on behalf of a person who is no longer able to pursue justice on his or her own (see Petherick and Turvey, 2008).

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add, “We are devastated by the loss of our beautiful daughter.” (Martinez, 2014)

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A classroom door swings open, and a mentally deranged undergraduate barges in and shoots the professor who is lecturing by the blackboard. Then, starting with those in the front rows, the silent and expressionless gunman methodically starts firing away at the horrified students, who hit the floor and turn over desks to shield themselves. “There were a couple of screams, but for the most part it was eerily silent, other than the gunfire,” a student reports. As the mass murderer wanders off, another student recalls, “I told people that were still up and conscious, ‘Just be quiet because we don’t want him to think there are people in here because he’ll come back in.’” Indeed, he tries to return to resume the slaughter, but a wounded classmate keeps the door wedged shut. Still determined to reenter into the classroom, the deeply disturbed young man fires repeatedly at the door. When he eventually stalks off, frantic students call 911 on their cell phones and holler for help out the windows. The attacker is later found dead from a self- inflicted gunshot wound to the head, in another classroom, alongside the bodies of some other under- grads he murdered. (Hernandez, 2007)