MISSING IN A BLIZZARD, RAPID DNA, AND SEXUAL ASSAULT INVESTIGATIONS - 098

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, missing in a blizzard, rapid DNA, and sexual assault investigations. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau. Welcome to episode number 98 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. And this week I'm answering your questions about how police would handle a missing persons investigation during a blizzard with a serial killer on the hunt, NTSB investigations in the use of rapid DNA, and conducting sexual assault investigations.

But first I need to thank gold shield patrons, Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, C.C. Jameson from ccjameson.com, Larry Keeton, Vicki Tharp of vickitharp.com, Chrysann, Larry Darter, Natalie Barelli, Craig Kingsman of craigkingsman.com, Lynn Vitale, Marco Carocari of marcocarocari.com, Terri Swann, and Rob Kerns of Knightsfall Press for their support, along with my silver cuff link and coffee club patrons. You can find links to all of the patrons supporting this episode in the show notes at writersdetective.com/98. And to learn more about using Patreon to grow your author business or to support this podcast, check out writersdetective.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

We are two weeks away from episode 100, where, to mark the occasion, I plan to live stream in the Facebook group as I create the 100th episode with your help, giving you a little behind the scenes of my studio and the upgrades I'm making as well as some schwag giveaways, so mugs, t-shirts, and I just got the new Writer's Detective hoodie in the mail. I love it and I hope you will too. And you'll have a chance to win it. Well, you'll win your own. A new one in a size that fits you. I am really looking forward to it and I hope you'll join me, especially because I'll be taking your questions during the live stream to use for the podcast episode.

So if you aren't already a member of the Writer's Detective Q&A Facebook group, be sure to join right now so you don't miss your chance to hang out with me live and maybe even win something. writersdetectivebureau.com/facebook will get you where you need to be. Just answer the membership questions and you'll be approved ASAP. And before we get into this week's questions, I'd be remissed if I didn't wish Rick, my late best friend in what would have been his 50th birthday today. So happy birthday, buddy. I'll swing by the cemetery to hang out with you for our annual cigar later today. All right, let's get into the questions.

Author TA Munroe posted this in the aforementioned Facebook group. "I came upon this group on Facebook and I got to thinking that almost all of my novels involve the police somehow, even though I don't write crime fiction. This current women's fiction work in progress is the most crime intensive one so far. I've enjoyed and learned a lot from the podcasts. I've listened to about 70 so far. Thanks Adam, for your help and interest in our work. This probably won't be my last post." Well, I hope not, TA. So she goes on to say, "A character of mine, a young woman, goes missing in a small city in downeast Maine right before blizzard begins. She's supposed to meet my protagonist at a designated time and place, but doesn't show. My protagonist spends as much time as she feels she can before she has to start the drive home as the snow begins. Home is in the next county, over an hour away."

"My protagonist talked to the people the missing person had been with, checked in businesses and goes to the police who take down information, and of course has called the young woman's phone, but gets no answer. It sometimes gets shut off for non-payment. The young woman isn't particularly at risk that my protagonist knows about, other than the serial killer in the area who targets, go figure, women. My protagonist returns to the same police department a week later when the weather and her work schedule allow. The two are coworkers and my protagonist has taken on a mentee role in the young woman's life, who has no family other than her son who's in foster care and was the reason for the trip. When might this become an official missing persons case, and when might the state police's major crimes unit become involved, which research told me it usually does in Maine? What might the police do in the middle of a major snow storm to search for a missing person? Would the serial killer in the area change anything about the initial investigation? Thanks in advance for any answers."

First of all, thank you for your question and thank you for listening, TA. I hope that's not your last post. I hope it's the first of many. So this becomes an official missing person case as soon as it's reported to the police. The blizzard alone would make her disappearance a life-threatening emergency as she might be out in the elements, so you might have a search and rescue type response given the weather. Honestly, there isn't too much you can do in the middle of a blizzard, well, that I would assume, says the California boy. Okay, I was born in New York and I lived in New York, so I'm familiar with blizzards from a little kid play in the snow standpoint. So realistically working in it, that's way out of my ballpark, but I would assume other than to track her by phone, as you mentioned, or maybe get out there with snowcats or snowmobiles, weather permitting, but essentially they would try to track her phone, like you mentioned, and then get the word out that she is missing via social media or the local news.

And then as soon as the weather breaks, I would expect the SAR team, sorry, the search and rescue team, to get out looking for her if there's a last known location or a last location that her phone was pinged, which kind of goes back to our last episode where I talked about cell towers. Weather aside, hell yeah, having a serial killer working in the area would be a huge reason for the major crimes unit to get involved as soon as possible. There'd very likely be a working group or some other kind of ad hoc task force focused solely on catching this serial killer and a fresh report of a young woman going missing is the exact kind of lead they'd be looking for in the hopes of catching the killer. So thanks again for submitting your question to you.

This next question also comes from the Facebook group from Darlene Chaney who asked, "Good morning everyone. Fiction novella, plane crash scenario. Does anyone out there know if it could possibly take less than 24 hours for NTSB and FAA and the airline to determine a body's ID, victim of a plane crash, from dental records and or DNA?" For starters, Darlene, the medical examiner or coroner, depending on which one they have there, would be the ones responsible for identifying the decedent, and they'd provide that info to the NTSB. The NTSB would be primarily responsible for identifying the cause of the accident or crash. Dental records would require reaching out to the family members of the possible victims and having them get the records from the victim's dentists, or at least identifying who that victim's dentist was. So that would very likely take longer than... It would take days rather than hours to get back, much less have compare between skeletal remains and the x-rays provided by the dentist. So that could take a while.

If you need the ID to happen within 24 hours, you can start researching emerging technology called rapid DNA. I say emerging because rapid DNA machines are only just now starting to be obtained by a handful of law enforcement agencies across the country. And as of now, there are two companies that I'm aware of that make rapid DNA machines. And those two companies are Thermo Fisher Scientific and ANDE, A-N-D-E. Rapid DNA has been used in several high profile accidents in Southern California, which is how I became aware of it in the last few years, including the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and part of his family. I imagine we will see rapid DNA become a lot more common in the coming years, but right now the high cost, and we're talking six figures here, is why so few agencies have it currently. That said, most of the agencies that do have rapid DNA machines have gone out of their way to make testing possible for whichever investigators need it, especially in high-profile accidents like plane crashes. So I hope this helps.

Ryan Elder is back with another question. Ryan writes, "Hello, and thank you again for your past input for my research for screenwriting, it's been very helpful. Hope you were doing well in these tougher times and hope that your podcast is as well. I have a question for a story involving how the police would interview a victim of sexual assault. The victim is female, and I was wondering, would they have a female officer interview her? Would they only have one officer interview her for comfort or would they have another one? Would the other one be allowed to be male? Any advice on this could help. Thank you very much again, and I appreciate it."

Very valid questions, Ryan, but before I answer this, I should offer a trigger warning. I'm not going to go into any deep kind of details with my answer, but this topic alone could be a very emotional thing to think, listen, or talk about if it hits close to home, and especially if you aren't ready for it, which is why I put this question at the end of this podcast episode. So feel free to hit stop on your podcast app and listen to something else. Personally, I've been listening to some foot stomping flamenco lately. It seems to liven up my mood in case you need a happy music suggestion right about now.

Okay, back to the question of having a female officer doing the interview. Obviously that would be ideal if that's possible. Unfortunately... Well, I wish we had enough women in law enforcement to be able to have the assault survivor choose which gender she'd be most comfortable talking with. Having the survivor feel as comfortable as possible in what is very likely her worst or most uncomfortable day ever should be at the forefront of the investigator's concerns. Just being a man and being in the room will very likely make her uncomfortable. But unfortunately, being a man and having to do this job is just the reality of our workforce. So being cognizant of that is key, as it will, or at least it should, affect your demeanor, your tone of voice, and your proxemics, meaning the physical distance between the two of you.

But let me come back to the interview in just a moment. Having the courage to report a sexual assault to law enforcement really does mean something. And the officer that first encounters the survivor needs to recognize and appreciate that. There are more horror stories than not about how poorly law enforcement has historically handled these kinds of cases from the survivor's perspective, and many jurisdictions have taken very proactive steps in trying to improve not only the experience in initially reporting the assault and the immediate investigative steps that need to be taken, but also how to make sure the investigation doesn't fall through the cracks in the pursuit of justice. It is never a positive experience, but it's imperative that it isn't any more unpleasant than it need be.

And that starts with the first encounter with law enforcement. When you report a typical crime, your house being broken into, let's say, you'll relay what happened to the uniformed officer that comes to check the house and then eventually take the report. And then maybe a week or two later, you may get a call from a detective. And then you'll probably relay the story of the break in once more, adding additional details that have come to light since you first discovered the burglary and so on. But when we're talking about a survivor of sexual assault reporting what happened to law enforcement, we have to be mindful of how traumatic it can be emotionally and psychologically to go back to those moments and to only subject the survivor to it as few times as necessary.

So ideally, if you are the officer assigned to take the initial report of a sexual assault, meaning a uniformed officer, you should check in with the detectives prior to doing a full blown interview and see if having that detective trained in sexual assault investigations can do that initial interview for you. It reduces the number of times the survivor has to relive the experience. I worked sex crimes for nearly two years, and it was by far the most emotionally draining assignment ever had, to the point of burnout. So as a male investigator, I never conducted survivor interviews alone, primarily to make the survivor feel comfortable. If the investigator were the same gender as the survivor, having one investigator in the room would be fine, assuming the interview is recorded.

Where I work, we have access to a facility that is set up especially for sexual assault investigations. This is a medical facility where a specially trained nurse will conduct the necessary medical legal examination, such as collecting the necessary evidence samples, which can be rather unpleasant. And then it also has a room set up for conducting and recording interviews. But unlike a traditional interview room at a police station, this one's very comfy, like your grandma or nan's living room. Think overstuffed sofas and chairs and stuffed animals and that kind of stuff. Ours is also set up to do interviews with children, so for us, we also have a corner that has toys and a children's height table and chairs.

So when it comes to the interview itself, there are obviously going to be uncomfortable things that have to be asked, so it's important for the investigator to come across as non-judgemental, understanding, and caring as best as they can, which is not the side of cops that most people see out on the street, so there are definitely going to be some perception barriers present before we ever even step into the room. So hopefully that will give you some insight into what makes for a good and effective sex crimes investigator. This is no time for the lug headed SWAT guy to make a swaggered entrance into the room.

Lastly, your investigator is going to put all of those facts, the interviews, the evidence, and such into a report and forward it to the prosecutor's office, regardless of whether the investigator thinks what actually happened is different from what the survivor is saying. In sexual assault investigations, it is the prosecutor who decides whether the suspect should be criminally charged, not the detective. And as a detective, that's actually a gift, because it preserves the rapport between the survivor and the detective. If justice wasn't served, that's on the prosecutor ,because you did everything you could with the facts that you were dealt.

Thank you so much for listening this week. Remember to join the Facebook group, writersdetectivebureau.com/facebook will take you straight to where you need to be to hang out with me for the 100th episode. This show is powered by your questions. Send them to me by going to writersdetective.com/podcast. Thanks again for listening. Have a great week. Keep wearing those masks and write well.

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