Principles of Criminal Investigation Term Paper

Principles of Criminal Investigation - Term Paper Example However, lack of advanced forensic technology in the 1980s can be regarded as one of the reasons it took too long to link someone with the Green River killings. In 1982, authorities found five murdered women in the Green River. One unique thing about the murders is that all the killings had happened through strangling and the murdered women practiced prostitution. The discovery of the bodies alerted the locals on a possibility of having a serial killer targeting prostitutes. The area where the murdered bodies were discovered had Sheriff Officers and everyone had optimism that the murders would be resolved as soon as possible. Contrary to locals’ expectations, more bodies were discovered in and around the Green River. The bodies mostly include those of teenage women found naked and without any possession (Morehead, 2012). The police department remained to collect skeletons of unknown women without any trace of the murderer. Over a period of two years (1982-84), the police department listed 49 murder victims and described them victims of the Green River Killer. This could be later followed by the formation of the Green River Task Force that had the mandate of looking into the increased serial killings. The task force comprised of detectives from police departments across the United States. The task force conducted investigations on the murders and obtained a lot of evidence from hundreds of suspects. Unfortunately, none of the evidence gave any definitive evidence that could link anyone to the serial killing (Morehead, 2012). The continued delays in getting hold of the serial killer added budget constraints on the task force, which led to reduction of personnel within the task force. By 1992, only one detective had remained to deal with the Green River case (Reichert, 2005). According to Reichert (2005), in the 1980s, forensic technology was less advanced, which posed numerous challenges during the collection of evidence. In such cases,