Murder Accountability Project
Abbreviation | MAP |
---|---|
Formation | May 31, 2015 |
Type | Nonprofit organization |
Purpose | To improve the accounting of unsolved homicides, assist law enforcement in clearing the nation's cold-case backlog and educate the public about the growing problem of unsolved murder. |
Headquarters | Alexandria, Virginia |
Chairman | Thomas K. Hargrove |
Vice Chair | William Hagmaier |
Treasurer | Holly Lang |
Secretary | Enzo Yaksic |
Michael Arntfield, Elizabeth Goeckel, Bruce E. Harry, David Icove and Isaac Wolf | |
Key people | Thomas R. Burke, JD |
Staff | All volunteer |
Website | www |
Murder Accountability Project (MAP) is a nonprofit organization which disseminates information about homicides, especially unsolved killings and serial murders committed in the United States. MAP was established in 2015 by a group of retired detectives, investigative journalists, homicide scholars, and a forensic psychiatrist.[1]
MAP has assembled records on most criminal fatalities, including case-level details on many thousands of homicides that local police failed to report to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s voluntary Uniform Crime Report program.[2] At its website, the group also provides access to an interactive computer algorithm that has identified homicides committed by known serial killers and suspicious clusters of murders that might contain serial killings.[3]
MAP is an outgrowth of a 2010 national reporting project led by
Hargrove developed an algorithm that organizes homicide reports into groups based on the victims’ gender, geographic location, and means of death. The algorithm searches for murder clusters with extremely low clearance rates. The algorithm’s identification of 15 unsolved strangulations in Gary, Indiana, was validated with the October 18, 2014, arrest of Darren Deon Vann by the Hammond Police Department. Vann confessed to multiple homicides and took police to abandoned properties in Gary, where the bodies of six previously unknown female victims were recovered.[5][6]
MAP personnel warned police and local journalists about larger clusters of suspicious female homicides committed in Cleveland and Chicago. The
MAP filed a
The MAP Board of Directors includes: William Hagmaier, a retired FBI special agent and former chief of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Enzo Yaksic, director of the Northeastern University Atypical Homicide Research Group, and Michael Arntfield, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, where he runs a cold-case society.[1]
References
- ^ ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ "Why Are American Cops So Bad at Catching Killers?". The Marshall Project. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
- ^ "Serial Killers Should Fear This Algorithm". Bloomberg.com. 2017-02-08. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ "Investigative Reporters and Editors | 2011 Philip Meyer Winners". IRE. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ Ed Payne; Eliott McLaughlin. "Police: Indiana man could be serial killer". CNN. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ "Can an Algorithm Catch a Serial Killer? - Freethink". www.freethinkmedia.com. Retrieved 2018-03-11. [dead link]
- ^ "Could an algorithm help detect serial killers in Cleveland? (map, graphic)". cleveland.com. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ "Tracking Cleveland's killers: Where they could be hiding". WKYC. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ "Is there a serial killer roaming the streets of Chicago?". VICE News. Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ Bilyk, Jonathan. "Lawsuit vs Illinois State Police demands state homicide, killings data not reported to FBI since 1994". Retrieved 2018-03-11.
- ^ Ward, Joe (December 14, 2016). "Illinois Is Last In The Nation In Catching Killers, Study Finds". DNAinfo. Archived from the original on March 12, 2018. Retrieved March 11, 2018.