Staging

One of the things most exciting about Dr. Pettler’s second edition of Crime Scene Staging Dynamics in Homicide Cases is the development of a new Staging Taxonomy. This piece is in the works, so I cannot talk about it much yet, but there are a few things we know for sure.

Visual Staging

Crime scene staging is a type of visual staging. Crime scene staging is a deliberate, purposeful act by an offender to manipulate elements of the crime to misdirect the investigation to avoid being detected (Pettler, 2016).  Most people are aware of this type of visual staging that usually involves adding, subtracting, or destroying physical evidence at the crime scene.

Linguistic Staging

Another type of staging we now call Linguistic staging includes Verbal Staging and Written Staging. Both are used by the offender to misdirect the investigation away from them with the use of words, either spoken or written. One could argue these staging behaviors are on the rise and it is important for investigators and the general public to become more crime scene staging aware.

 Oral Staging

In addition to manipulating the physical evidence, Dr. Pettler’s empirical research has shown that it is common for offenders to orally stage or lie to investigators to support their staging of the crime scene and might be the most common type of staging there is. A frequent example of verbal staging is a staged or guilty knowledge 911 call. This is when an offender/suspect calls 911 to report a crime, in which the caller is aware of the events of the crime but attempts to misdirect the dispatcher and law enforcement by telling their own story of events of how the crime occurred. The concocted stories often attempt to include details that match the physical evidence at the scene. This may take place when the offender attempts to turn a murder scene in which they are responsible for, and stage the death scene, to be the work of an outside intruder, suicide, accident, or natural death. What are some of the signs of a staged 911 call? From what I have found “Fake” 911 calls usually begin with an almost immediate blurt out of what happened. The offender has the need to their narrative of events told to misdirect the investigation away from what really happened. Things like “We have a kidnapping!”, or “I just got home and someone shot my husband in the head!”, or even “Please hurry my wife fell asleep in the bathtub.”, are some examples of phrases you may hear by someone trying to misdirect the investigation on a 911 call.  Another clue may be, is if the caller, is excessively out of breath, and acting hysterical to the point they are nearly unintelligible. This can be a manifestation of their imagination of how they believe someone would act in a legitimate situation. In a true victim 911 call you usually hear the caller specifically ask for help for the victim they are calling for. From what I have found, they tend to be remarkably calm, given the circumstances.  They speak clearly, and are sound in the information they provide to the operator.  All investigators should attempt to listen and analyze the 911 call before they arrive at the crime scene. It will provide a baseline for comparison at the scene and later for statement analysis.

Other types of oral staging include statements made to family and friends. At LPA, we call this prescriptive story telling. Offenders may tell their family different things than they have told the investigators. All statements made by a suspect are extremely important to an investigation, especially in domestic cases where the suspect and victim live in the same quarters. This is because physical evidence in intimicides* can be undervalued or deemed irrelevant by the defense because of the close quarters in which the suspect and victim live. This makes behavioral and circumstantial evidence paramount in these type of cases.

*Intimicide is a term coined by Dr. Laura Pettler, which defines the type of homicide that encompasses intimate partner homicide.

Written

The other form of linguistic staging is written staging. This when someone attempts to misdirect the investigation by leaving a note, letter, or some other type of written communication at a crime scene, or interjects one later into the investigation. Texts, emails, social media posts, journals, and diaries are all ways offenders stage in written format the events of a crime to meet their needs. Case in point, a husband brought his wife’s journal to work and used an overhead projector to trace her handwriting onto a carefully crafted suicide note. The husband went home, killed his wife, then offered up the faked note to police as proof his wife was suicidal and had killed herself. In another, one man killed another man that knew he had murdered their friend and was going to turn him into the police. Before he could do that though, he killed him and planted a fake suicide note in his pocket. The note described how he had taken his own life out of guilt of killing their friend in an accident. Talk about, Killing Two Birds with One Stone, or in this case, Killing Two Friends with One Note. These examples highlight the growing problem of offenders using elaborate ruses to stage a homicide as a suicide. Written staging can be as simple as a few words written on a crumpled piece of paper, or even one word written in blood at the crime scene. In the latter, was the case of an obsessed stalker who confronted a woman inside her home and when she rejected him, he bludgeoned her to death and left her in a pool of blood. Before he left, he used her blood to scribble the name of the woman’s boyfriend on the wall next to her dead body. Making it seem as if the woman’s last act was her writing the name of her killer on the wall right before she died.  Bogus journal entries made by a suspect in their own journal, are samples of written staging to be “discovered” in the subsequent investigation after the crime has occurred.  For example, if the suspect’s journal has an entry on the day of the murder describing how much fun they had at a certain event during the time of the murder, this may give them an air-tight alibi would it not? Sometimes offenders will send an anonymous letter/note to law enforcement or media outlet during the investigation. This tactic is usually one of purposeful misdirection in an attempt to change the course of the investigation and offer up a red herring to the police.

I believe crime scene staging of all types is on the rise. Elevating the need for crime scene staging awareness and education. You can join forensic criminologist, Dr. Laura Pettler in her 2021 Webinar Series to learn more.