LPA’s Roundtable of Experts

Brilliant. Experienced. Respected.

At LPA, we often hear the same story:
“We spent thousands with a private investigator and got nowhere. Finally someone told us to call LPA. We wish we had found you 10 years ago.”

Why? Because not all investigators are created equal.

  • A medical doctor isn’t always a cardiologist.

  • A mechanic isn’t always an engine specialist.

  • A police officer, detective, or even an FBI agent isn’t automatically a homicide expert.

  • And a private investigator is not necessarily a death investigator.

If your loved one’s death is suspicious, ruled suicide but you believe otherwise, unresolved, or part of a wrongful death case — you need experts in death investigation. That’s LPA.

We don’t serve papers. We don’t chase stolen cars. We don’t sensationalize cases in the media.
What we do is conduct ethical, scientific, multidisciplinary investigations — trusted by law enforcement, attorneys, and families who want answers.

Why the Roundtable Approach Works

For centuries, the “roundtable” model has been used to solve the world’s most complex problems. LPA applies the same approach to death investigation.

Our Roundtable of Experts brings together seasoned professionals across every critical discipline, including:

  • Homicide and cold case prosecutors

  • Forensic criminologists

  • Retired federal agents specializing in cold cases

  • Death investigators and forensic pathologists

  • Crime scene investigators and reconstructionists

  • Undercover operatives

  • Consulting experts in psychology, suicidology, bloodstain analysis, shooting reconstruction, ballistics, and more

This unique model makes LPA the only private death investigations firm of its kind. Every case benefits from the combined knowledge and experience of a multidisciplinary team working in unison.

Pettler’s Proven Methods

LPA’s work is built on the innovative methods of Dr. Laura Pettler, internationally recognized forensic criminologist and creator of the Murder Room Death Investigation Methodology.

Dr. Pettler’s methods are taught and used worldwide, and form the foundation of LPA’s approach. The six-stage system includes:

  • Victimology & Suspectology

  • Pettler’s Staging Trilogy & Staging Taxonomy

  • Interview Matrix & Statement Analysis

  • Chronology System

  • Kaleidoscope Shooting & Bloodstain Reconstruction

  • Conflict → Resolution → Benefit Matrix

These tools allow LPA to conduct thorough, ethical, and scientifically accurate death investigations — providing clarity, accountability, and answers where others fall short.

 

The Kaleidoscope System Shooting & Bloodstain Reconstruction System

Dr. Pettler’s Kaleidoscope Reconstruction System for bullet path and bloodstain trajectory reconstruction is the industry leader worldwide. There is literally nothing else like Kaleidoscope in the world. Kaleidoscope is the #1 go-to kit for CSIs and detectives everywhere. And LPA’s Kaleidoscope Reconstruction SUPER Store is the only crime scene reconstruction store in the world featuring

  • 3 Shooting Recon Kits

  • 2 Bloodstain Recon Kits

  • 1 Combo Shooting and Bloodstain Recon Kit

  • 11 Variations of Tubular Dowels

  • 65 Variations of Fiberglass Dowels

Kaleidoscope is the most versatile and comprehensive shooting and bloodstain reconstruction giving users the ability to manually reconstruct scenes economically and efficiently.Laura Pettler & Associates is the only manufacturer in the world of Laura’s invention, The Kaleidoscope Reconstruction System, the most comprehensive and versatile bullet path trajectory and impact spatter bloodstain reconstruction system in the world. Stemming from a 2008 homicide in Caroleen, NC, Laura and two colleagues developed what was first known as Tubular Dowel Crime Scene Reconstruction, which Laura reinvented in 2013 and again in 2017 that is part of her Kaleidoscope System today carried by 11 forensic product distributors who sell it in more than 30 countries.

 

Crime scene photo: Timothy White position using a forensic mannequin. Property of Laura Pettler.

History of Kaleido: It all started when…

In October 2008, when Dr. Laura was working with a North Carolina Sheriff’s Office to reconstruct the murder of a man named Timothy White. Mr. White was shot in the head and twice in the back of his left hip and left leg. The district attorney asked which shot was first, second, and third. The sequence of shots was the difference between charging First Degree Murder and seeking the death penalty versus Second Degree Murder.

Back then, Laura purchased fiberglass driveway markers and wood dowels from home improvement stores, spray painted them various colors, and taped string to their ends to demonstrate bullet paths. She used lasers to show trajectories, but without the ability to shoot lasers through the dowels, often she ran into trouble. For bloodstain reconstructions, she ran into similar challenges: She also used a floor lamp stand, tape, and string to reconstruct blood in flight of bloodstain distributions. Both of these methods led to droopy strings, they were primitive, and she knew she needed to invent something new.

We use Pettler’s Kaleidoscope System and other innovative technology to reconstruct your case.

 

Tubular Dowel Crime Scene Reconstruction

The first thing Laura knew needed improvement were the dowel rods for bullet path reconstruction. Spray painting wooden rods was just not cutting it. Laura wanted to shoot a laser through a dowel rod, but no dowels existed in the world of forensic science with that capability. Laura sought out a hollow dowel that would replace the solid ones. After experimenting by shooting a laser through a McDonald’s straw, Laura knew clear, hollow, dowels were the future of laser reconstruction.

With the help of so many outstanding contributors along the way, Laura launched the first “Tubular Dowel Crime Scene Reconstruction Kit” in Tampa, Florida at the 2009 International Forensics Conference (The IAI). In 2013, Laura reimagined tubular dowel crime scene reconstruction by taking her original system even further by inventing what the world knows today as Dr. Pettler’s Kaleidoscope Laser Reconstruction System.


 

Kaleidoscope 2.0

In August 2022, again at the International Forensics Conference (The IAI), this time in Omaha, Nebraska, Dr. Laura and long-time colleague, Douglas Young, Thorton Police Department Senior Criminalist and 2020-2021 President of the Association for Crime Scene Reconstruction launched the newly remodeled Kaleidoscope System. The first upgrade since 2017, Dr. Laura and Doug’s presentation of the kits met with resounding success.

The Murder Room

TMR Death Investigation Method Boasts 98% Solvability Rate. Dr. Pettler’s life is dedicated to leaving the world better than she found it, so she spends her time developing systems to that make solving and clearing death cases easier. Dr. Pettler specializes in staged murders: murders made to look like suicides, made to look like accidents, naturals, or murders. Her area of expertise is focused in intimate partner and domestic violence hot and cold homicide cases, which in some cases extends to missing persons, serial homicide, and sexual homicide as well. Many of the cases she’s worked have been serial homicide related. Laura has invented, uses, and teaches scientific mixed-method research-based death investigation methodologies like Pettler’s Crime Scene Staging Trilogy method, Pettler’s Victim-Centered Death Investigation Methodology, and Pettler’s The Murder Room method to law enforcement and related professionals in India, Europe, Africa, The Bahamas, Central America, and throughout the United States. Pettler’s methods are robust with built in metrics within metrics to get closer to the most plausible manner of death, crime scene staging indicators, and more.

The Murder Room: Decedent-Centered Death Investigation Methodology is an empirical, multidisciplinary, quantitative, qualitative, victim-centered death investigation methodology that at the end scientifically determines the accurate manner of death, staged or not staged crime scene, probable cause if any, trial strategy, and more. This method is excellent for cold cases, missing persons, wrongful death, post-conviction investigation, and more. Versions for

  • Field Investigators

  • Cold Case Investigators

  • Case Reviewers

  • Staged Crime Scenes

Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy

Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy is the world’s first staging taxonomy that explores staging behaviors in death cases as a form of communication categorizing each behavior under one of three clusters of behaviors: Linguistic, Visual, or Non-Verbal. The taxonomy is a hierarchal arrangement of interrelated behaviors aimed at helping investigators organize death investigations for staged cases to ensure they are not missing anything and that everything discovered in the investigation is mappable, trackable, and measurable. Dr. Pettler debuted her new taxonomy in March 2021 at the LPA International Forensics Institute in her 2021 Webinar Series and has since presented in internationally to the scientific community. Publication is pending in her upcoming second edition of Crime Scene Staging Dynamics in Homicide Cases.

  • First to develop a four-prong theory on Crime Scene Behaviors of Crime Scene Stagers

 

Pettler’s Research-Based Forensic Victimology

Research-Based Forensic Victimology is the analytical study of victim information using a modified version of the qualitative research method triangulation grounded by the two ethical constructs of empirical research, which are validity and reliability. In empirical research, validity means the study's ability to answer the research question(s) and reliability means the ability to apply the study's results to the population for which it was designed.  Analyzing all available information about a victim during the course of an investigation is critical to investigatory success. The author’s concept of research-based forensic victimology essentially implies the two of fundamental cornerstones of empirical research; validity and reliability should anchor victimological study. From a research perspective, validity generally means that the system design or method of which research is conducted is sound. On the other hand, reliability, from a research perspective generally means that the systematic design or instrument used to measure the variable produces consistent results applicable beyond the study’s sample to a broad population. The concepts of validity and reliability are by far a broader topic, but for the purpose of this discussion about research-based forensic victimology, validity is the structural soundness of the information gathering system and reliability is the applicable soundness of the information in part and as a whole. Because resources are scare in American law enforcement today, it is fair to say that it is most always impossible to validate every piece of information gathered during the course of victimology Recognizing this obstacle as real and reasonable is imperative to determining the allocation of resources towards identifying the most useful and verifiable information.

 

Pettler’s Modified Triangulation

Pettler's Research-Based Forensic Victimology is built on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as the scaffolding or theoretical framework for collection instrument design and collecting raw data. Maslow argued that humans beings have five levels of needs: (a) physical, (b) safety and security, (c) love and belonging, (d) esteem, and (e) self-actualization. Plugging victimological information into one of these five categories helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of the victim's life towards identifying key pieces of evidence for determining how the victim became a victim of one of the five manners of death: natural, accidental, suicide, homicide, or undetermined. Modified Triangulation (MT) for Research-Based Forensic Suspectology is an isosceles triangle that can be drawn in many different ways. MT helps us categorize subject information by its ability to be considered for a potential or pending legal cause of action at the sole discretion of a licensed attorney. Results of MT are places in one of three categories: (a) empirical, (b) quasi-empirical, (c) non-empirical.

  • Empirical evidence about the decedent (point 1) that for legal purposes is proven, supported, and substantiated by at least one or more key pieces of valid (point 2) or reliable (point 3) case-related data 

  • Quasi-Empirical evidence is information about the decedent (point 1) that for legal purposes is only partially proven, supported, and/or substantiated by a key piece of valid (point 2) or reliable (point 3) case-related data 

  • Non-Empirical evidence is information about the decedent (point 1) that for legal purposes is unproven, supported, and/or substantiated by case-related data

To use MT, we need three pieces of information:

  1. Point 1 is the item in question

  2. Point 2 verifies its Validity

  3. Point 3 verifies its Reliability

Pettler’s Chronology System

Petter’s Chronology System - Pettler’s Chronology System organizes and identifies relevant milestones to minute details of ante, peri, and postmortem events from macro to micro then micro to macro across horizontal planes that help investigators find gaps in sequences relevant to proving their case.

 

Pettler’s Conflict>Resolution> Benefit Matrix

Preceding conflict has been validated as a contributor to the murder of the victim in 100% of staged murder cases. Below is Pettler's Conflict-Resolution-Benefit Matrix that synthesizes preceding decedent-subject conflict, conflict resolution, and benefit from the death of the victim. In many staged murder cases, the preceding conflict will be reflected in the death scene and resolved by how the subject benefits from the death of the decedent.

 

Pettler’s Staging Trilogy

Pettler’s Staging Trilogy is LPA’s recommended first step for investigators arriving to a death scene. Based on published empirical staging research results, preceding conflict is present in 100% of staged murder cases. Secondly, most often stagers “discover their victims” injured, dead, or missing. Third, stagers most often call 911 to report finding their victims injured, dead, or missing, even though they know all along they killed their victims themselves. Pettler’s Staging Trilogy does not solve your case by confirming your case is staged. It is a triage step every investigator should ask when they get to the scene. “Who is in conflict with this victim/decedent?” “Who discovered the victim/decedent?” and “Who called 911 and what did the caller report?”

Terms & Concepts

  • Genoenvirosocioculturalism - the confluence of sociological variables including the structure and function of society, cultural variables including traditions, beliefs, religion, customs, and achievements; and environmental variables including the geographical area of which an individual lives and operates on the biological drives, personality, cognition, emotionality, and behavior pursuant to the interrelationship between the victim and the offender that produces a reflection of the synthesized whole in the pre-crime behaviors, in the crime scene, and in the wound patterns of both the victim and offender, and in the post-crime behaviors of the offender.

  • Intimicide - The killing of a former, current, or temporary intimate partner or a member of the intimate partner’s familial or social circle by another former, current, or temporary intimate partner. Intimicide includes the murders of former or current boyfriends, girlfriends or temporary sexual partners; husbands, wives, same sex domestic partners, and the friends and family of intimate partner violence victims who are murdered because they provided shelter and/or support for intimate partner violence victims. Intimicide includes the murders between individuals who just met and became sexually intimate, like for example two people who met at a bar, left together, and then one partner kills the other partner during the encounter. Intimicide also includes individuals who were dating only briefly at the time of the murder of one by another, or intimate partners who were originally strangers, but entered into a regular sex-only intimate relationship or an extra-marital affair. The definition of intimicide can also be extended to include intimate partners who solicit or conspire to have their intimate partners murdered, because without the initiation and whatever compensation might be agreed upon, the actual hired hit man most often would never even know the victim, ever target, and especially not murder the victim without prompting by the intimate partner wanting his or her partner dead. However, intimicide is not:

    • The murder of a victim by a serial killer

    • The murder of a victim engaged in prostitution killed by a patron

    • The murder of a victim by a stranger during the commission of non-consensual sexual act, such as rape (i.e., sexual homicide/rape-murder)

  • Cyberstaging - predatory individuals who pose as psuedovictims. Cyberstagers go to great lengths to weaponize social media to fake illness, accident, natural disaster, violent crime, property crime, hate crimes, cybercrime, other losses, and other problems by fabricating high-drama repeated online emotionally-charged, specifically-designed anecdotal exaggerations, such as hashtags, posts, shares, comments of photos, videos, language, and other content saturated with inaccurate and misleading and/or inflammatory rhetoric, including the constant despair over the permanence of their dire state to manipulate their audiences into believing there is actually a crisis. Cyberstagers prey upon the altruism of others for the purpose of personal gain. Cyberstagers may also solicit sympathy to gain power and control over others, so together they attack the cyberstager’s targets, which enables the cyberstager to not only abuse their targets themselves, but enables them to arrange for others to abuse their targets by proxy.