#RiseAndSlay: Laura’s Mission To Leave the World Better Than She Found It

No matter what, rise. No matter how, slay the bad and replace it with good. That’s it. That’s the whole #RiseAndSlay mission.

Laura Pettler is known for setting milestones in the history of forensic science. Her ground-breaking work in staging behavior in homicide cases, death investigation methodology, and crime scene reconstruction has led to recognition as one of the top experts in the world. After publishing the third dissertation on staging in the world, “Doc” as she’s known to many published the first book in the world on staging Crime Scene Staging Dynamics in Homicide Cases, which included the publication of Pettler’s Victim-Centered Death Investigation Methodology (VCDIM) and Pettler’s Staging Trilogy. In 2017, she published The Murder Room: A Systematic, Scientific, Multidisciplinary, Victim-Centered Death Investigation method that expanded VCDIM. In 2021, she published and presented internationally Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy, the first taxonomy of its kind to classify staging behavior as a form of offender communicational behavior. And all of that is just for starters…

Dr. Pettler is a former Deputy Coroner, District Attorney’s Investigator, is the co-founder and Director of North Carolina’s first Crime Scene Reconstruction and Behavioral Analysis Program, was the head of the District Attorney’s Cold Case TASK FORCE, is a former member of the Richmond County Gang TASK FORCE, is the former Vice President and was a member of the Review Board Member of the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases, is a volunteer expert for the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute founded and directed by Sheryl McCollum, and is a private forensic consultant now in her 20th year.

Forensic criminology is the study of behavior that results in criminal behavior. It synthesizes the analysis of physical, behavioral, and sociological evidence for the purpose of understanding specific crimes like homicide so better systems can be invented to combat the problems. Within the scope of her work as a forensic criminologist, Dr. Pettler is an expert in crime scene analysis & forensic reconstruction of bloodstain evidence and bullet trajectory evidence, behavioral analysis of homicide offenders and their crimes, and the sociology of murder. Dr. Pettler has worked through adjudication and/or consulted on hundreds of hot and cold death cases over the two-decades now. And, since 2005, because of the hard work of LPA’s Elite Roundtable of Experts, its Army of allied Operatives nationwide, and Staff, Laura Pettler & Associates has become one of the top death investigation firms in the world, earning International Award Winning Status: Voted #1 Scientific, Multidisciplinary, Victim-Centered Death Investigation firm in the world in 2020 by CorpToday Magazine and in 2019 by Acquisition International.

LPA’s Roundtable of Experts: Brilliant, experienced, leaders in their fields…

Over and over again at LPA we hear, "We have spent thousands of dollars with a private investigator and gotten nowhere. Finally someone told us 'call LPA', we looked you up and we wish we would have found you 10 years ago."

Medical doctors are not all podiatrists. Mechanics are not all engine experts. Police, Detective, State Bureau Agents, and FBI Agents does not mean “homicide expert.” And private investigator does not mean “death investigator” or Expert in Unsolved/Unresolved Murder Investigator.

If you have something wrong with your heart, go see a cardiologist, not a podiatrist. If you have something wrong with your car, hire to a mechanic, not a chef. If you have a suspicious death, wrongful death, unsolved murder, or death ruled “suicide” and you suspect it is not or think those who ruled it suicide are wrong, hire LPA. We are an investigative professionals with decades of experience. We are not publicists, we are not hired guns. We do not attack others privately or publicly because it’s not good for any case we are trying to get turned around the other way. We do not “take your case to the media”. There is a time and place for appropriate media usage, there is a time and place to dispute discrepancies. There is a time when we see if the work of another can hold up to scrutiny, but at the beginning of the case is not that time.

For all the reasons above and for many more, LPA is respected by law enforcement, prosecutors, civil attorneys, defense attorneys, and surviving families of victims and decedents because we are discrete and professional. LPA is the place for the law enforcement agency, wrongful death civil lawyer, coroner, prosecutor, or family who is serious about keeping confidential information confidential, which finding answers for you.

LPA’s Roundtable of Experts is the only one of its kind in the business. For centuries, the age-old approach of the ‘roundtable’ has proven valid and reliable for solving even the world’s most complex problems; it’s obvious it’s the solution to solving the simplest to most complex murders as well...

Again, we believe in leadership by design. LPA takes the roundtable approach to solving cases with our seasoned homicide and cold case homicide prosecutors, forensic criminologists, a retired federal agent cold case operations expert, private investigators, death investigators, forensic pathologists, crime scene investigators and reconstructionists, and undercover operatives with consulting experts in forensic pathology, clinical psychology, suicidology, psychological autopsy, bloodstain pattern analysis, shooting incident reconstruction, ballistics, and more... 

Pettler’s Death Investigation Methods: Smart, proven, innovative, effective…

Dr. Pettler’s death investigation methods are used all over the world. Dr. Pettler travels extensively teaching and presenting her methods to investigators throughout the United States and abroad. LPA’s Roundtable Experts use Pettler’s Murder Room Death Investigation Methodology, which is a six stage death investigation system that includes victimology, suspectology, Pettler’s Staging Trilogy, Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy, Pettler’s Interview Matrix, Pettler’s Chronology System, Statement Analysis, Kaleidoscope Shooting and Bloodstain Reconstruction, Pettler’s Conflict>Resolution>Benefit Matrix, and other important components of a proper, thorough, ethical, accurate, and complete death investigation.

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 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.