Murder Is Simple: It Is Conflict Resolution for the Offender

Click to watch Doc on Criminally Obsessed with Anne Emerson

What the Tepe Case Reminds Us About How Homicide Really Works

Murder is often portrayed as chaotic, impulsive, or incomprehensible. It is framed as evil, madness, or something so complex it defies understanding.

In reality, murder is simple.

Murder is conflict resolution for the offender.

That does not mean it is morally simple. It means it is behaviorally simple. The offender is faced with a conflict they cannot tolerate, cannot control, cannot escape, or cannot resolve through lawful or social means. Murder becomes their chosen solution.

The recent arrest in the Tepe case is a clear example of this principle at work.

Targeted Violence Is Not Random Violence

From the beginning, this case showed indicators of targeted violence. Targeted violence means the offender knew exactly who needed to be harmed to resolve the conflict they were experiencing. Remember TRIGGER>EMOTION>THOUGHT>BEHAVIOR.

Random violence is opportunistic. Targeted violence is personal.

The victims were not interchangeable. They were specific to the offender. That specificity matters because it tells us something critical about motive, offender decision making, and victim-offender relationship dynamics.

When violence is targeted, the offender is not acting out of chaos. They are acting out of perceived necessity.

Conflict Does Not Disappear. It Escalates.

One of the most common investigative errors is assuming that the absence of visible conflict means there is no conflict. In reality, unresolved conflict often goes underground. It becomes internalized, simmering, and increasingly dangerous. Conflict can take many forms:
• Loss of control
• Perceived rejection or humiliation
• Threats to identity, power, or status
• Financial disputes
• Custody or relationship dissolution
• Narrative collapse where the offender’s story about themselves no longer holds

When an offender lacks healthy conflict resolution skills, lacks emotional regulation, and lacks empathy for the victim, violence becomes a tool. Not an accident, especially not a staged one lol. Not a snap decision…A tool.

Why Victimology Comes First: LPA’s Policy—Victimology in the First 48

The fastest way to understand homicide is to start with the victim, not the weapon, not the crime scene. Victimology asks the most important question at the scene: Who was in conflict with this person That question immediately narrows the universe of possibilities. It forces investigators to look at relationships, power dynamics, history, and motive pathways rather than chasing hypotheticals. One way we advocate for investigators to get a firm handle on a case from the onset is by using Pettler’s Staging Trilogy helps investigators identify the potential for staging at a crime scene by asking three questions upon arrival: Who is in conflict with the victim? Who discovered the victim missing, injured, or dead? Who reported missing, injured or dead to to 911?

In the Tepe case, victimology pointed toward relational conflict. That is not hindsight, it was foresight because we use the Murder Room Method. It is pattern recognition. I now suspect the TRIGGER will emerge from the publicly released data: argument-conflict, custody, child support, rage, something…we don’t know yet. Regardless, intimate partner homicides and family annihilation cases follow consistent behavioral pathways. The victims and offenders change for me. Their scripts rarely do.

Murder Is a Decision, Not an Accident

Offenders do not wake up one morning and randomly decide to kill. The decision is preceded by:

• Escalating grievance

• Perceived loss of control

• Rigid thinking

• Emotional narrowing

• Dehumanization of the victim

• A belief that violence will “solve” the problem

From the offender’s perspective, murder restores control. It ends the conflict permanently. It silences the perceived threat. In this case I think it might have helped the suspect resolve his anger. That is why murder feels final to the offender, but also why it feels shocking to everyone else.

Why Methodology Matters

Methodology keeps investigators grounded in evidence rather than emotion. My friend Doug Young and I were talking this week. He is teaching a class at in VA this week that forces investigators to justify and explain their methodology. Many investigators don’t use a method at all. And here’s the thing, when investigations focus only on physical evidence, behavioral evidence can be overlooked. When investigations focus only on timelines, motive can get blurred. When investigators chase theories instead of patterns, cases stall and often go cold right before their eyes.

A victim centered, behaviorally grounded methodology allows investigators to:

• Identify conflict early

• Recognize targeted violence

• Narrow suspect pools faster

• Build probable cause sooner

This is not about shortcuts. It is about precision. A firearm did not walk to the Tepe’s house and shoot them…a person did. Behavior did. Without behavior you don’t have murder.

Accountability Without Celebration

An arrest is not a victory. It is a step toward accountability. The purpose of homicide analysis is not prediction for its own sake. It is truth seeking. It is justice. Answers for families. It is honoring victims by understanding what happened to them accurately and ethically. Monique and Spencer Tepe mattered long before their names appeared in headlines. They are not symbols of people’s worst nightmares getting murdered in the middle of the night. They were people.

The Takeaway

Murder is not mysterious. It is most often not random. It is not unknowable. Murder is conflict resolution for the offender, most of the time. When investigators understand that, they stop asking the wrong questions. They stop chasing white noise. They start seeing patterns where others see chaos. And when a method is sound, truth does not require hindsight.

And remember, every trail leads to the truth. Ride on!