Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Expert gives ideas on rapist's location
BY SHEILA McLAUGHLIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A Canadian police officer called in to help in a serial rape investigation left Cincinnati on Monday, warning detectives that his methods alone can't solve the local crimes.
Still, his expertise in geographic profiling is seen as another tool that might help a multiagency task force pinpoint where the rapist lives and where he might strike next.
If anything, Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen said, Vancouver Detective D. Kim Rossmo's three-day visit helped generate fresh ideas in a 2-year-old investigation that, so far, is without a suspect.
“When he made suggestions, a lot of heads were shaking in the affirmative,” Mr. Allen said of Detective Rossmo's first meeting with task force members on Saturday. “He was definitely able to give them some good ideas.”
In two to three weeks, Detective Rossmo — who has aided in 1,700 serial crime investigations on four continents — is expected to submit a written report on his findings to the task force.
Information culled from crime reports, interviews with local detectives, aerial and close-up views of the five crime scenes and surrounding neighborhoods, and other factors will be plugged into a computer software program to come up with locations that could link the suspect and the crimes.
The profiling method — known to target within a half-square-mile where the suspect might live — is meant to help detectives narrow their investigation to a particular geographic area, Detective Rossmo told The Cincinnati Enquirer before arriving here Friday.
“Geographic profiling doesn't solve crimes,” he said. “It's just a support technique and investigators can use it to process large volumes of information.”
Mr. Allen said Detective Rossmo told task force members Monday what he thought his final report might say. However, Mr. Allen declined to give details, citing the ongoing investigation.
Police, who already have a psychological profile of the suspect from the FBI, renewed their call for caution last week because the first assaults of the past two years began in mid-April.
The five rapes, linked to the same suspect through DNA evidence, started in 1998 in the suburban Warren County community of Mason, with attacks on 12- and 14-year-old girls and a 27-year-old woman in the same neighborhood.
The investigation spread to Hamilton County after a 6-year-old girl was assaulted July 25 last year in Montgomery, and a 10-year-old girl was attacked Oct. 4 in Colerain Township.
The rape suspect, who wears a ski mask and has a red mustache and blue eyes, typically breaks into the houses through unlocked doors or windows. Authorities said he has carried the children outside before sexually assaulting them.
Police also are trying to determine if attempted rapes in Blue Ash, Sharonville and Springdale are linked to the same suspect.
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