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20 Homicide Stud. 3 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/homcst20 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Homicide Studies 2016, Vol. 20(l) 3-24 Getting Away W ith Murder: @2014 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: An Examii nation of Detected sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1088767914553099 Hom icides Staged as Suicides hsx.sagepub.com *SAGE Claire Ferguson' and Wayne Petherick2 Abstract Staged crime scenes involve an offender deliberately altering evidence to simulate events to mislead investigators. Despite likely occurring more often than reported in the literature due to success in offender deception, the exact frequency of staged crime scenes is unknown. In an attempt to bridge this gap, a legal database was searched for detected staged scenes. A total of 1 15 cases were examined, and this study reports on I 6 staged suicides that were examined through descriptive analysis. Findings indicate the frequent involvement of firearms, hanging, or asphyxia, and that offenders are usually known to victims, although not necessarily intimately. Keywords criminology, death investigation, staged crime scene, murder, suicide, physical evidence Introduction For centuries, lying about and manipulation of physical evidence has been used by offenders to escape culpability for criminal behavior, with evidence being altered to render the illusion that something else occurred. As a result, investigators charged with determining how a crime occurred and who is responsible have long tried to combat these efforts through investigative techniques and strategies. However, to date, these efforts have been largely ad hoc with unknown error rates. As such, it is still unknown what proportion of staged scenes are actually detected and how accurately. In one of the earliest scholarly discussions of crime scene staging, Hans Gross dis- cussed defects that indicate things have been done to present the scene as something it is not. Gross (1924) states that 'University of New England, Armidale, Australia 2Bond University, Robina, Australia Corresponding Author: Claire Ferguson, Criminology, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia. Email: cfergus4@une.edu.au

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