Curiosity is a human trait defined as a desire to learn or know something. We all have it, just some of us are blessed or cursed to have it more than others. Everyone slows and cranes their neck driving by a car accident, just for a fleeting glance of the injured or the damage. Every newscast at a crime scene will show the draped bodies on stretchers leaving the residence. All feeding the dark curiosity in all of us. There are some people with heightened curiosities, outwardly “normal” in all appearances, but consumed by the desire to know more and having the ability to question. Many have warned us about having too much of that curiosity gene. The old proverb “curiosity killed the cat” is just such a warning to those that want to ask too many questions.

There have been amateur sleuths around for centuries, persons inquiring and digging into all sorts of things, always questioning what others took for granted. We have all had at one time experienced the “nosy neighbour”. Then along came the internet monster, a multi-headed dragon with the ability to access, share and distribute information at lightning speeds, and to make everyone in the world your neighbour.

It is also well established that the police have always sought help from the public, and asked for “everyone with any information” to call. Now at every criminal event the police media types besides seeking anyone with information, now ask for anyone to provide “dash cam video”. So the police solicit all forms of information from the outside, but once received, from that point on they don’t want to share, especially any investigational detail. So the question is, have we reached a stage where that dynamic between the public and the police needs to change, or at the very least be re-considered?

In an article in LEXIPOL by Ted Bremer, he points to the growth of the amateur sleuth networks and narrows it down to a couple of incidents which he sees as the point origin for that growth; the Boston Marathon bombing, and the murder of Gabby Petito case, both American cases. He explores how amateur sleuthing in those cases, now armed with the strength of the internet, reached uncontrollable levels, and in the end turned into what he called “digital vigilantism”, and thus in turn a problem for the the police. In the Marathon case, massive amounts of photos and videos during and after the bombing were being analyzed and shared on the web site Reddit. In the Petito case, the police further spurred the public inquisitiveness by giving access to the police body cam footage. Later, the Moab City Police Department were examined for their actions on a “miniscule” level, and in the end it led to the resignation of the police chief, the entire department coming under fire, and multiple civil lawsuits.

Clearly the dangers in getting amateur sleuths involved are obvious. There are a couple of other things that need to be considered and balance the scales of concern: the internet is here to stay and the tools of this computer age are unharnessed and getting increasingly more and more sophisticated. Secondly, peoples curiosity and the need to feed it is a driving force on many societal levels. Just go look at Netflix or Crave, or the multiples of podcasts. Everyone wants to be a cop in some form or rendition and just as importantly, they don’t need to obey the rules of evidence nor are they under any form of judicial constraint.

Bremer in his article talks about the case in Idaho where four students were murdered inside a rented campus residence in November 2022. In that case one single amateur sleuth group who got involved in the Idaho case, which formed in November 2022 and by December 28, 2022 had grown to a 137,000 members. There were 10,000 posts within 30 days not to mention thousands of sub-posts. Mountains of information, some relevant, most irrelevant, swirling around the ether. In that case, it led to problems for police investigators in terms of being able to monitor and judge the reactions that came from it. In the Idaho case, almost all the information turned out to be of little or no value, in fact it led to misidentifications of suspects.

That being said, as of 2022, there have been numerous cases where the amateurs solved the crime, sometimes when the police have ignored the file or have gone down different investigational paths. The Golden State killer case is a prime example– a case that was in the end solved by forensic genealogy and DNA. Barbara Rae-Venter was a 74 year old retired patent lawyer, who also happened to have a Phd in biology. Over many months that dragged into years, Venter, and some other volunteers searched the databases of genealogical sites such as GEDMatch, and Family Tree DNA to try and find a match for the killer’s DNA. They shared their information throughout with the police, who at times provided file evidence to help them in their search. A finding of a distant fourth cousin led to the identity of Joseph James DeAngelo. He was a former police officer who eventually would plead guilty to 12 murders and having raped over 50 others during a crime spree that began in 1974 and ended with his arrest in 2018. Without the work of those volunteer sleuths, that case likely would never have been solved. DeAngelo was 74 when arrested and may have gone to the grave taking any confessional evidence with him.

In the highly acclaimed documentary “Don’t F**K with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer”, released in 2019 on Netflix, Deanna Thompson, a data analyst for a casino in Las Vegas, and John Green in Los Angelas became obsessed with a YouTube video which showed someone, disturbingly and in graphic detail suffocating two kittens. Their persistence and obsessive work ethic led to the eventual incidental solving of the murder of a university student Jun Lin. He had been killed and dismembered by Luca Magnotta, a Canadian porn actor with a sadistic and disturbing bent. They managed to lead the police to the recovery of all the evidence in the case. (Magnotta has recently been in the news over being moved to a medium security facility in Canada).

Crystal Theobold was murdered by gang members in a case of mistaken identity. Her mother, Belinda Lane, posing on-line as someone else, managed to befriend members of the gang and learn the identity of the shooter and others that were involved. It ended on charges of 1st degree murder on the shooter, and charges against others in the gang.

There is digital media consultant Billy Jensen. Jensen uses geo-targeted ads on social media to generate potential witnesses; and now claims to have solved 10 murder cases.

Needless to say the list is now very long of cases where some of the better amateur sleuths , unhindered by the normal rules of evidence gathering, have honed their amateur abilities to a level that in many cases would be un-matched in most police investigational units. Of course, there are also many others who are uncontrolled in their frenzy, often putting forward unsubstantiated theories, or making false allegations on innocents. Their laptops and their phones are their only weapons and equally concerning also their only repositories of that evidence.

To date, the police organizations, say little, and as directed by their managers, share no investigational information. On bigger cases, they will sometimes assign persons to “monitor” the social media content. Often, the amateur sleuths are met by police attitudes bordering on arrogance and with smirks of derision. In this current time and age, in particular in our relations to the internet, that seems short-sighted. Somehow the police need to harness these sleuths, possibly bring them into the fold and maybe also in terms of sharing some information. In the previously mentioned Idaho case there were 137,000 participants, but only two administrators for the site. Would it be out of the realm of possibility to bring those administrators into the police fold, specifically for that case? There would need to be rules and regulations obviously in terms of direction and evidence gathering and retention but it could be done. Deanna Thompson, Billy Jensen, or Barbara Rae-Venter would fit and be an asset for any police investigational team.

Police investigations have to work within the constraints of a budget, and human resourcing issues. You will never be able to hire all the expertise internally, it will logically have to come from outside the police environment, even if it is on some form of contractual level. It would mean that the police need to climb down off the pedestal a bit and lose the us versus them attitude. Nobody should believe that they have somehow cornered perspective and expertise in terms of any level or type of investigation, no matter what area or field of inquiry. A dogged determination and an unbendable curiosity are invaluable and seemingly they are getting harder to find. The rules and roadblocks facing todays police officers are seemingly greater than they were any number of years ago, the police often burdened by over reaching rules and legal and managerial supervision. It has created a very noticeable and pronounced sense of futility amongst many investigators especially when trying to push cases through the system. Maybe a little contracted help from the “outsiders” would be both welcome and may in fact be needed.

Photo courtesy of Leiris202 via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved