Still though the little girls in Iowa give me pause... I mean so what if he moved the bodies..he may have done so because he had the opportunity and could hide them and revisit them, whereas the situation with the older girls did not allow for it.
I don't think moving the bodies is part of signature. So I still think the cases may be related. as we are looking for a serial killer and looking for patterns, opportunity and motive. The motive being sexual sadism, perversion and pedophillia. Also to look at a preferred environment for his crimes, rural, isolated, outside, low traffic, but enough so not to be noticed or to stand out yet still benefit from the cover of nature. Some may think the nature trail is the pattern and the victim only needs to be female.
wonder they had any suspects in the Iowa case that could fit?
mOO
Snipped and bolded to highlight this part because I'm always interested to read and understand more about people's theories. How did you come to the conclusion that this particular piece of information should be downgraded in importance when you were looking at patterns?
The US Justice Department published a guide for local jurisdictions called
Investigative Pathways for Serial Murder. The guide's stated purpose is to provide investigators with information about serial murder rooted in empirical findings that could help LE investigate and solve serial cases.
In Chapter 3 of this document, crime scene analysis is covered with respect to what's important for investigators to look at. Here's a list of crime scene variables that investigative are to prioritize:
1. Approach to the victim
2. Nature of the physical Interaction (are the victims lured/quiet coercion or was it a blitz attack, etc)
3. Nature of the sexual interaction (if it occurred...it did in over 70% of serial murder cases)
4. Choice of weapon
5. Manner of death
6. Method of body disposal
And out of all of these, #6, method of body disposal, was called "one of the central factors to case resolution."
The guide further goes on to describe the patterns that investigators should look at when trying to determine if cases are linked. Those things are: consistent M.O. (including body disposal method), common approaches to victims, similar physical/sexual interactions (this would be where signatures would be considered), common victimology, correlated forensic results, geographic locations, and temporal aspects (time of year, day of week, etc).
JMO but I don't think the public has nearly enough information about either the Delphi or Evansdale murders to know if there is linkage. We know things like "there was the word 'bridge' in both locations!" but that's not what's important. LE may have a good idea, though, based on things that have been kept relatively quiet like weapons used, nature of physical/sexual interactions, and, of course, details of body disposal.
