A little info on staging. Criminologists define three types of staging, IMO:
Primary staging - the overwhelming majority of "staged" cases, this is when the offender alters the scene or evidence for the purpose of misdirecting or thwarting the investigation. When criminologists talk about staging, this is primarily what they are referring to.
Secondary staging - When there is an intentional alteration or manipulation of the scene for the offender's pleasure or fulfilment. This is related to the psychological signature aspect. Some criminologists do not consider this a type of staging and refer to "posing" or "signatures" instead. These intentional alterations of the scene include a wide range of behaviors, pre- and post-mortem, and all are done strictly for the fulfillment (typically sexual) of the offender. There are additional three subsets of behavior here, any of these would be considered "signatures" -
1. depersonalization - when the offender attempts to obscure the victim's identity or engages in mutilation designed to divest the victim of sexual characteristics
2. Body posing - the victim is placed in particular positions, usually to shock/offend society or to humiliate and degrade the victim
3. Symbolic/ritualistic - these are the "odd" behaviors where investigators can attach no specific meaning but they clearly had a meaning to the offender. They may have to do with paraphilias or other individualized fantasies or symbols. They have a tendency to repeat if other crimes occur in series BUT they can evolve or be adapted to individual crime circumstances and do not necessarily stay exactly the same over time.
Tertiary staging - Occurs when someone, not out of criminal intent, alters the crime scene because they are seeking to spare the family or victim embarrassment. An example would be, coming upon a victim who died by autoerotic asphyxiation and re-dressing them to avoid bringing shame on the family or victim.
A 2012 study by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit reviewed 946 homicides for evidence of staging. The found evidence of primary staging (intent to mislead police) in 79 cases, or a little over 8% of cases. The primary methods used to stage the scene were, from most used to least used by offenders: arson, filing a false missing persons report, faking a burglary/robbery, accident, suicide, and finally, faking a sexual homicide by exposing the victim's genitals (staging a sexual homicide happened in exactly 1 case out of 946).
Final word - I hate that Daily Mail article from which the "staging" comment comes. It was not a direct quote by Ives, it was the author's interpretation of what he said. He has never mentioned staging in any other interviews; he has mentioned signatures. Signatures could include body posing. However, we have no confirmation of that.
All MOO
Since "signatures" seem such a critical element here in thinking these murders are the acts of a serial killer (even if his first killings), and I imagine signatures can be studied and faked, I wonder about the potential impact of recent movies and tv series which featured offenders and crimes involving signatures as well as (in the case of
Hannibal) a copycat staging his crimes to utilize the same signatures as had been present in other crimes.
Perpetrators who kill but want their motivations to be misunderstood might "copy" things they have seen on television or studied from following true crime in an effort to mislead investigators.
I'm thinking
True Detective Season 1, which ran in 2014 (with the odd symbolic tripods constructed out of sticks placed nearby victims, the posing of victims, and the antlers mounted on the victims' heads) as well as the
Hannibal tv series which ran from 2013-2015 (featured victims' bodies mounted on deer racks, a victim dressed and returned to her home and placed in her bed, unusual tools used to lacerate, excessive cutting and inserting various surgical instruments into a body, removal of eyeballs, posing, the creation of a totem pole from multiple bodies, cannibalizing victims, among other things). More recently, the
Mindhunter series (2017) covered the study of signatures by profilers and presented some examples related to certain offenders, although that series ran after the double homicides occurred in Delphi.
Once knowledge of these types of elements becomes widely spread, LE must scrutinize what is "real" signature vs. what is faked and that must be difficult to do, especially in real time as LE are investigating brutal murders. But, perpetrator(s) who want to avoid capture and accountability will use whatever tools they believe will help them do so so LE has to consider the possibility of faked signatures.
Originally, IIRC various LE officials mentioned 3 signatures at the Delphi Murder scene. More recently, I believe former Prosecutor Ives talked about 4-5 things you would "absolutely take a photograph of." When you start to talk about that many signatures, I start to wonder whether at least some of them are staged to look like something other than what the crimes really are.
This being a small, rural town that had never suffered such an unusual and shocking crime, I wonder whether a fairly intelligent perpetrator used such oddities with the intent to throw LE off the perpetrator(s) scent as well as increase the likelihood LE would increase their reliance on investigators unfamiliar with the area and its residents.
Normally, I would think those LE most local to a crime are also those most likely to have or to gain the local intelligence that will lead to locating those responsible - things like who is involved with who, what are common criminal activities and where do they typically occur, what types of associations might criminal elements have even loosely had with the victims or their family members, could something one of the girls or a family member have done - even if completely innocently or as part of their regular work - have somehow really infuriated some hothead who has serious anger management and entitled-to-have-his-own-way problems and would seek revenge.
But, once the crime starts looking like the work of a psychosexually motivated killer who brilliantly executes a double homicide in broad daylight within the vicinity of others at least close enough to perhaps hear something during, or spot and remember something before or after, and then to disappear without detection, it seems that attention to those local sources of intelligence may go on the back burner as the billboards go up across the west to find the traveling serial killer. After all, who and where is next makes finding this terrifying perpetrator caught in LG's camera's eye something of a priority.
It seems like LE was getting a lot of tips and they pursued some warrants early on, so maybe I'm wrong and the local intelligence was still being pursued as well as welcomed in. It seems to me memories and local's thoughts as to possible connections were most valuable early because memories, things thought a bit unusual at the time they occur, or perceived linkages disappear over time. So, it was to the perpetrator(s) favor if he could swamp tip lines with calls from all over the country or make the crime so monstrous that those close to him might say to themselves, "no way,… he's a jerk and he was on a bit of a tear about blah, blah, blah right about that time, but he's not a monster who could do THAT."
In the past couple of years, LE has said they believe the perpetrator(s) is or was local. They have been mixed on one vs two perpetrators. Some have said one perpetrator (and former prosecutor Ives recently repeated that as his belief), but some have been more equivocating and so I still haven't dismissed the possibility of two working together. LE have also said they were originally following one strategy but are now following another that the perpetrator(s) did not expect they would do. That makes me wonder whether they have, or had at that time, located one perpetrator, but didn’t yet have enough evidence against the other. That was almost two years ago and for reasons that are probably sound, they haven't shared what motivated the change in strategy.
I am just very concerned that LE may have been purposely led astray by the "signature" and shocking crime scene aspects and I'd welcome and appreciate your thoughts on the subject.
