Solving Murders Over Lunch

Once a month, a Victorian-era private dining room in downtown Philly becomes a hotbed of crime--a course of murder served cold, right after dessert.

More than twenty years ago, three unlikely friends--a cop (who now runs a PI agency), a sculptor with a gift for reconstructing the faces of the long-dead, and a criminal psychologist--started meeting for lunch to brainstorm solutions to cold crimes. They invited a few friends--detectives, forensics experts, criminologists--and asked law enforcement agents to bring this de facto crimefighters' think tank their cold case files.

Today, the Vidocq Society, named for a 19th Century French detective who pioneered the use of fingerprinting and ballistics as evidence, brings together crime experts from all over the world every month to consider unsolved murder cases. And they've solved quite a few, among them a murder in a small Pennsylvania town that confounded investigators: a woman had been wrapped in cellophane and stabbed brutallly inside a local restaurant, presumably to rob the place. But criminal psychologist Richard Walters saw through the staged burglary.

"What robbery suspect would stab someone so viciously that the knife enters the tile floor and wrap the head in cellophane?" says Walters, in an interview with NPR's Fresh Air. "A robber is simply not going to do that. It's not efficient." He pointed investigators towards an angry ex boyfriend, who is now serving a life sentence for murder.

Journalist Michael Capuzzo profiles the Vidocq Society in his new book, The Murder Room. To read an excerpt and hear an interview with the author and with society co-founder and crime psychologist Richard Walters, visit the Fresh Air archive.

You can also read a feature story on the Vidocq Society in The UK Telegraph here.

San Francisco PD Outsources Police Work to Civilian Investigators

Today, NPR's Morning Edition host interviewed San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon about a pilot program the SFPD is launching which will train civilian investigators to respond to low-level crimes not in progress, such as burglaries and auto thefts.

Chief Gascon hopes that letting non-police investigators do some of the legwork on these non-violent crimes will speed the process of responding to and collecting evidence at lower-priority crime scenes, will take some of the pressure off dwindling city funds for law enforcement, and will free up police officers to respond to more urgent calls and to investigate violent and other serious crimes, such as gang-related activity.

"So at the end of the day, you end up with a better preliminary investigation with a collection of evidence," says Gascon, who admits that busy officers often take hours to respond to burglary and theft calls. "...Civilians are just as able to be trained to have a great level of skills and handle evidence in court as well as sworn." (courtesy of NPR)

Chief Gascon hopes the program will be up and running by early next year.

Click here to read a transcript or to hear the full audio feature.

For an AP brief on this topic from the New York Times, go here.