Murder & Criminology

Murder and criminology

“One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.”
SIR CHARLES CHAPLIN

When investigating a murder case, you must have at least one of the following to find the culprit:

1. a (spontaneous) confession;
2. a witness (direct/de relato);
3. a material proof (depending on the categories of law).

To identify witnesses and evidence, investigators follow a path that includes the study of the characteristics of the perpetrator (criminal profiling), the victim (victimology) and the analysis of the crime scene. Particular attention must be paid to the study of the victims, who can provide a lot of useful information to understand the murderer's psychology.

The majority of the murders are committed due to a motive that we can define as "trivial" (jealousy, revenge, economic interest). In these cases, the motive leaps "immediately to the eye" of the investigator and directs him in the investigation towards a suspect who has some kind of relationship with the victim. Instead, in a serial murder case, we are faced with a type of motivation internal to the subject that kills, a psychological pleasure that, at least in the first phase, does not translate into evident material traces to be "found" on the crime scene.