Clearing Cases

 By Thomas Kies

While doing research for my new book, I came across some numbers that were troublesome.  So rather than keep them to myself, I’ll share them with you.

I have a theory that people love to read mysteries and thrillers because there’s a satisfying ending.  Justice is served, the bad guy is caught and punished.  I think we love that because in real life things don’t necessarily end up being tied up quite so neatly.

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report data and data from the Murder Accountability Project, in the late 1960s and 1970s, police solved about seven out of every ten murders.  In 2020, they only cleared about half. 

That means fifty percent of all murders in the US went unsolved. According to a piece in the Washington Post, that’s 26,000 unsolved homicides over a ten-year period.

According to a CBS News Investigation, a review of FBI statistics says that the murder clearance rate has fallen to its lowest level in more than half a century. Police are far less likely to solve a murder when the victim is Black or Hispanic. In 2020, the murders of White victims were about 30% more likely to be solved than in cases with Hispanic victims, and about 50% more than when the victims were Black, the data show.  

Part of the problem, according to the CBS Investigation, is the breakdown in trust between communities and the police.  That makes it much more difficult to receive tips or help from witnesses.  

Another theory, according to the Marshall Project, a journalism non-profit organization, is that the methods to clear a crime…that is to identify and arrest a suspect…have changed over the years.  Some of the “methods” of clearing crimes in the sixties, sometimes using “tricks” or shoddy evidence, led to a great many innocent people arrested, convicted, and sentenced. 

Another theory is that more murders are gun related.  Killing by gunfire can mean a certain amount of physical distance as compared to a knife or an object with which to bludgeon someone to death with. There’s less chance of leaving crucial clues. 

But in the mystery novels you find in your local bookstore or library, the “clearance” rate is much higher, nearly 100% I’d guess.  Reading a novel about crime and not seeing it resolved in the end is deeply unsatisfying. 

So, as we write our stories, we interview witnesses who are willing to talk with our investigators.  They may or may not be reliable, but that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it? 

Or investigators gather clues and analyze them, looking for evidence that will lead them to the bad guys.

And in our books, sometimes the bad guys make mistakes. In the movie Body Heat, an arsonist is advising his attorney who has come to him for advice on how to commit a crime.  The arsonist says, “I want you to see if this sounds familiar: any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna f--k up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius... and you ain't no genius.”

By the way, here are a few more sobering numbers, just in case you're interested (these numbers are from 2018): 45.5% of all violent crimes were “cleared”.  

Only 33% of all rapes were solved.

Only 17. 6% of all property crimes were solved.

And just to be concise, “clearing” a crime doesn’t necessarily mean a conviction or even an arrest.  It can mean identifying the perpetrator who might already be in prison or dead. 

So, now that I’ve shared this, I’ll get back to writing.  I have a bad guy to catch.

Till Death Do Us Part

Like many of you, I have my favorite programs to binge-watch. At the top of my list are true-crime shows. I once spent a week dog sitting at my sister's house and when done working on the keyboard for the day, I'd mix up a batch of martini's and kick back to episodes of Inside the American Mob. Besides writing, I also paint, and when busy in my studio I key up Netflix in the background. During an extended flurry to complete a series of new works I cycled through all the seasons of Forensic Files. One consequence is that when I look now at any one painting I'm reminded of whatever homicides were investigated during its creation.

Years ago, the top crime show was COPS, which I didn't like. Police raids through trailer parks and Section 8 housing seemed more exercises in class warfare than searching for the bad guys. Not that the low-life offenders didn't deserve what they got, it's just that the crimes committed by the wealthy and middle-class went unnoticed.

Until Forensic Files. The big draw of the show is of course how advances in forensics allow investigators to solve crimes and bring justice and closure to victims and their survivors. While I appreciate the forensic science, the attraction for me is the human drama, usually someone deciding that the solution to their present dilemma is to murder the spouse/significant other/immediate family member/business partner. Sometimes the show deals with serial killers hunting targets of opportunity but mostly investigators don't stray far beyond an immediate circle of the dead guy's acquaintances. Unlike the trailer-trash perps of COPS, on Forensic Files we witness the well-to-do and privileged committing homicide: bankers, lawyers, doctors, real estate agents, police detectives, and even a bestselling novelist (Michael Peterson). Though these people were uniformly educated, they made a lot of stupid mistakes, for instance stashing the murder weapon and bloody clothes in the basement washing machine. Incriminating evidence left on computers has likewise undone many a "fool-proof" plan. I also notice that in Forensic Files, on occasion the police get timely leads via a "mysterious phone call." Makes me wonder what was the source? An informant? A bugged phone? Evidence obtained through extra-legal means?

When I'd run through all the seasons available on Netflix, I moved on to Murderous Affairs. Here the gimmick is love gone very wrong. On the minus side, they use a lot of dramatizations with actors who appeared to have been yanked from the office temp pool or relatives impressed into service. Needless to say, you won't be wowed by the acting. In one episode, the "dead victim" giggled when the EMTs tried to lift her onto a gurney. It doesn't help that the cheesy uniforms look purchased from the discount costume bin at Walmart. Aside from that, the compelling hook is the drama and the violence it spawned. As in Forensic Files, victims and killers are middle-class or higher in socio-economic standing. And they make a lot of dumb mistakes. Occasionally there's crossover in cases between Forensic Files and Murderous Affairs. Though Forensic Files has better writing and effects, Murderous Affairs often sheds light on Forensic Files' mysterious phone calls--usually ex's or vengeful rivals dropping a dime. Rejected romance equals revenge.

Real Murder

Our name is Type M for Murder and so I decided to tackle murder for real. This last week, the U.S. had another mass-murder, nine shot dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. As a gun owner, on hearing the tragic news, I hung my head, both in condolences for the dead and their survivors, and to tell myself, here we go again. The American gun-control shouting match immediately heated to white-hot rhetoric before veering into an argument about racism and the Confederate battle flag.

Though many claim gun ownership in the U.S. is defined by political lines, it's not. I've got strong leftist sentiments and own guns, and I know plenty of liberals who stock quite an arsenal. And I know conservatives who have never fired a gun and don't care to. When I'm among gun aficionados, politics is rarely discussed.

The numbers I'm offering below are drawn from the most verifiable statistics available to me such as the FBI crime tables, GunPolicy.org, and others. The comparisons won't be exact but hopefully will paint an accurate enough picture. And any numbers I use will certainly incite trolls of all political stripes.

There's no doubt the U.S. is seen as a violent country. In 2014 we had 12,253 murders, of which 8,454 were committed with firearms. If we take the difference, 3,799, that homicide total still places us at the top of the murder list of Western-developed countries. But not so fast...if we include violent crime that didn't end up with bodies Dead Right There, then England and France are more dangerous than the U.S. What complicates any fact checking is that countries have different definitions of "violent" crime.

To the anti-gun crowd, the answer is quite obvious. Ban all guns, and gun-related crimes (and deaths) will go away. But it's not so simple. First of all, the U.S. is the only country where private ownership of guns is specified by law: the Second Amendment. And, almost all countries do allow private gun ownership in some degree (even Australia, which is often mistakenly touted as gun-free). Two countries that don't allow any private gun ownership are China and North Korea, and I don't think we want them as our model for civil rights.

The U.S. leads the world both in rate of gun ownership and numbers of guns. We have about one gun per person, and so the guns number about 300 million. At number two in rate of private gun ownership is Switzerland at 45.7 per 100 people. Number 3? Finland, 45.3 per 100. Who is second in number of guns? India! With 40 million in private hands.

So if lots of guns equals lots of gun deaths, then Switzerland, Finland, and India should be awash in bullet-riddled bodies, but they're not. Based on that, the argument can be made that strict licensing is what reins in gun-related deaths. However you have the example of Brazil, with 8.6 guns per 100, which translates to about 17 million guns (lots of people in Brazil). Owning a gun and ammunition in Brazil requires a license, with a criminal, mental, and employment background check, and that license must be renewed every three years. But given these controls, the Brazilian homicide rate, to include gun-related, dwarfs that of the U.S. Brazil in 2010 (most recent numbers): 43,272 total homicide; 36,153 gun-related. U.S. in 2010: 16, 259 total; 11,078 gun-related. Plus, in the U.S. as the number of guns is going up, both the numbers and rate of homicide is on the decline. So something else is prompting murder besides the availability of guns. Like poverty. Income disparities. Lack of opportunities.

But if we move to episodes of mass-murder, then what's at work is something more problematic than what motivates other violent crime. It's a failure of the spirit, it's a surrender to nihilism, it's dissociation from society. It's what drives some people to suicide and on that subject is where we can find tools to help address these problems. The recent mass-murders occurred in circumstances similar to what Viktor Frankl discussed in his monumental book, Man's Search for Meaning. He pointed out the irony of an increase in suicide in developed countries despite greater prosperity and material comfort. Killers driven to mass-murder clearly have mental/emotional issues, and here the failure lies with family and acquaintances who didn't step in. Easier said than done. In our family we had a murder-suicide, and the tragedy blindsided us. What could we have done to prevent this heartache and bloodshed? In hindsight, plenty. But looking forward, nothing suspicious or dangerous presented itself.

To stop these mass-murders, we have the responsibility of educating ourselves, of looking out for one another, of reaching out. Of asking questions, showing concern, and acting.