True Crime in Real Time
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<h1 id="c1">Case Briefing</h1>
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<div>Welcome to the incident room. This is your case briefing.</div>
<div class="indent">“Congratulations on your promotion to homicide detective,” the Detective Major tells you. “You and your partner will be assigned to our major cases. As a team, you will uncover evidence, interview suspects and witnesses, and, if there’s enough conclusive evidence, send the case to the DA. Good luck, we’re all counting on you.”</div>
<div class="indent">As a reader in the role of a member of the somewhat fictionalized investigative team, you will face several challenges. You will uncover the evidence based upon historical crimes as an actual investigator would—as they present themselves in the course of the investigation. The crimes are real, and the evidence comes from the actual case files. Your partners are fictional characters based on a composite of real detectives and others who investigated these crimes. All the evidence that is uncovered is based on police reports, interviews, court transcripts, and contemporary news reports.</div>
<div class="indent">These cases are truly a collaboration between you, the reader, and the rest of the investigative team at the crime scenes. At the conclusion of each case, you will provide an assessment of the evidence and decide for yourself where the evidence leads you.</div>
<div class="indent">As you work your way through these crimes, keep in mind there was a diligent endeavor to maintain important interviews and the evidence for these real cases as accurate as possible. Most of the conversations of the individuals involved were taken from actual interviews and transcripts of the cases. The conversations between you and the fictional detectives are, of course, invented to propel the story forward.</div>
<div class="indent">The evidence discovered is based on diligent research. Some of the specifics may surprise you, as they have not been highly publicized, such as new suspects or a new approach to analyzing the evidence.</div>
<div class="indent">The stories have been adapted to allow you, as the main character, to uncover pertinent evidence. All other aspects of the real cases have been maintained for accuracy.</div>
<div class="indent">As you read through the case and follow the evidence, remember that each step in a criminal investigation is a conscious choice. What is the evidence telling you? Would you have proceeded as these detectives did? Does the totality and circumstances of the case warrant the steps taken by these detectives? Are there any bits of evidence that you would have given more weight to than these detectives did?</div>
<div class="indent">In these stories, you are also challenged to consider some new approaches that have not been previously presented before. See if you agree with the conclusions of the detectives you are “partnered” with.</div>
<div class="indent">You are also challenged to test your knowledge of true crime and use the evidence, locations, and crime scenes to name the actual cases behind the re-creations. The names have been changed but, again, the evidence from these true crimes reflects the actual evidence.</div>
<div class="indent">In many true crime cases, there can be a definitive turning point in the investigation that alters the judgment of the investigating detective. A piece of evidence that changes the trajectory of the case. It flips the switch on the case, it is the ignition point. It changes the case from questionable to convincing in the mind of the detective, and clearly points to the one perpetrator. Since you are the detective in all the cases that are contained in this book, an additional challenge is for you to find that ignition point that will help you solve each of these cases.</div>
<div class="indent">As you become more experienced as an investigator, your partners, first starting out as your trainer, gradually gives you more freedom to explore the evidence on your own. As your expertise grows, your partner more frequently asks your advice about the evidence and the suspects you will encounter. You will learn the value of not jumping to conclusions. Even if you are familiar with the suspects, you only go where the evidence takes you. You often contribute suggestions during the investigation but, like every great investigator who has come before you, you always wait until all the evidence has been tested and the investigation concludes to render your opinion on the case.</div>
<div class="indent">You are not required to agree with your team. You are encouraged to take notes along the way and come to your own conclusions about which suspect, if any, should be sent to the DA for prosecution.</div>
<div class="indent">Now get to work.</div>
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