According to Turvey (2000), precautionary acts refer to a criminal offender’s behaviors committed before, during or after the commission of an offense and which are consciously and intentionally intended to defeat, hamper or confuse investigation of the crime. They are acts of staged crime scenes and events that are meant to mislead the authorities and redirect the investigation of the crime and circumstances surrounding the commission of the crime in question. They are simulated acts meant to conceal a crime by interfering with evidence at the crime scene. This makes it difficult for the investigating authorities to come up with an accurate criminal profile of the suspect. Law enforcement officers investigating a crime normally use offender or criminal profiling in the identification of likely suspects and analysis of patterns of criminal behavior to predict future victims of similar crimes. Criminal profiling is meant to provide a psychological and social evaluation of the offender, narrow the suspect pool, assess the items in offender’s possession and provide interrogation and interviewing strategies (Patherick, 2009, p. 124).
Queen v Giuseppe Russo (2003) VSC 164 Supreme Court of Victoria a Melbourne, Criminal Division, No. 1452 of 2001.
This was a double homicide case involving the murder of Maria Russo and Gaetano Russo in their home. The victims had been brutally beaten. The investigators found Maria’s body outside the kitchen near the back steps while Gaetano’s was discovered in the kitchen. After examination of the case by investigators from the Victoria Police in Melbourne, Australia, it was found that the offender had staged the crime scene to confuse and mislead investigators.
As a result of these precautionary acts by Joseph, the victims’ son, his first conviction for murder was overturned for lack of evidence linking him to the crime. However, he was rearrested and convicted of homicide. These precautionary acts by the offender also hindered the development of a criminal profile by making it difficult and almost impossible in the first instance to match the nature of the crime scene to the offender’s ability to commit the crimes. The acts led to several loopholes and missing links in the investigators’ report of the crime since they could not easily match the offender’s characteristics to the victim’s murder in the first round of investigations. These acts confused the modus operandi of the offender thus making it hard to come up with a profile matching their behavior.
References
Petherick, W. (2009). Serial crime: Theoritical and practical issues in behavioral profiling. San Diego, California: Elsevier Academic Press.
Turvey, B. E. (2000). Staged crime scenes: A preliminary study of 25 cases. The Journal of Behavioral Profiling, 1(3), 1-10. Retrieved June 25, 2016, from http://www.profiling.org/journal/vol1_no3/jbp_scs_1-3a.html
