

Only about 14 percent of the cases studied involved parents or intimates killing the child.In 44 percent of the cases studied, the victims and killers were strangers, but in 42 percent of the cases, the victims and killers were friends or acquaintances.In 74 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child murder victim was female and the average age was 11 years old.The use of pornography by killers as a trigger to murder has increased.The probability that the killer’s name will come up during the first week of the investigation has decreased.With more killers identified, researchers found threat that the killer will be a friend or acquaintance is nearly equal to that of a stranger.The additional cases generally reflect and support the findings in the original report with several significant and definite differences: Now the Attorney General’s Office has released a follow-up study, including 175 additional solved cases. This data provided law enforcement valuable insight into what investigative techniques tend to be most productive.

In this first research project, published in 1997, researchers reviewed more than 600 child abduction murder cases across the United States, then interviewed the investigating detectives. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, to study the investigation of child abduction murder cases. In late 1993, the Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General's Office undertook a 3-1/2 year research project, partially funded by the U.S.
