Interesting Study by WA Atty Office

2006 Child Abduction Murder StudyIn
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. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, to study the investigation of child
abduction murder cases.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
detect`ives. This data provided law enforcement valuable insight into what investigative techniques tend to be most productive.Now
the Attorney General’s Office has released a follow-up study, including
175 additional solved cases. The additional cases generally reflect and
support the findings in the original report with several significant
and definite differences:

• 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 probability that the killer’s name will come up during the first week of the investigation has decreased.
  
• The use of pornography by killers as a trigger to murder has increased.
  

Key findings:

• In
  74 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child
  murder victim was female and the average age was 11 years old.
  
• 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.
  
• Only about 14 percent of the cases studied involved parents or intimates killing the child.
  
• Almost
  two-thirds of the killers in these cases have prior arrests for violent
  crimes, with slightly more than half of those prior crimes committed
  against children.
  
• The primary motive for the child abduction killer in the cases studied was sexual assault.
  
• In
  nearly 60 percent of the cases studied, more than two hours passed
  between the time someone realized the child was missing and the time
  police were notified.
  
• In 76 percent of the missing children
  homicide cases studied, the child was dead within three hours of the
  abduction–and in 88.5 percent of the cases the child was dead within
  24 hours.
  

Key recommendations to protect children:

• Be aware that children are not immune from abduction because they are close to home. More than half of the study’s abductions took place within three city blocks of the victim’s home.
  
• Be certain that your children are supervised – even if they are in their own front yard or neighborhood street. Approximately one-third of the abductions studied took occurred within one-half block of the victim’s home.
  
• Teach your children not to ever approach a car– whether the occupant is a stranger or not– no matter what the occupant the tells them or asks them.
  
• Be aware of strangers and unusual behavior in your neighborhoods. Many child abductions are witnessed by people who do not realize that a crime is being committed.
  
• If your child is ever missing, CALL POLICE IMMEDIATELY. An immediate response to a missing or abducted child may be the difference between life and death.
  

Executive SummaryConclusionsDownload the entire reportMeet the research team

When I read this I thought how close Lindsey Baum's profile of a victim is to this.