Historic Homicide Burial Search in Rural Woodland

Abstract

The cold case search for clandestine graves can be challenging due to the time elapsed since the crime and the search environment. This paper reports on a cold case search for a young girl who was reported missing in the mid 1970s in the East Midlands, UK. Once a search area was determined by case reports in undulating woodland, a ground search proved unsuccessful; therefore, a multi-phased geoscientific investigation (using remote sensing and UAV drones, metal detector, EM and dGPS surveys) was carefully collected, analysed and interpreted with anomalies then intrusively investigated. Results showed 36 isolated metal detector and 3 EM priority targets which were intrusively investigated and recovered onsite but nothing case relevant was found. Study implications suggest careful multi-phase geoscientific investigations can give confidence in a cold case no-body result, thus effectively saving Police time and costs in further investigations.

Keywords: geoscience, cold case, EM, metal detection, dGPS