Historic Child 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 itself. 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 sub-area was determined by case reports in undulating rural woodland, a ground search proved unsuccessful; therefore, a multi-phased geoforensic search investigation (using remote sensing and UAV drones, metal detector, EM and dGPS surveys) was undertaken, with subsequent collected data processed and analysed. Results showed 36 discrete dGPS-surveyed metal detector and 3 EM priority targets to be identified which were all intrusively investigated but nothing case-relevant was found. Study implications suggest careful multi-phase remote and geoforensic investigations can give confidence in cold case no-body searches, saving Police operational time and costs in further investigations.

Keywords: cold case, remote sensing, EM, GPR, metal detector