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Essay Available:
Pages:
11 pages/≈3025 words
Sources:
10 Sources
Style:
Harvard
Subject:
Law
Type:
Essay
Language:
English (U.K.)
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Topic:

Psychological Profiling

Essay Instructions:
Psychological Profiling Assessment: 3000 word limit CASE: MURDER OF CLARA HIGGINS Answer ALL THREE questions in this case. You are required to produce a written piece of work for the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) investigating Clara Higgins murder. He has set the following questions as terms of reference – 1. Construct a crime scene assessment from the information given with the aim of assisting the investigating team to a better understanding of the case from a behavioural perspective. (Within this assessment, you may wish to consider aspects such as the likely sequence of events, victimology, offender motivations and the relevance of geographical factors. 2. Provide an informal initial opinion about the psychological and behavioural characteristics of the offender(s). 3. Critically discuss how effective offender profiling is for police investigations. This piece of work should incorporate a brief description of the type of crime, clear and understandable conclusions relevant to the terms of reference and interpretations and investigative suggestions supported by academic evidence. Circumstances of Case Clara Higgins was a 64-year-old woman that lived in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. She had never been married and had one daughter, Natasha. She moved to Wakefield in 2005 for her health. She had worked hard all of her life before retiring. Clara had been employed as a hotel manager before retiring. She had health problems and she was currently battling stomach cancer. On the evening of Tuesday August 18 2008 Natasha left Clara's house at 9.00pm after having dinner. They had been celebrating Natasha's recent promotion at work. The next morning Natasha arrived at her mothers house to find that the front door was unlocked, the lights and television were still on and Clara's mobile phone was on the table in the kitchen. Natasha contacted the police and reported her as missing. On Saturday August 22 2008 the body of Clara was recovered in a shallow grave 8 miles away from her home. Medical examiners in Wakefield reported that she had been tied up with rope and had a tea towel placed in her mouth. According to the autopsy report she had sexually assaulted and had died as a result of mechanical obstruction of the airways by dirt. Essentially, she had been buried alive and asphyxiated from the dirt particles smothering her airway passages. At the graveside, police found a spade, several pieces of cloth, empty beer cans and food wrappings.
Essay Sample Content Preview:
CASE: MURDER OF CLARA HIGGINS
Construct a crime scene assessment from the information given with the aim of assisting the investigating team to a better understanding of the case from a behavioural perspective. (Within this assessment, you may wish to consider aspects such as the likely sequence of events, victimology, offender motivations and the relevance of geographical factors.
According to Menzies, Wilder and Priestley (1999), a crime scene assessment can be termed as the basis on which answers can be obtained regarding the occurrence of a crime. It gives investigators and the police the answers that they need in unraveling the causes of a crime and the reasons behind the occurrence of a crime. As one would say, a crime scene assessment should be the first activity to be conducted in a crime scene as investigators seek answers to the occurrence of a crime in any crime scene. In the case of the murder of Clara Higgins, a number of aspects come up regarding the causes of the deceased’s death, the reasons behind this and the motivation factors that could have led to the murder of the deceased. In order to be able to effectively assess that scene of crime in this case, the house belonging to the deceased and the shallow grave in which the deceased’s body was recovered 8 miles away from her home.
The following assessment will contain some details of the rape/sexual assault, murder and subsequent burial of Clara Higgins in a shallow grave a few miles away from her house as understood by the author requiring close scrutiny of crime scene information as given. In this case therefore, this is a rather disturbing information to put together imagining what could have happened to the elderly deceased that fateful night as anyone with the smallest degree of humanity cannot help but be affected by having to examine this most brutal murder in detail. Within this assessment, the author will consider aspects such as the likely sequence of events, victimology, offender motivations and the relevance of geographical factors among others in attempt to ascertain the cause of the deceased’s death. The author believes that through this assessment, the investigative authorities would be led to a better understanding of the case from a behavioural perspective.
However, it is the author's belief that the close scrutiny of these disturbing details is essential if the investigation tem and the police are to make any considerable progress in any meaningful way in the resolution of what happened that night. Moreover, the evidence leads to some startling and potentially controversial conclusions and without those being evidenced they cannot be made. It is the author's hope that this work would in some way aid the investigative authorities and the police to reconstruct exactly what happened in Clara Higgins house that terrible night. The following is a partial reconstruction of the crime scene based on the police crime scene information as provided in the...
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