BTK: Forensic Techniques Used In Criminal Investigation

The BTK was a very good but sloppy serial killer and it’s only because the lack of modern forensic technology that he was able to kill so many people. He knew not to leave finger prints but left DNA at almost every crime scene. DNA testing in the 1980s was relatively new and took a large sample to create a DNA profile and unlike today where the tests can be done within a day, there weren’t as many crime labs that could process the DNA.
The Crime Scene investigators had a lot of evidence to process because the killing spread across the entire house. With multiple people being killed there would all have to have the bodies processed for evidence at the scene and at the morgue by the coroner. Each person would need paper bags placed over their …show more content…
This would have also been a good tool to use when they got a voice recording, they could have targeted that area with TV or radio commercials with the recording.
Another would be crime pathologist to tell them the type of person is committing the crime. Using the DNA profile that could have been built using modern technology this could be used to help build the criminal pathologists profile of the criminal. Taking this profile and they could gain a better idea of why, and where he will pick his next target. If they could have figured out how he was picking the homes it might have given the police the information that he worked for a security installation company.
There are many other ways of collecting and testing evidence that wasn’t there in the old days from special lights to point out blood and semen, to standardized collection methods that may have saved the evidence better. Since testing DNA is easier and a policy to test each sample collected they could have caught him buy wounds potentially caused during the crime, since it was hard to test DNA in the 80s we don’t know if they tested all the DNA collected at the