it would be apriciated if you made sense with replys thank you
Some folks in this forum think I'm too hard on you alevel students in pointing out you should be researching facts in a library rather than seeking opinions from nameless, faceless sources on the internet who may or may not have a single fact on your subject.
So out of curiosity, I looked up some of the listed alevel media sites online. Here's what one had to say on the subject of research, with added emphasis in italics:
Do check names/dates/facts with alternative sources, and remember that opinions are opinions and may be completely unfounded.
Beware!!!! There is a lot of misinformation out there. Try to check everything you read, and, remember, if you use information from a website QUOTE YOUR SOURCE as part of your bibliography. . . . Remember that adequate research involves using information from the Internet AND the available textbooks. At A2 especially you will need to research topics in great depth - books are absolutely the best for this! Websites offer a great overview and introduction, but if you really want to understand a topic, hit the library.
http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevel.html
No matter how many crime movies and TV shows a person may watch, most people know damn little about how real crimes are investigated. The people you should be polling are police officers and criminal trial lawyers; they also see movies and TV, some as many as anyone in this forum, and they can best spot the difference between crimes in make-belief vs. the real world.
Your second best source would be an old newspaper reporter who spent years covering beats at courthouses and "cop shops." And by sheer luck, you've stumbled onto one such source--me. I've spent 30 years as a reporter, including more than a decade running hundreds of crime scenes and covering hundreds of trials in small towns, medium-size metropolitan areas and the fourth largest city in the US, Houston, Tex.
The biggest difference between film and life is that there usually isn't much mystery in real crimes, because usually the culprit is someone from the same neighborhood and someone saw the crime committed. In murder cases, it's usually a family member, friend, or neighbor. Almost always the killer and victim are of the same ethnic background. And most times it's a crime of passion, love, hate, jealousy. And in most cases, it never goes to trial because the perpetrator's lawyer will plead out when the prosecution offers a lesser sentence for a lesser crime (man-slaughter rather than murder, maybe) in order to avoid a trial. Many times they get as far as seating a jury before the defendant grabs the offered plea. These are what law officers and reporters refer to as "misdemeanor murders"--both the victim and the perp are from the same background, same race, same income level, usually poor. To be brutally honest, they're nobodies and nobody gives a damn about the crime one way or another.
Give you an example--I once covered a crime scene in some dive where two guys were playing pool and got to arguing over who won or lost. One of the players pulls a pistol and shoots the other player dead in front of half a dozen witnesses. Then he goes through the dead man's pockets to get the 50-cent bet they were arguing over. Having finished his business there, the man--a regular at the club--walks to his apartment a few blocks up the street.
Sometimes law officers dispose of a defendent without ever having to go to trial. Sometimes it's just a matter of sending the perp back to prison on a parole violation. And then there was the time out in West Texas when an illegal immigrant working on a farm outside of Lubbock took a double-bladed ax and killed two other illegal immigrants. It was the one time I ever encountered the "double ax murder" that jaded reporters wish for on a slow news day, and I was looking forward to covering the case. But when I stopped by the DA's office the next morning to check what charges were filed, I found there would be no charges and no trial because the county had already handed over the mentally disturbed killer--to the immigration service for immediate deportation back to Mexico. "Let the Mexican government pay to institutionalize him," the DA explained.
Even among the middle class, the crimes generally are cut and dried. Like the police captain who shot his wife in bed and tried to pass it off as a suicide. Except the way he told the story, the woman would have had to be a contortionist to get the gun from a drawer on his side of the bed and shoot herself at that angle with that hand while he was struggling to stop her. In the end, he pleaded out.
I covered one murder via a telephone interview with the killer before the police captured him. Man shot his wife down in their front yard in view of several neighbors then went into his house. I got the address from the police dispatcher sending out officers with backup, used the cross-directory to look up the telephone number at that address, and dialed it up. Phone rang and the man answered. Told me he killed his wife; he may have even told me why, but I don't remember the reason. I asked if there was anyway to get him to come out of the house without anyone else getting hurt. He said he'd like to talk to his daughter. By then the operator was cutting in on the line to connect him with the police outside, so I called up a detective I knew in homicide and told him the daughter might talk the man out. Sure enough, she did.
If no one sees the killer, he isn't an obvious suspect, and doesn't confess his crime, the next main method of catching a criminal is that someone tips off the police. Usually another criminal looking for a softer sentence on whatever rap he's facing. But it can also be an angry wife or girlfriend or a accomplice who'd rather his partner take the hard fall.
I never made an actual count, but I bet there were not more than a dozen times that I saw police even take fingerprints at a crime scene, much less check blood splatters and such things. I've never seen a real cop do that scene where blood stains become visible in a certain kind of light. First of all, as I said, there usually is no need for such things--an experienced detective and the medical examiner can get all they need from examining the crime scene and the body the way it has always been done. Plus when the crime scene is a bar, a place of business, an alley where people come and go, the killer would die of old age before you could run down all the fingerprints you would find.
For most killers, it's a one-time thing; they kill the one person who offends them--the wife, another pool player--and there is no reason for them to kill again. But even serial killers may not make the news for a long time unless they do something to draw attention to themselves, like killing someone who is missed when he or shee suddenly disappear.
Great example is Dean Coryl, Houston's "Candy Man" who for years had two teenage helpers bringing him young boys to rape and kill. Many of the kids had records as runaways and JDs, and even their own families thought they had just taken off again. Some families probably weren't all that sorry that they were gone. No one had a clue what was going on until Coryl turned on one of his helpers who shot him to death and afterward told police where to find all of the bodies. The young killer was with police as they dug up one of the burial spots, and at some point said he'd like to talk to his mom. A enterprising TV reporter offered to let him use his car phone. Guy tells Mom, "I just killed Dean," which not only went through the phone lines to his mom but also to the TV station where the confession was recorded.
One of the coldest killers I ever saw was a guy picked up in Houston after they found women's bodies buried at his former residenences in California and some Great Lakes state. This guy really hated women--said their only use was as recepticles for male sperm. But the person who got a confession out of him was a petite red-headed female homicide detective who knew just how to work the creep's ego. She was better than "The Closer" on TV who usually gives us 45 minutes of personal trauma vs. 15 minutes of slicked over police investigation. But in real life, that only happened in one case.
Reply to Topic
You're a writer after my own heart, Sedai; I, too, love alliteration and humor! 