Why Are We Missing Aquatic Murders?

Abstract

Identifying, investigating, and prosecuting aquatic abuse and murder can be challenging. Aquatic scenes can be large, uncontrollable, and difficult to access. The water can hide, damage, and move corpses and other evidence hundreds of kilometers. Forensic practitioners (FPs) are hindered by a lack of insufficient or unsupported aquatic incident training, equipment, evidence-based best practices, and standards. This results in basic investigation standards being broken on aquatic scenes, and the cause and manner of death are sometimes being misdiagnosed or deemed undetermined. Law Enforcement (LE) agencies do not have the same “aquatic investigator” resources as they do for fire scenes and vehicle and plane crash incidents. There are no standardized certifications for performing aquatic scene investigations or reconstructions. There are solutions that are currently being implemented, and others that need to be initiated. This chapter is an introductory review of some of the more common and global challenges of working aquatic fatal, nonfatal, and evidence cases. A description of several solutions for first responders through jurisprudence is presented along with a call for the forensic community to come together with a multidisciplinary approach to address aquatic incident research needs, evidence-based best practices development, and developing standardized training and certifications.