By andy Marso
Capital News Service reported this story from a database downloaded from Scripps Howard News Service at http://www.scrippsnews.com/projects/serial-killers. Scripps Howard compiled its data — which includes 525,742 homicides nationwide — from the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Report and public records requests for a November 2010 article called “Hunting Serial Killers.”
The Supplemental Homicide Report is part of the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report and includes data on both the victims and offenders in homicides, as reported by the investigating agencies.
Capital News Service used the “Offender’s Sex” field in the database, which lists the murderer as “Male,” “Female” or “Unknown,” to determine how many of the total homicides had been solved.
To account for data-entry errors, Capital News Service cross-checked the “Offender’s Sex” field with the “Offender’s Age” field, “Offender’s Race” field and the “Situation” field that describes how many victims and how many offenders were involved in a given homicide.
In all of the 1,520 Prince George’s homicides in which the offender’s sex was listed as “unknown,” the offender’s age was listed as “0.” In all but three of the 1,520, the number of offenders and the offender’s race was also listed as “unknown.”
Maryland State Police spokeswoman Elena Russo said there was only one likely explanation for the 1,517 homicides in which no information on the offender was provided.
“That means the crime hasn’t been solved,” Russo said. “The offender has not been caught.”
