Beyond The Pattern: A Forensic Framework For Serial-Offender Investigations
Granville Salvadore, BBA. LLB. (Hons.), MIT-WPU School of Law Research Intern, Centre for Crime Sciences and Forensic Intelligence
ABSTRACT
Serial-offender investigations frequently rely on behavioural similarity across offences, yet similarity alone cannot establish common authorship, identify a suspect, or support legal liability. This article develops a forensic decision-making framework for moving from behavioural linkage to investigative hypothesis, suspect relevance, and legally defensible evidentiary assessment. Drawing on crime-linkage research, forensic reliability principles, and a parallel reading of Indian and United States evidentiary law, it distinguishes modus operandi, signature behaviour, victimology, physical evidence, digital evidence, witness evidence, confession, and intelligence leads according to their investigative function, limitations, and corroborative requirements. The article also identifies diagnostic, predictive, and profiling overreach as distinct analytical failures. Its central argument is that linkage should organise inquiry rather than predetermine guilt: behavioural similarity may justify further investigation, but liability requires independently authenticated, methodologically reliable, and legally admissible evidence.
Keywords: serial-offender analysis, case linkage, forensic decision-making, evidentiary overreach, suspect relevance, liability.
