DISCLAIMER: The Murder Accountability Project (MAP) and its Board of Directors make no warranty, expressed or implied, to readers and users of the MAP website (www.murderdata.org) and accept no responsibility for its use, nor for any harm, loss or damage resulting from reliance on any tools, data, information or other content made available through the MAP website. The MAP website is provided for informational and non-commercial purposes only. The readers assume sole responsibility for determining the appropriateness of its suggested use in any particular methodology, calculation, or serial homicide model; for any conclusions drawn from the results of its use; and for any actions taken or not taken as a result of analyses performed using MAP’s online tools.
MAP’s homicide detection methodologies are based on datasets
maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or case data MAP obtained
directly from police agencies that do not report data to the FBI. MAP does not
guarantee the accuracy, completeness, reliability, availability, or usefulness
of these datasets. MAP’s serial homicide detection methodologies may or may not
have predictive value when applied to specific circumstances and to specific
cases. These methods in the past have detected both known and previously
unknown serial homicides. But users are warned that these methods also can
produce false results, either by making false matches between unrelated cases
or by failing to detect known linked cases. The rate of failure is currently
unknown. The ultimate authority on whether homicide cases should be linked
rests with the law enforcement agencies which investigate crimes and with the
appropriate courts of criminal law.
