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National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

Cold Cases and Serial Killers (Part 1)

September 2023

In April 2018, the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo was arrested. NIJ support helped lead to his arrest, and in the aftermath of the arrest, NIJ Social Science Analyst Eric Martin was among those tasked with finding other cases NIJ helped law enforcement solve. Eric joins the show to talk about some of those cases, and answer some broader questions about serial killers: What is a serial killer? Are they on the rise? How do we know how many serial killers are currently active?

Justice Department Fights for the Missing

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System logo

Since 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice has helped to lead the search for tens of thousands of missing Americans. Created by the Department’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known as NamUs, catalogs photos, fingerprints, dental records and other forensic evidence in an effort to find the missing, identify human remains and close cases that, in many...