Unlike television shows such as the CSI series that neatly wrap up murders in an hour, few real murder investigations are solved in 48 hours.
Further, despite incredible strides in forensic identification technology, most murders are solved by good old fashioned police work.
Indeed, even in the modern era, murders are generally solved using the method of Sherlock Holmes: inductive reasoning and gut instinct.
News Analysis: Unsolved Murders Soar in Augusta-Richmond County
Columbia County is the typical American bedroom community. Over the decades, families have flocked to the area because taxes are low, the streets are peaceful and violent crime is not a routine occurrence.
While murders in Columbia County are rare, they do happen, and when they do, they are usually baffling to the people charged with conducting an investigation.
The murder of Kay Parsons who resided in the upscale Orchard Hill subdivision in Grovetown is a good example. In late March 2009, Parsons’ body was found in her garage. Near the body, investigators found a claw hammer and a baseball bat, both covered in blood.
Parsons had been savagely beaten to death.
[adrotate banner=”19″]
Investigators found evidence of a struggle inside the house and some valuable items were reported as missing. Investigators soon discovered that the house next door had also been burglarized.
If investigators had used deductive reasoning, they would have determined that Parsons likely stumbled on one or two individuals attempting to rob her home.
Deductive reasoning starts with a hypothesis and moves outward to a conclusion by using evidence to support the hypothesis. If investigators had used this method, Kay Parsons’ murderers would likely have never been caught.
Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. It uses the evidence to strike down hypotheses and allows for multiple paths to reach the truth, or as Holmes would say:
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
According to Major Sharif Chochol, a lead investigator with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, the investigation does not begin with partial fingerprints on a murder weapon but rather with the victim him or herself.
“We start with finding out everything we can about the victim’s background. Who did she know? Was she in an argument with someone over money? Did she have a problem with someone at work?” Chochol said.
[adrotate banner=”54″]
In the Parsons case, fingerprints inside the home would have little initial value because Parsons’ killers were later found to be frequent visitors to her house.
One immediate induction-based clue in the Parsons murder was the sheer brutality of the crime. The perpetrator engaged in over-kill, which pointed away from some random burglar unknown to the victim.
By researching Parsons’ background, investigators found that Parsons’ marital relationship was rocky, which would have made her husband the prime suspect. However, the husband was at work at the time, and evidence proved that he did not have the opportunity to commit the crime, based on the Coroner’s stated time of death.
That fact did not eliminate the husband, though, as he could have simply hired someone to kill his wife. However, generally a hired hitman would bring his own weapon to commit the crime. He likely would not have used whatever tool he could find laying around the victim’s house.
“You have to use the process of elimination instead of jumping to a conclusion and making the evidence fit your conclusion. You have to ask ‘what would the reasonable person infer’ when looking at the body of evidence,” Chochol said.
Investigators determined that Parsons’ husband was having an affair with her co-worker, next door neighbor and best friend, Rebecca Sears. However, another improbability was present: Sears was proven to be away from the area at the time of the murder.
[adrotate banner=”22″]
However, Sears’ son, Christopher Bowers, had no such alibi. Indeed, he was the one to report finding his own house burglarized before Parsons’ body was even discovered.
“…No matter how improbable.”
As investigators plugged in piece after piece of the puzzle, the dominos began to fall quickly towards Sears and Bowers. What started out as an enigma unraveled by the use of inductive reasoning.
Both mother and son eventually pleaded guilty to the crime, and both are now serving life terms in prison. Sears’ motive was clear: she wanted her romantic rival eliminated, and her son was happy to oblige.
MORE: Murders Unsolved in Augusta: Brandon Grubbs, Part I
“Every murder is different, and you have to treat it that way. You have to go where the evidence takes you, and you can’t just use a checklist. It is the investigator’s instincts combined with the evidence that solves murders,” Chochol said.
Or, as Sherlock Holmes would say, “It’s elementary.”
Scott Hudson is the Managing Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com.
[adrotate banner=”44″]
