Expert: Jack Toomey - 10/17/2005

Question
Dear Officer Toomey,

I'm writing a fiction story that opens with the discovery of a wounded police officer in the street (Boston). He's escaped from a killer's lair and carried out with him several personal belongings/identifiers of the other victims still trapped there -- all of whom have been reported missing.
Among the items found with the officer are a set of house keys that belonged to one of the killer's victims, James. However, this particular victim had 'disappeared' years ago in a mountain climbing accident and was presumed dead. So my questions begin:
1) In their investigations, would the police be able to trace James' keys to his Boston residence?
2) If James' house were empty, would they dust for fingerprints and be able to discover that James had been reported dead but, in reality, since has been living under a false name? (i.e., fingerprints don't match the name on the lease).
3) Would the police notify James' immediate family about these developments and ask further questions about his disappearance. What might the family be able to do/offer to assist the police?
4) Exactly how would the police notify the family if they were living in a different state? Would they call and ask them to come to Boston? Would they call first, and then send a police officer out to the family's home? What is the protocol/ likely procedure?
5) Which level or branch of police would handle the investigation and notification of the family?
6)If James' father were a military officer, would a representative of the military police be involved in either the case or notification of the family?
I hope this isn't too confusing or too many questions. Many thanks for your consideration and any help your able to provide!
Best regards,
Elizabeth  

Answer
Hello,

    If I am a bit critical don't be offended because I help authors all of the time and they usually welcome me calling out glaring errors and unbelievable things that would never happen in real life.

  1.  not sure what a killers lair would be and in twenty six years I have never heard of a police officer being held captive in a killers lair but if you say so then ok.  If it were an ordinary house key I doubt if they would be able to trace it to a particular home.  They might be able to trace it to a manufacturer but house keys dont have serial numbers like tv sets so that would be a stretch.

  2.  presuming that the police were able to find "James's residence what would they be dusting?  Possibly the door or windows if there was forced entry but there is not much to dust in an empty house.  You are getting very far fetched her to presume that the police were able to find latent fingerprints in James house and then trace them to a person who has been missing for sometime.  For that to happen there would have to be something in the house that "James" would have handled and if the house was empty for years then what would it be?  So if there was something in the house that James had handled it would have to be a glass or something that fingerprints would adhere to but you said that several years had gone by and fingerprints don't last forever.  And then what are the police comparing the prints to?  "James" would have had to have a criminal record of some sort for the police to compare the latent prints found in an empty house on some object to the known prints of the missing James.  Quite a stretch.

 3.  I am sure that the police would be in touch with James family.

  4.  The police would request that the police from the other city go by the house in person and make notification and then they would be in touch by phone after notification was made and then probably go to Boston to interview them further if that was necessary.

 5.  the homicide branch of the police department

  6.  no.  the military would have nothing to do with this case.

  Let me know if you need any more help on this but really this is a bit overboard unless I am reading it wrong.