Locating Body Deposition Sites of Murdered Missing Persons

This retrospective cross-sectional study examined 347 murdered persons cases from Oregon and Washington states covering the period of 1952-2025 to develop an evidence-based system for prioritizing body deposition site (BDS) search areas. Victim demographics were analyzed as well as, time to discovery, BDS types and methods, victim-perpetrator relationships, and critical distance measurements from the Last Known Place (LKP) or Place Last Seen (PLS) to the BDS and from a Prominent Feature to the BDS. Results from the distance calculations established confidence intervals for BDS search zones that led to the development of a concentric circle search system for each distance category. Beta testing confirmed the reliability of random samples drawn from distance population categories to accurately fall within expected limits 95% of the time.