Taking Control of Denial and Defeat

This chapter gives an account of false reality that plagues serial killer task force investigations. The failure to recognize that the enormity of the task is not an impossibility but a surmountable obstacle, is worse than the job itself. In fact, even inexperienced investigators rarely shrink from the job, but might shrink from the false reality of the impossibility of the job. Denial and defeat debilitate the task force operations from within by luring task force personnel, from senior commanders to clerical assistants, away from the reality of the task at hand, into a false reality. United States developed a multiagency investigative team approach, which established a set of guidelines and procedures for how task forces should operate. It is a kind of playbook, a manual which gives task force members and the agencies they work for, a drill or set of instructions to pursue the investigation from its inception to the filing of charges.