The North Pole Murders

Before CODIS, the FBI’s DNA index system, and before VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, states had no systematic method of sharing evidence from violent crime scenes with each other. No national database existed, making it difficult for investigators to track vicious predators who crossed state lines.

After a string of closely-spaced murders of young women near Fairbanks in the late 1970s and early 80s, the abductions and murders stopped. Troopers believed the killer had moved somewhere else, but they had no database to track the predator’s movements beyond Alaska. Only the…