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Scott William Cox


In November of 1990 and February of 1991, two prostitutes were murdered in the Portland area.  These two murders were solved due to the realization of a possible serial killer in an unrelated assault and different law enforcement agencies working together.  In May of 1991, another prostitute in Seattle was severely sexually and physically assaulted and thrown from the cab of an 18 wheeler truck.  The victim had to be hospitalized as a result of the attack.  Even though the victim did not want to prosecute the case, the detective in charge realized that this attack showed signs of a current or future serial killer.  Police were able to track down a man by the name Seth Scott Cutter through the employer, the trucking company.  Police felt that Cutter could be the person responsible and information about Cutter was disseminated to neighboring agencies.  An officer from a different police department recognized the suspect as a local man named Scott Cox.  When police interviewed Cox after finding out about the pseudonym, he confessed to the 2 murders, along with beatings of different prostitutes in Washington State and Oregon (Keppel & Birnes).
During the course of his work as a truck driver, Cox drove many routes through several different states, including Washington State, California and Oregon, as well as in Canada.  Over 4,000 pieces of information, including timelines, border crossings, state, national and business records were amalgamated into the HITS (Homicide Investigation Tracking System) database program.  The HITS database is a computer software system used to track violent crime data in the Pacific Northwest.  It was designed to help catch offenders by sharing all related information with law enforcement in local areas, particularly Washington State and Oregon.  Over 22 police, sheriff, crime lab, and attorney general’s offices from the 3 states and Canada in which Cox traveled frequently as a truck driver, worked together to piece together all the information needed to prosecute Cox and stop a serial killer in his tracks.  This case is an excellent example of: 1) a detective noticing and acting on the signs of a possible serial killer in the evidence found from a living victims, and 2) many different law enforcement agencies over several different jurisdictions, even across an international border working together to stop a serial killer before many more murders could happen (Keppel & Birnes). 




Works Cited
Keppel, Robert D., and William J. Birnes. The Psychology of Serial Killer Investigations The Grisly Business Unit. Academic Press, 2003.

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