Unlike the other neighboring countries on the other parts of the world, who used to have a better system when it came down to recording reported cases regardless of how small it was, law enforcement authorities of Santina's country, on the contrary, have never done a good job of compiling statistics on missing persons on a nationwide basis.
And to date, no definite actions were taken for its betterment. There was no sign showing that any from the law enforcement had ever taken time to reconsider how they treat the matter.
More often than not, people with a missing relative were referred to the media instead. As such, only a little police effort, if there has been any at all in the first place, was expended towards following the cases up after that.
Unless of course if the victims were high profile, for instance, someone from the wealthy or influential family.
That alone was enough to show how the authorities had little regard for keeping a systematic record of how many of these missing persons did turn up eventually.
Whether they were dead or still alive, or what kind of injuries they have sustained; or on a worst-case scenario, how many of these said missing people had remained missing up to now and for how long they had been missing so far.
Likewise, little attention was paid to determine patterns such as the missing person's physical type or age; the geographical area in which he or she had disappeared or by off chance, reappeared, as well as the condition in which he or she had been found.
Santina's previous theories had long believed that her country probably had a hidden murder rate something more than what the police had ever had the capability to detect. A rate that was probably far above the actual national police's annual murder statistics.
And it was just that for some unknown reason, those who were in position who was supposed to conduct a thorough investigation regarding this disturbing theory fail to see it.
It was unsure whether either the law enforcement was just trying to seal this truth by turning a blind eye or if they were just simply blind themselves to see it. But regardless which was which, neither of them sounded appealing.
Santina reckoned that if she would ever be bolder that how she was already, she could even dare claim that contrary to the most common perception that they had grown to, serial killings could actually be a far more prevalent phenomenon in their country than what they could ever imagine and it was only because the authorities were being denial in accepting this kind of idea that was why it had never been made known to the public.
But of course, Santina could still somewhat understood why most of them see this theory of hers as far fetched, because, at the end of the day, the issue lay on the fact that there were little if any, comparisons that were ever made between the particulars of the murders committed at different times or places.
Wayback, when she was just on the initial stage of her theories, Santina had tried reaching out with some of the people she had contact with from the law enforcement. But eventually, she got withdrawn doing it anymore, because she would always end up getting the same response from them; general smiles as well as remarks telling her that she must have seen lots of foreign movies before which led her to see things differently than what it actually was.
"Rest assured that there were no serial killers here on our place. And if there happened to be one, we should know better than anyone else. After all, we are the officials."
One even claimed before.
"And if there were any at all, they would be white males in their thirties."
Joked the other.
This might be amusing, thinking that there were hardly any cases of recorded serial murders before in history in which the killer and the victim did not share ethnicity.
However, rather than finding it amused, Santina found this kind of attitude more disturbing than the latter.
Yet she knew that if she really wanted to change the collective minds of the local law enforcement, then she has to collect data.
After all, she was nothing but a professor now.
Yes maybe some might still recognize her former job as a forensic anthropologist as well as her late contributions at the crime division, way back when she was still working on that field
Some might even take her as a forensic pathologist who has been a great help for solving some of their previous cases
But that was just it! She was nothing but a supporting character in their cases and her voice alone will remain unheard and her words would never hold water as long as she did not have concrete proof in her hands.
Because as per usual, police were only intimidated by statistics, by hard facts, by numbers. So if she wanted to be taken seriously, then she has to gather her resources first.
And these particular murder cases that Mikael was roping her into was another opportunity for her to begin compiling the data that she needed.
As such when the other party told her about some tidbits of information regarding the specifics of the case she was immediately drawn to the peculiarities of these murders.
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