Welcome to The Murder Accountability Project!

[burblestein]

Your question is a bit confusing, Manwel.
If the Watts case is missing from the Murder Accountability Project, you need to contact their webmaster.
If the Watts case is missing from WS, it may not have been written up for the site. WS is still incomplete, and depends on its volunteers submitting cases. You may want to write up the Watts case yourself. If so, I will give you a hand with the writeup.

 

[LR1]

Forgive me for this question if it has been answered before (I am new) but I am curious what it means if you search for a specific murder that you know occurred but it is not accounted for in the results? Specifically, I cannot find the data result for Douglass Watts, 2018, White male, age 73, Chicago area.

You may have seen it but there is data for a 73 year old male killed in chicago with a handgun in the month of September in 2018 but they have his race listed as black. I'm thinking this might be Watts but they (fbi) errored in the data input.

 

[Manwel]

I realized I did not specify WS or MAP. I didn't see the listing in MAP and wasn't sure how to proceed. I did not search for Black males as I knew Mr. Watts was White. Thanks for the digging, LR1. Disappointing that it's incorrectly listed. Wonder if it's site error or initial reporting error?

CPD are ... notorious, shall we say? Same time as Duck Walk Killer was on the loose, I woke up from two gunshots on my street; sounded like it was right at the corner of the block near me. This was around 2:30 am. I peeked outside and within maybe 90 seconds, all kinds of cops on bikes and in silent SUVs and in their white van just magically appeared and started scanning the area. I didn't see them doing any kind of door-to-door stuff, no sirens, just walking around with flashlights. They cleared out after 30 minutes. The next day? Nothing in the paper.

The day after that? Chicago Sun-Times had a little note online about a theft gone wrong on my block—but listed as the night before. I emailed them to tell them nothing had happened the night before, it would have been two nights ago. The reporter insisted that the police gave them the information for the night before, but other details were also incorrect, like the time of night. It was listed as 1:30 am, and only one gunshot. There had been two. So I said to the reporter, "Look, I like on this block, this didn't happen last night, and the details from police are wrong." I got the equivalent of a shrug in his reply.

So. You know. Yay CPD and whoever is authorized to speak to reporters.

 

[burblestein]

I threw a quick google search on Mr. Watt. There seems to be adequate MSM coverage to add him to WS.

 

[burblestein]

Manwel, LR1, in my experience, error seems to creep into these posted cases as a matter of course. The most common mistake is miscalculating a victim's age in a cold case; the poster(s) will compute a missing victim's age as extending to the date of the posting instead of only to the date of disappearance. There are also numerous typos. Misposting due to geographic unfamiliarity is another common error. Racial designations are also often faulty; I have seen the same victim variously described as Native American, Caucasian, and African-American, just because they were swarthy.

The classic screwed up case is this one: CA - Kerry Graham, 15, & Francine Trimble, 14, Forestville, 16 Dec 1978. Besides the blunders in identifying these children's gender and origin, online data on them was so bungled they were excluded from online search. They were finally identified almost by accident. Read it and weep, if you have the heart.

 

[Manwel]

Manwel, LR1, in my experience, error seems to creep into these posted cases as a matter of course. The most common mistake is miscalculating a victim's age in a cold case; the poster(s) will compute a missing victim's age as extending to the date of the posting instead of only to the date of disappearance. There are also numerous typos. Misposting due to geographic unfamiliarity is another common error. Racial designations are also often faulty; I have seen the same victim variously described as Native American, Caucasian, and African-American, just because they were swarthy.

The classic screwed up case is this one: CA - Kerry Graham, 15, & Francine Trimble, 14, Forestville, 16 Dec 1978. Besides the blunders in identifying these children's gender and origin, online data on them was so bungled they were excluded from online search. They were finally identified almost by accident. Read it and weep, if you have the heart.

Oof. So I came across a couple different MAP searches where the actual Tableau functionality was turning up data that I had not selected for, so there's just the basic design and functionality oopses with it. But then I discovered a case in Monterey County (Salinas) where several female family members were killed by a family friend and cousin. This case was easily solved years ago, jail time already applied to perps, but it's still appearing in the MAP database as unsolved. Same with another CA case I stumbled upon while looking for Golden State Killer cases. There were three people murdered in 1987 in the same house that the media revealed was gang-related and solved, but in MAP it's listed as unsolved and related to burglary.

Is this all weakness of FBI records, human error during entry of information to database, or did this begin at the police report level? And how can it be improved or fixed?

 

[dotr]

My daughter, Brittany Danielle McGlone, was murdered in the home of her boyfriend May 4, 2007 in Wood County, TX. Her murder remains unsolved. The lead investigator is now charged with serious charges not related to my daughters case. Additionally, he, a previous sheriff and other county officials are defendants in federal case. Any help is so appreciated.

Just found this post in time for a new thread because there has been an arrest!

TX - TX- Brittany McGlone, 19, Sexually assaulted & beaten to death, Winnsboro, 4 May 2007 * Chad Earl Carr ARRESTED*

https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/15-years-later-arrest-made-2007-texas-homicide-19-year-n1298619 ''Dateline featured Brittany’s case in our Cold Case Spotlight series in 2021. On the morning of May 4, 2007, after working an overnight shift, Brittany drove to her boyfriend’s house in Winnsboro...

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