2008 Woodie Awards
Woonsocket detective discusses city's first serial killer at Forensics Seminar
Jeff Sullivan
Issue date: 3/4/08 Section: Campus
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Jeffrey Mailhot was an active serial killer in the Woonsocket area, murdering three confirmed victims, all of whom were prostitutes.
"Woonsocket has always had a lot of crime, particularly against prostitutes," he said. "But we have never had a case like this, mainly because everyone knows each other here for the most part," he said of the close-knit community.
Durand said that this case was unique because there was never much evidence as to who may have committed the crime. Mailhot admitted his motive in a taped confession obtained after his arrest.
"He said only that they were whores, and that no one would miss them," Durand said. "It was so frustrating trying to find evidence on this guy."
The difficulty, he said, was that since prostitutes work outside the law, and basically get into cars with complete strangers, there are usually no witnesses and few punctual missing person reports filed.
He is not the only person who realizes this problem. Kenna Quinet, a professor of criminology at Purdue University, said in a recent article, "The Missing Missing: Toward a Quantification of Serial Murder Victimization in the United States," the number of serial killer victims are much more numerous than current figures estimate.
She said because there are so many cases of under investigated deaths in the United States, many victims, like prostitutes, runaway foster children and transients, are not counted as murder victims, and therefore not even considered in serial killings.
She states in her article, that the number of estimated homicides is so low that if such missing persons were serial murdered, the number of serial victims in the United States could be as much as 10 times the initial estimated annual amount, which she said is around 1,832 victims every year.
Durand said that in the beginning of the case, the fact that Mailhot killed people who would not be missed, there were very few clues to point to him.