SKN

Hello everyone, this is Susanne Knabe-Nicol from Police Science Dr and today I'm doing an interview with Clare Bowie. Clare used to be a geographic profiler working for the National Crime Agency here in the UK, the NCA. And I met her, I think, 2007 or 2008 when I was doing my Master's in investigative psychology and actually did my dissertation for my Master's on geographic profiling. And she was in the team at the time and I did some intensive one-to-one sessions with each of the geographic profilers to extract their expertise and how they work exactly, cognitively. So, I've got a good understanding, hopefully, of geographic profiling. I should do because of that dissertation. It also got published earlier this year as an article, this particular study. And I teach it to my students when I teach on the criminology program at Middlesex University. Now, the reason I want to speak to Clare is because she had a really interesting case that she worked on, interesting investigatively, because the way that geographic profiling usually works is one way and we'll get to that and the way that she was using it and applying it to help catch the perpetrator was a very different approach. So, I thought it would be really good to have a chat with her and find out a little bit about geographic profiling and that case. And here she is. Hello, Clare. Welcome. Could you please tell us a little about how you got into geographic profiling in the first place?

CB

Yeah, I was always interested in psychology and criminology and did psychology at university. And luckily enough, during my undergraduate degree, I did a year out at the National Crime Faculty, as it was then, which changed into the National Crime Agency. I did a placement year working with the National Crime Faculty. And they, at the time, were setting up a serious crime analysis section and they used to train serious offending profiling as well. And as they set up the serious crime analysis section, I got a job when I graduated from university as an assistant analyst and an analyst, doing mainly crime linkage across the UK. And then we started a geographic profiling section. And because I'd been using the mapping tools and doing some spatial analysis, my interest piqued in relation to geographic profiling. And I got a job on the team, which was great. I was the first civilian member of the team. All the others had been police officers.

SKN

Excellent. That's good background. Could you give us a good explanation, a good definition of what geographic profiling is for those who are not familiar with it?

CB

Sure. Geographic profiling is basically a prioritisation technique. It does that using spatial analysis and spatial theories and strategies. So, offender profilers that you might ordinarily have heard of will use behavioural profiling to work out who the offender is. And geographic profiling focuses more on where that offender might be found. It brings in research and analysis from criminal spatial research and human behaviour to try and work out why an offender is choosing a specific location to commit their offences. It doesn't locate the offender, but it does give you, as a criminal investigator, an idea of where you could potentially start looking, the best place to do any DNA screens or to set up surveillance based on where and when the offences are occurring.

SKN

That's probably a very new concept to many people, even those in policing. What is geographic profiling based on or how does it work?

CB

It works on a spatial analysis of where the offences occurred. Kim Rosmo was the person who generated this technique. He did a lot of research in the US on serial killers, looking at where they picked up their victims, where they disposed of the bodies, where they might have taken them for attack locations and where they might have disposed of any property. And he was able to plot these locations and predict with some degree of certainty where they might strike again or where they might dispose of bodies in the future. And it's all to do with the distances and the locations of where the target or victim might be found. Overlaid with the knowledge that the offender has of a specific location or number of locations. Offenders tend to commit their offences in places that they're familiar with and they know because it means they're aware of the risks associated with that location. They're aware of the escape routes and the chances of them being able to commit that crime successfully because they know that location.

SKN

Something that I find very interesting about geographic profiling is that when you talk about the basics in that way, ‘people tend to offend in areas they're familiar with’ - once you plot the offence locations of certain crimes committed by one offender, and you also show where they live, you see that there's a cluster of offences near where they live. And people might think, ‘Well, that's obvious, you know, because people don't travel far’ and you're thinking, ‘Well, hang on, but we can use that in policing. We can use that to prioritise a long list of suspects to say, well, OK, let's start with the ones that live in areas we know are most likely to be inhabited by offenders based on where they live and where they've been offending.’ So, it's not that obvious at all. And how it can then be applied is obviously the science and is the bit where you guys came in and then did your magic. How exactly did you use geographic profiling in the NCA?

CB

We used it on mostly rape and serial offences, such as arson and indecent assault. Obviously, it's based on murder, serious murder in the US, but the same principles and techniques can be used in the UK. We used it on, as I say, serial offences, but also there's some singular offences where we had multiple locations that we could use it and use the theories to support the investigation on where they might be looking for the offender given the direction of travel they went post-offence or maybe where they deposited some property from the victim. Or maybe even we had some sightings pre or post-offence that we could use to identify how long they'd been in the area, when they came into the area, for example, and how long they'd been there.

SKN

Because the basic principles are that usually the offender has a link to the location or has a link to the victim, because otherwise they probably wouldn't be there at that time when the victim is there, ready to commit an offence. And once you can work out whether they are linked to the victim or they are linked to the location, again, it helps you with your prioritisation, because let's say you've got, in very crude terms, let's say you've got a rape or rape-murder somewhere. Initially, it starts by saying, OK, well, all the males in a certain radius could be suspects. Then you take off certain ages, anyone below the age of, I don't know, 14, maybe anyone above the age of 80. And then you start whittling it down. But once you understand the relation of the psychology of geography and where we actually all go and what locations we use, which routes we use, and you understand those dynamics and you can apply those to offending, because a lot of researchers have looked at geographic profiling for investigative purposes; we can prioritize these lists of suspects and we can, like you say, it doesn't identify the offender, but it gives a good starting point for the police. It's like finding, you know, when we're looking for the needle in the haystack, which bale of hay do we start in? So that's always how I understand this. Can you tell us what the training route is to becoming a geographic profiler, either at the time when you did it or if you know what it is now? Because obviously you have left the NCA, you're doing a different job at the moment, but how do you become a geographic profiler?

CB

Yeah, so at the time, which was some time ago, actually 20 years ago, I did my training. It was a course within the UK taught by one of the current geographic profilers. There's a number of exercises we did using the computer systems, doing a lot of research, reading the theories and then applying it to cases that had been dealt in the UK and kind of doing profiles and getting those reviewed by my colleagues. And then I had a year's kind of probation where I was supported and all my work was reviewed internally by the team. There was four of us at the time in the UK who used to work with me and make sure that I was completing the profiles accurately and deciphering them, analysing them correctly. The computer system gives you a profile, but it's very important that you don't just take that as ‘X marks the spot’ and that's where the offender lives. It's very important that you do the analysis and provide analytical recommendations based on that and what that profile might be telling you. Is it telling you where the offender lives or is it potentially telling you their hunting area and where they're going to identify victims?

SKN

And I remember your colleagues when I was doing my research with all of you guys saying that I think you were the only civilian, like you said, but you came from this analytical background, which obviously added a very thorough methodological side into the team, which was very valuable. And yes, with geographic profiling, I think most people's understanding of it is that it helps identify where the offender might be based. So, they have a base which can be their home address or can be their work address if they're commuting to work. And that is probably one of the main applications in terms of trying to locate the offender. Obviously, the hunting ground is a very different approach, which we're going to talk about in terms of that case that we're going to discuss. There are differences with these findings from geographic profiling. I mean, there are statistics that most rapists, for example, don't offend further than two point something kilometres from their home base. And there are other similar findings that people, that offenders travel further to commit property offenses like theft and damage than personal offenses like violence. And they're sort of the bread and butter of some of the people who work in this field, but how do these findings differ across countries or across geographies like rural areas versus more urban areas, for example?

CB

I go back to basics, right? If you think of yourself and where you went yesterday, you probably travelled, you started at your home base, I would imagine, and you either went to work or you socialised or you went to the shops. And then you came back home at the end of the day to sleep. Now, there's only so far you can go within that time, whether you commit offenses or not, most people will go back to that home base. So, the time that you can travel within that day is restricted by all the other activities that you do. If you live somewhere rural, you're more likely to get into a car and travel further to a supermarket or to a leisure centre. And offenders are the same, right? They have to commit those offences within their daily routine activities. So, they would choose on their way to work to go to somewhere where they might be able to pick up a victim or somewhere they might be able to steal a car. And so, the time and the distance that they can travel is governed by their routine activities and their spatial awareness and where they're going on a daily basis. So, if you live in a quite a built-up area, you could probably get what you needed, you know, on the local corner shop. You travel further if you're in a more rural area than if you live in a town centre or a city centre. And then obviously, the transport routes, transport networks, if you're not driving, if you're taking transport, then, you know, we look at the transport networks, trains and buses, because offenders are using those as well as on foot. So, it's looking at the whole of what the area tells you spatially and what the offender is telling you by the places he's choosing to commit those offenses as to where he's likely to live or she is likely to live.

SKN

And you mentioned software early on. Obviously, you were trained on the RIGEL system. What does the software do? How does it fit into your process? And what do you then do with the findings it comes up with?

CB

It uses an algorithm when you've got a number of offences. So, the underlying principles are that you need five linked offences to do a geographic profile, as it is called. And this computer output uses the algorithm to identify the most likely, the most probable area of offender residence based on the spread of crimes around that area. It also incorporates what we call a buffer zone. There is an area around an offender's home where they're least likely to commit an offence. Obviously, you don't commit crime on your doorstep. You might be identified by a neighbour or someone you know. You might be witnessed and they might recognise you. Offenders don't offend just outside their home area, but it will be just a kind of average distance away. And then the chances of them committing an offence decreases the further away they go from their home address as well. It uses this computer algorithm to identify the most probable area of residence based on the spatial locations of the linked series. As I say, we need five or more and we need a high degree of certainty that all those offenscs are committed by the same offender. That's where my background in crime linkage came in as well. The other thing is we need to be pretty sure that we've got all the offences that an offender has committed as well. If we only know of six and he's done 60, then we're going to have a skewed analysis when we just look at a small portion of those offences. So, it's really important that we look at all the criminality in the area and either using DNA or behavioural similarities that we're kind of sure or that we're aware of a high proportion of the offences the offender has committed. Obviously, some offences won't even be reported by their victims. And that's something we have to take into consideration when we're doing a profile.

SKN

It was one of my conclusions when I did my study with you guys that actually with what your understanding is and the patterns that you're aware of and the patterns that have been identified in research, I think you could do this without the software. And in quite a few cases, an increasing number of cases at the time, you did not use the software, but it probably still offers some good pointers. Shall I show the picture of the formula here? And I don't know, can you talk us through that formula?

CB

Yeah, so as I spoke about, it's kind of an analysis of all the different locations that are pulled in. But what I was saying was the buffer zone looks at the probability being lower, and then further away, it's higher. I won't try and talk you through it, but it does incorporate the buffer zone and all the different locations. And gosh, you know what, it's a long time since I've walked through that. But yeah, for every location in that grid, there is a probability that the offender lives there. The more purple locations have a lower priority, a lower probability of offender residence going up to the kind of hotspot, the red and orange peak location. That's where the offender's likely to live, or kind of be targeting and looking for victims. We would suggest on the basis of that profile, that any investigative strategies will be based on the red and orange area in the middle. There’s normally a 5-6% chance, depending on our analysis, that the offender has an anchor point in that high probability area. [Is that all?]

SKN

It's all about statistical probabilities, isn't it? As we've said, it doesn't identify the offender, it just shows us where, based on research that has been done on geographic profiling, and based on the offences, that we're quite confident are linked to the same offender - what are the most likely areas where this offender has a base? And that could be their place of work, it could be their home address. And this output was called a jeopardy surface, wasn't it? It's just showing the most likely areas of where that base might be. There was the red areas, and then it was like a heat map, it was cooling down around the surfaces. Would you like to talk us through this case now that we've met online here to discuss? And just tell us what the case was, what the circumstances were, what your approach was, and etc.

CB

I got called into Somerset Police in relation to this offence, they'd had a number of sexual assaults within the city centre. And they were linked, some on behaviour and some on the description of the offender, he'd been wearing a balaclava. And he'd been targeting victims in skirts walking around the city centre. They'd all happened, mostly in the evenings on Friday and Saturday night, so we were sure that he was targeting young females as they were going about their social activities within the city centre. Given the linkage, and given the times, we were called in to do some geographic analysis. The offence timings show that, there was a high likelihood that he was in the area, targeting females, you can see they're mostly on a Friday, and although they're on a Saturday and a Sunday, it's on the Friday night into a Saturday period, the social hours where people were out socialising and heading home from those social activities within the city centre. And actually, we do a lot of work just not on the locations, but where the victims have been that night. During the analysis of the offences, I read all the victims’ statements, witness statements, we were able to identify where the victims have spent their evening and also their routes home to where the offences had occurred. They'd all been within the central Bath area, socialising and then had walked home to their home addresses and it was during this walk that they were being attacked.

CB

Yeah, exactly that. We were able to see from the victim analysis that they'd all started their journeys within the city centre, and as you quite rightly say, that was then identified as his hunting area. Some of them would walk with friends, and then they'd split at certain times, and then as you say, you know, he'd attack them sometimes going in their back garden gate, so he'd leave it right to the last minute. The attack locations at the end of these coloured lines were actually a long way off, and we could tell by CCTV or witnesses that he'd followed them right out of the city centre area here, which is shown where the coloured lines all kind of start and come together. And then that's overlaid also by where the geographic profile probability area is as well. You can see here that the peak area of probability was over the city centre. Given that all the victims had started there, given that the temporal analysis showed us that he potentially wasn't there other times of the week, he was just there when he knew there was a high probability that potential victims would be walking and socialising, we were able to guide the investigation that they might not actually be looking for someone who was resident within this area, but someone that was travelling to the area to wait, lay in wait, maybe sometimes, you know, five, six, ten times as many times as he was offending, waiting in an attempt to commit these offences. And we know that from previous research and previous knowledge of offenders, that some of them actually hunt for their victims much, much more than the actual, the times that you actually get an offence reported. Some of these offenders are out hunting for long periods and hence things like surveillance in the area and decoy operations are the things that potentially might identify this offender when he's wandering around, following victims, maybe he'll follow a victim and they'll get into a taxi. And you'll start to witness this kind of behaviour from offenders who were just wandering in an area quite aimlessly, trying to identify their next potential victim.

SKN

We probably knew about most or all of the actual assaults, but there might have been a lot of practice runs, a lot of previous, incidences of him hunting, following, and like you said, somebody might have gone off into a taxi and then he aborted that particular pursuit. There's always potentially a lot of witness information that, ‘Did you see anyone sort of following anyone? Did you see anyone looking suspicious, just walking behind someone?’ And there's a lot of these precursor offences or practice runs or aborted missions. Let’s just have a look at this image again. What we're seeing here is the yellowish area, as you said, is what the geographic profile predicted as the either offender residence or hunting ground, where all the lines start in the centre is where the victims started their journey out of the town centre from. And the coloured lines are the routes that they walked on their own to get to their home location. And then the ends of those coloured lines are where she was attacked, correct? And what are the two stars?

CB

The two stars, when we finally identified the offender, which we did via a decoy operation within the city centre, we were able to identify that he did have, not currently, but he was previously known to have lived in the Bath city centre. That had given him a familiarity, a knowledge that there were potential victims. But he lived a few miles away in one of the local towns and he was travelling in, parking up. Actually, in one of the offences, we were able to see him following a victim in a vehicle. He was in the vehicle driving slowly behind her. He was travelling into the city centre to where he knew there was a higher number of potential victims than where he'd actually lived. And that was where he was preying and hunting for these females.

SKN

Can you talk us through that decoy operation that you set up?

CB

As a geographic profiler, one of the challenges is we're never actually involved in the police investigation itself. We will take their information and data and their witness statements and all the work they're doing and do the analysis. But we're not directly involved in the investigations that occur. I did a report advising that a decoy operation, if done safely, would be potentially an option here. This offender wasn't using weapons. He wasn't using a high degree of violence, so we felt that it was a viable option here. We had plainclothes officers walking the routes of the victims very safely under surveillance. And we did actually catch the offender following the victim. And just as she walked into a safe house, he walked up the pathway to that house and was arrested following the plainclothes officer.

SKN

Excellent. Fantastic. Do you know how many times they'd been running that decoy operation before they caught him?

CB

I think they ran it a couple of times before they actually were able to catch him.

SKN

OK, so the fascinating bit for me here was that it was the hunting ground that you identified. The home addresses and where he had lived before, that's obviously that you found out after, once he had been caught. But finding out where was he looking around, waiting for someone to follow and attack? That's the interesting bit here, which is why I want to talk through this case.

CB

And the other thing we were very careful about kind of within the timeline of this kind of investigation was not to do too much in the press. Because if we did put e-fits out and there was an EFIT at one point and there was a period where he didn't offend. You will be very careful if you're using surveillance techniques and decoy strategies that you haven't kind of chased the offender away. He might change his hunting area. He might change his strategy and his MO. There's lots of intercepting kind of things to be aware of when you're kind of putting out this surveillance strategy or doing any other kind of investigative techniques. Lots of options, lots of things to consider.

SKN

It can be a very difficult decision, can’t it. Do you want to warn the public and make them aware and prevent offending? Or do you want to catch him and prevent offending that way? So, yes, it's always a very fine balance that has to be struck on a case basis. What would you say are some of the challenges of geographic profiling?

CB

As I said, we're always one step removed from the actual investigation. I can do my analysis,  I can give my strategies and techniques that I would suggest. But it's up to the police officer in charge of the investigation to decide how he might take those strategies that are suggested and obviously take them in line with other evidence or the priorities of the kind of techniques that are available to him. Sometimes I used to be quite passionate about, you know, ‘Do it this way. This is how you're going to catch them’. But I need to leave the overarching decisions and prioritisation to the to the investigator. So that's what I found most challenging in an investigation such as this one, the challenge is you've got to be there at the right time and the right location to catch that offender. And, you know, he might have moved on. He might not offend again. Having the right strategy at the right time and the right location to catch them, which you can't always do. And that's frustrating, right? I've probably done, you know, hundreds of reports in my time. And you only know you're right if they actually catch the offender, whether they're using your strategy and prioritisation or not. I've got a lot of unsolved cases I expect out there that I don't know whether they were right or wrong. But we just give our best analysis on the data that we've got available to us. And, you know, we might not have all of the information that would help us make that right decision because it's just unknown to the investigation at that time.

SKN

Well, the other factor is that you might have been spot on and what you suggested they do, where and when you suggested they do it might have been absolutely right. But he could have broken his leg and been in bed for a few weeks, or he could have gone on holiday. And that's why it's really difficult sometimes to determine or assess the accuracy or usefulness of behavioural profiling or geographic profiling, because, well, it's based on statistics, so while something might be the most likely scenario and, you know, you use all your professional experience and qualifications to work out what is most likely, it doesn't mean that that is what this offender did. Now, does that mean the profiling process didn't work? Does that mean you didn't know what you were doing? Or does that mean, well, this person just did not do what was the most likely thing to have been done? It can be really difficult to assess profiling like this, for example.

CB

We used to say ‘As long as you're wrong for the right reasons. It was still a good report’, which might sound a bit strange. But as long as you did the analysis in the right way and came up with the right prioritisation, even if the offender lived somewhere else, we'd always go back and review what we did. But what did we miss? What didn't we find or what didn't we know about him? It's a probability, right? We could always have that chance that we didn't get it right that time. There's always outliers and people that don't fit those patterns. It's the 80-20 rule, I guess, again, which pops up everywhere.

SKN

Yeah, yeah, exactly. What would you say is the potential of geographic profiling and how would you like to see it develop?

CB

I think it's got huge potential. I'd like to see it used more across multiple offences. We just used to use it in the National Crime Agency, it's just really high-level offences, but I think it's got a practical application across burglaries. I've used it for arsons, different property offences. So potentially, you know, it's got quite a cross application. But it's having either the geographic profiling or analytical software available for the local police area or being able to identify someone via the kind of theory and research principles as well. So hopefully, you know, we were teaching those to officers themselves so that they could apply them to their strategies and tactics and also be aware of them when they're interviewing victims and witnesses to be able to ask them the right questions. So, hopefully it will continue to be applied to investigations globally to try and identify offenders in the future.

SKN

One of the conclusions of my PhD research was that I was comparing the data I had collected with you guys on what kind of geographical understanding can you apply to a certain case? And I compared that to police officers. And I found that there's a certain level of geographic understanding already within investigators. And I think that's great because that's a basis you can work on. But there's a lot of more high-level understanding that they're missing out on. So, my conclusion was, I think they should either be trained in some geographic profiling principles, like you say, because they might ask more detailed and more relevant questions. Like, for example, for this serial rape case in Bath, where exactly were the victims walking? Where did they start? Exactly which route did they take? Or to have someone who's trained in geographic profiling in every force. And I know that quite a number of analysts are already trained in geographic profiling. But in the forces that I worked in, the rural forces, we didn't have that. And I think we don't know the extent of missed opportunities there. And I always thought, well, if one of you guys, you know, geographic profiler reviewed some open cases, how much value could they have added to that? At the moment, we don't know how much we're missing. But I think it would definitely be worth training a lot more people, investigators, analysts, on geographic profiling principles. But as it stands, we have one geographic profiler left at the National Crime Agency, covering the whole country. And obviously, you know, they're dealing with a certain amount of cases that they can handle. And I think there's a big gap in-between the cases that go to the geographic profiler and the thousands of cases that have no geographic input. And what could we do if we did have someone with the right knowledge in there?

CB

And we used to spend a lot of our time training on the detective courses. We used to go to Hendon and across the UK talking to officers that were doing different types of investigations and talk to them about the type of information they'd want to collect from victims and witnesses. Because it's not only where knowing where the offender went, it's knowing almost where they didn't go. If the victim says, oh, he didn't definitely didn't run away that way. This is another technique that we developed, that post-offence movement was quite indicative of where the offender might live or where they might be parked. You'd always go back to your home address following an offence. And we found that was quite likely. All this information and, you know, police officers quite rightly are trained to look for evidence during their training. What we would give them is highlight the importance of other more behavioural or spatial information that they might be able to glean from the victims and witnesses that they're talking to. Or where to collect CCTV from to identify the offender's route post-offence or pre-offence to try and identify more spatial information that might lead them to capturing the offender in a specific series or case.

SKN

Do you have any other cases that you can remember where you used a certain specific aspect of geographic profiling to find them, any other one that stands out to you?

CB

The post-offence movement. I've got an example of that, I worked on the Sally Anne Bowman murder in Croydon and we were able to identify that she got out of a car at her home address. So, you know, the opposite of the Bath series, if you like. She wasn't followed back to her home address, which was a crescent. We knew it was someone that had had a familiarity with the crescent that she lived in. She hadn't been followed back there. He was in the crescent for some other reason. And post-offence, we found she was murdered on her doorstep and we found some items from a handbag in a certain direction out of the crescent and turning out. So, we were able to identify the direction the offender had gone post-offence and give prioritised locations for the investigation to do a DNA screen in the local area. Working with the behavioural profilers, they would say, given the violence within the offence, it was likely to be someone younger. It was likely to be someone with a criminal record. So, we used a DNA screen in the local area to identify likely offenders and compare their DNA with the DNA that was found at the scene. And again, this was one of those that was quite high profile. They put a lot of investigative time and resources into it, but they just didn't find that offender living in the local area at that time. It was some time later that he actually was identified during, I think it was a bar fight in the local area and they took a DNA swab from him as a suspect and it matched on the DNA database against the murder of Sally Anne. And then following that, we were able to identify that he did have a previous residence in the crescent that she was attacked in. So again, showing that these offenders often don't live very far away from the places that they're hunting for victims and attacking their victims in.

SKN

So, if he had still lived in the crescent at the time, he would have been asked to provide a DNA sample?

CB

Yes, if he had still been living there, then yes, he would have provided a sample. Because he wasn't living there, he didn't come to our attention until sometime later. He was working in the Croydon area and had wandered there after he'd been working. But we always used to learn from our mistakes and one of our techniques following that investigation was to look at previous residence as a secondary layer of prioritisation going forward. You always kind of learn from the cases you work on and develop that into future investigations as well.

SKN

Any other cases that come to mind?

CB

I'll tell you about the best one, when I was still an analyst, actually, and I was working on a series. And we went to look at the crime locations. And as we were looking at one of the locations where schoolgirls used to walk home at lunchtime, this offender was offending against the schoolgirls and used to spend time wandering around the area. And lo and behold, when we were walking up to the kind of peak area where he'd been offending at lunchtime, we did come across the offender looking for victims and the police officers we were with had to make a very quick arrest and we were able to identify that he was the offender. So, we actually caught him in action. That was a nice result.

SKN

That was nice and efficient. Well done. OK, fantastic. And my last question is, if you could wave a magic wand and you could make one change in geographic profiling and law enforcement, what would that be?

CB

Oh, my goodness. I think, and very controversially, I would like everyone to have their DNA swabbed, their DNA held on the system. I think that would allow offenders, like we've been talking about, when there is DNA identified from a victim to be identified a lot more quickly.

SKN

It's interesting that that is controversial because some people would start going ‘My personal freedom’ and I'm just thinking, what on earth do you think is going to happen? Nothing will happen. And well, unless, of course, you commit an offence, but that's the whole point is to make society safer. I personally, in our society, I have no objections to that. Obviously, there are some governments where I don't know if there were any dodgy things they could do with somebody's DNA, fair enough that there's mistrust, I'm not saying the British government are particularly trustworthy, but to be honest, I don't think they've got a great interest in doing anything untoward with people's DNA. So, I think for investigative purposes and to keep people safe, I totally get that. And personally, I'm not against it. So, yeah, I totally understand. Well, thank you very much for your time today. And it was really fascinating to hear about this case and geographic profiling. And, I hope that people got a lot out of it. And fantastic. Thank you very much, Clare.

CB

No problem. My pleasure to talk about it. Brought back some memories.

SKN

I bet it does. Speak to you soon. Bye.