CRAIGSLIST-RELATED MURDER SOLVED WITH THE HELP OF PAWN SHOP RECORDS

Police in Washington State and California Work Together and Use LeadsOnline, Nationwide Online Pawn Shop Database, to Solve Murder



Dallas, June 1, 2010 – A murder that took place outside of Tacoma, Washington, was solved with the help of police in San Francisco and LeadsOnline, a nationwide online database that tracks pawn shop records.

In May, a Washington state resident was killed in front of his family when he answered the door to who he thought was someone interested in buying a diamond ring he’d posted for sale on Craigslist. The individuals attacked the man and his family, killing the victim when his 14-year-old son tried to intervene. The three attackers stole the victim’s wife’s wedding ring off her hand, and fled.

The murder suspects traveled to California and sold the ring to a pawn shop near San Francisco for $40.

Police were able to track down the suspects and link them to the murder using the records provided by the pawn shop. Local pawn shops and secondhand stores report the items sold to their stores by entering the information into the LeadsOnline, database, which is then immediately accessible to law enforcement agencies across the country. Because the LeadsOnline system is based online and police across the country can access the system, there are no jurisdictional boundaries.

"We are pleased that the LeadsOnline system played a part in solving this horrific crime," says Dave Finley, President and CEO of LeadsOnline. "We admire the hard work of the detectives in this case and offer our deepest condolences to the victim’s family."

LeadsOnline is the nation’s largest online investigative system used by more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies to recover stolen property and solve crimes. Each day, millions of items are added to the LeadsOnline database by businesses including second-hand stores, scrap metal recyclers, pawnshops, and Internet drop-off stores across all 50 states. An official eBay partner, LeadsOnline helps prevent illegal transactions on the eBay website by giving law enforcement access to the world’s largest online marketplace through automatic upload of all eBay transactions into the LeadsOnline database. Those records are instantly available to law enforcement agencies, meaning crimes can be solved in seconds, not months. The LeadsOnline system, compatible with the NCIC, serves as an indispensible, efficient, and money-saving resource for detectives because it provides a cross-jurisdictional, instantaneous, and accurate ...