The New New
Meet the Serial-Killer Whisperer
This woman has the world’s most comprehensive database on what makes serial killers tick
Last year, in late-July, Sasha Reid went to her desk in her apartment just outside Toronto. Her cat, Giz, hopped onto her lap. It was late, and the sun had already gone down. She booted up her champagne-colored MacBook Air and began searching through recent police reports from Canada, looking for people who had been reported missing for more than 72 hours, which is when most law enforcement agencies open cases.
Reid, a 30-year-old criminologist and developmental psychologist who’s finishing her PhD at the University of Toronto, has been collecting information on missing persons for more than two years. She’s amassed an in-depth database of thousands of them — drawing from official Search and Rescue (SAR) reports, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) database, collecting tips from crime-beat journalists as well as from friends and family of those missing — in order to obtain the age, ethnicity, demographic, and geographical information of victims. For some of this data collection, she’s delegated research responsibilities to 13 volunteer undergraduates at the University of Toronto. Often, she cross-references this database with another database that she’s been…
