Crime scene getaway

A crime scene getaway is the act of departing from the location where one has committed a crime. It is an act that the offender(s) may or may not have planned in detail, resulting in a variety of outcomes. A crime scene is the "location of a crime; especially one at which forensic evidence is collected in a controlled manner." The "getaway" is any escape by a perpetrator from that scene, which may have been witnessed by eyewitnesses or law enforcement.

The crime scene getaway is the subject of several penal laws. If motor vehicles are used for the getaway, then each vehicle is a new crime scene.

In some jurisdictions, the very act of making a getaway from a crime scene is an inchoate criminal offense in itself, though it is generally viewed as natural behavior for a lawbreaker. For example, under New York law, "escape" is defined as escaping custody or detention; "unlawful fleeing a police in a motor vehicle" is a distinct crime.

For thousands of years in the past, the standard method of escape from a crime scene was for the perpetrator merely to run away, faster than the constable on patrol, sheriff, or the night watchman. This was common even into the 20th century. For example, according to the Warren Commission report, Lee Harvey Oswald infamously walked, then ran away from the Texas School Book Depository from where he shot President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. If another means of transportation becomes unavailable, the suspect may have to run.

Once humans domesticated horses, that animal became a favorite way to escape a crime scene. Many old "Wild West" bank robbers, train robbers and other outlaws such as Butch Cassidy, Tom Horn, Jesse James, John Wesley Hardin, Apache Kid, Bill Doolin, Tiburcio Vasquez, Cherokee Bill, Sam Bass, Billy the Kid, Rufus Buck, Belle Starr, Henry Plummer, Soapy Smith, William Brocius, Queen Ann Bassett, Jim Miller, John Wilkes Booth and Bob Dozier of the 19th century used horses to get away from the scene of their larceny and murders.

The etymology of two common terms for peace officers in premodern times indicates that their major role may have been to prevent horse theft—or escape by horse. These are constable (from the Latin comes stabuli -- attendant to the stables), and marshall, a loanword from Old Norman French, which in turn is borrowed from Old Frankish *marhskalk "stable boy, keeper, servant", cognate with Germanic *marha- "horse" (cf. Engl. mare) and skalk- "servant" (cf. Old Engl. scealc "servant, soldier").

While not as common in modern times, horses have still been used by criminals to flee from a crime scene and/or escape from police, oftentimes in developing countries where motor vehicles might not be as common and/or in cases when the suspects are trying to uses horses to flee in rural areas and/or wilderness areas where cars would be either too impractical or noisy. Examples of criminals using getaway horses in modern times, include organized criminals fleeing from the scene of narcotics operations, safe houses or smuggling routs when they have been discovered by police. During the Columbian search block manhunt, Pablo Escobar and his cartel associates utilized multiple methods to evade the authorities, even at times using escape-horses.

A motor vehicle, commonly referred to as a getaway car, is frequently used by the offender to flee the scene of a crime. Getaway cars are prevalent in major crimes such as bank robberies and homicides. Very frequently, but not always, a getaway car is stolen and is abandoned soon after the crime, in the hope that the vehicle cannot be traced to the offender.