Dallas S. Drake - Homicide Researcher

Dallas S. Drake is a criminologist, author and educator.  He is the co-founder of the Center for Homicide Research and serves as the principal researcher.  Drake frequently trains law enforcement, criminal justice professionals, criminologists, and crime victim advocates across the country.  He also lectures at colleges and universities. 

Drake supervises a team of nearly 100 undergraduate, graduate, and law student researchers who conduct original research and undertake analysis on the issue of homicide.  Drake offers services and resources, and provide training on issues related to homicide, violence and improving the criminal justice system.

Drake is an active member of the Homicide Research Working Group (HRWG), an international academy of homicide researchers, where he has served on program chair and on the membership committee.  Drake is also a member of the International Homicide Investigators Association (IHIA), the American Society of Criminology (ASC), the World Society of Victimology (WSV), the Midwest Sociological Society (MSS), and the Sociologists of Minnesota (SOM).

During the course of his research, Drake has performed case reviews on active and cold-case homicides and other death cases in more than two dozen states, several major U.S. cities, and three foreign countries for law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and occasionally for the friends and families of homicide victims.

Drake’s training has included: determining cause of death, child abuse homicide, death scene investigation, crime scene investigation, bloodstain pattern interpretation, identifying and protecting crime scenes, arson investigation, homicide involving burned, buried and unidentified remains, bomb threat and response, personal threat assessment, personal and group-threat response, and counter-terrorism. Drake’s training has included death and crime scene investigation provided by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, as well as national and international crime experts. 

Drake graduated in 2005 with a degree in Sociology: Law, Crime and Deviance from the University of Minnesota. Drake was a member of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and Golden Key Honor Society.  Drake spent 22 years as a career firefighter where he had occasion to be on the scene of over 50 deaths including homicides.