Terms of Use

Latent is a public research tool that aggregates cold-case homicide records from official law-enforcement and public-records sources into one searchable, mapped, source-cited view. By using this site you agree to the terms below. They exist mostly to keep the data from being misused in ways that could harm the families and people it concerns, and to be clear about what the data is and is not.

This page is written in plain language and is not legal advice. We are a small, self-funded project; if anything here is unclear, email us (see Contact) and we will explain it.

What Latent is

We collect records that are already public, normalize them into a common shape, geocode them, and link each field back to its source. We do not originate case facts, and we do not investigate cases ourselves. Every case page points to the official source it came from. Some details are extracted from source narratives by software running on our own hardware; those extracted fields are an overlay on the record, never a replacement for it, and they are marked as such.

Accuracy and no warranty

The data is drawn from third-party public records and may be incomplete, out of date, or wrong. We make no warranty that any record is accurate or current. The site is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind. Latent is not an official record, and it must not be used as one. For authoritative information about a case, contact the originating law-enforcement agency.

Leads for review, not conclusions

Features that surface possible connections between cases (for example, the “possibly related cases” panel) are statistical leads for human review. They are not findings, accusations, or evidence that any case is actually connected, and they say nothing about who was involved in any crime. Treat them as a starting point for further research through proper channels, never as a conclusion about any person.

Acceptable use

You may read, search, and reference this data for research, journalism, education, and similar good-faith purposes. You may not:

Use Latent to harass, threaten, stalk, surveil, or contact victims, their families, witnesses, or any named person.
Identify, accuse, or take action against anyone as a suspect. A correlation or proximity in this data is not evidence of involvement.
Use the data to make decisions about a person's eligibility for employment, housing, credit, insurance, or any similar purpose. Latent is not a consumer reporting agency and this is not a consumer report.
Bulk-scrape, harvest, or systematically download the data, or attempt to re-identify or de-anonymize any individual.
Republish the data as your own dataset without attribution to Latent and the underlying official sources.
Use the site for any unlawful purpose.

Corrections and removals

We take requests from victims' families, named individuals, and agencies seriously. If you believe information on this site is inaccurate, out of date, or should be removed, email courtney@latenttrace.org with the case page URL and a short description of the issue.

Because our records mirror official sources, corrections to the underlying facts are usually best made at the source as well, and we will update our copy to match once the source is corrected. We will also review and fix errors we introduced in aggregating or extracting.
We honor good-faith removal requests from a victim's family or the named individual, and lawful requests from agencies, weighed against the public-records nature of the data. We would rather err toward the family's wishes.
We only publish what the official source provides. We do not add inferences the source did not make (for example, a victim's race is never inferred by our software).
We aim to acknowledge requests within a few business days.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, Latent and its maintainer are not liable for any damages arising from your use of, reliance on, or inability to use the site or its data, including damages from inaccurate records or from anyone's misuse of the data. Your use of the site is at your own risk.

Intellectual property

The underlying case records are public records belonging to their originating sources. The site's design, code, and the particular compilation and presentation of the data are Latent's. If you reference the data, please attribute both Latent and the official source named on the case page.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the project changes. Material changes will be reflected in the “Last updated” date below. Continued use after a change means you accept the revised terms.

Contact

For corrections, removals, or any question about these terms, email courtney@latenttrace.org. For how the site handles visitor data, see the Privacy page.

Last updated: 2026-06-04