Research method

How LAST KNOWN builds a case record

LAST KNOWN is designed for examination, not passive true-crime consumption. The unit of work is a sourced claim connected to the record that supports, contextualizes, or contradicts it.

Atomic claims, not narrative certainty

A case narrative can make disputed details feel settled simply because they are written in the same paragraph. LAST KNOWN separates material statements into atomic claims, preserves their factual state, and publishes the source relationship beside them.

Exact provenance

A citation is more than a URL. Where available, the public record retains the producing organization, source and record type, source version, exact excerpt or locator, publication date, independence classification, and the citation’s relationship to the claim.

Time stays uncertain when the record is uncertain

Approximate, disputed, inferred, or bounded times are not silently converted into exact timestamps. Chronology relationships are attached to the specific published claim version so a later wording change cannot quietly inherit an older time assertion.

Contradictions remain visible

A conflicting source is not discarded simply because another source was accepted. Contradiction is a relationship researchers need to see. Competing accounts remain separate and their provenance stays inspectable.

Publication is a controlled boundary

Draft research is not automatically public. Published material passes separate risk, canonical approval, and release gates. The public Case Desk reads from approved publication projections rather than exposing canonical staff tables directly.

Corrections preserve history

When a published representation is corrected, LAST KNOWN preserves what the public previously saw, what replaced it, why it changed, and the publication revision that released the correction.