Dr. Laura Pettler

Named one of the world’s most influential women in forensics today in 2019 and awarded Most Influential Forensics Businesswoman (USA) by CEO Monthly Magazine in 2022, revered true crime forensic criminologist and one of the world’s leading experts on staged murder, Dr. Laura Pettler is the author of the world’s first book on solving staged murders, author of the world’s third dissertation on staged murders, inventor of the Kaleidoscope Shooting and Bloodstain Death Scene Laser Reconstruction System. Pettler is also an executive producer and director, on-camera talent and podcaster, musician-singer-songwriter, equestrian, entrepreneur, and licensed private investigator. Pettler owns and operates Laura Pettler & Associates (LPA), voted the #1 Death Investigations firm three years running for its scientific, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, decedent-centered methodological approach.

Pettler is well known for repeatedly making history. As one of the only female pioneers in forensic science the world, Dr. Pettler continues to invent ground-breaking methods based on her published research in staging behavior in homicide cases, death investigation methodology, and crime scene reconstruction. After publishing the third dissertation on staging in the world, “Doc” as she’s known to many published the first book in the world on staging Crime Scene Staging Dynamics in Homicide Cases, which included the publication of Pettler’s Victim-Centered Death Investigation Methodology (VCDIM) and Pettler’s Staging Trilogy. In 2017, she expanded VCDIM and published The Murder Room: A Systematic, Scientific, Multidisciplinary, Victim-Centered Death Investigation method. In 2021, invented Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy and published it internationally. Pettler’s Staging Taxonomy, the first taxonomy of its kind to classify staging behavior as a form of offender communicational behavior.

Pettler was the OzTeam Forensic Criminologist for the Emmy-Winning Dr. Oz Show appearing in Seasons 8, 9, 10, and 11. Pettler has appeared in numerous television shows for more than a decade and you can catch her regularly as a Guest Analyst on @CourtTVNetwork and @CourtTVUK in daytime and primetime shows. Pettler is also Executive Producer/Host/Artist of LPA’s upcoming podcast The Murder Room, and was co-host of Melissa Moore’s podcast Life After Happy Face that dropped July 2021. Additionally, in 2017, Pettler was the Executive Producer/Host/Artist Notorious: True Crime Stories with Laura Pettler nominated for Best Director by the International Academy of WebTelevision and has appeared on numerous podcasts and True Crime television shows, such as The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes, Snapped!, Killer Motive, Secrets of the Morgue, Deadly Women, Wrong Man, Gone: The Forgotten Women of Ohio, mini-series' shows like Death at the Mansion and Lovers Lane, Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Fox Nation, The Mel Robbins Show, Daily Mail TV, broadcast on all major networks like Oxygen, Discovery ID, Starz, Reelz, and Spike, and CourtTV.