CrimeCollab turns public police, court, and FOIA records into one case file you can actually search: the documents, the people, the places, the vehicles. Your own material lives in the same file, so the photos you took, the notes you keep, your timeline and your theories sit beside the official record instead of in a separate folder. Upload anything and it gets read and sorted for you, with a citation on everything. When someone else’s research touches your case, you get a hint, and you can take it one fact at a time.
Free to join
Illustrative case. All names, documents, vehicles, and locations shown are fictional.
The model
The documents live in three Drive folders and a forum thread. The same person’s name is spelled four ways. Nobody can tell which claims are sourced and which have just been repeated a hundred times.
One case file, holding the official record and your own work at once. Every person, place, and vehicle is one record, however many ways it was spelled. Every claim shows how many sources back it, and separately how many people simply repeated it.
Documents, people, organizations, locations, vehicles, evidence, and events all live on the same structure. Connecting two of them connects them everywhere.
The timeline, the case map, the directory, and the narrative are not separate databases. They are four ways of looking at the same case.
This is the part you cannot get from a folder of PDFs. When another member documents a person, a vehicle, or a date that touches your case, a hint appears on yours. You read the source, then take the fact onto your own copy, one at a time. Nothing is ever overwritten in bulk, and you are never handed a conclusion.
How it works
Police reports, court filings, FOIA releases and transcripts, plus your own photos, scans, notes and audio. One at a time, or in bulk from a shared Drive folder.
Every page is read, including scans, so the whole thing becomes searchable. Photos are read too: the objects in them are identified and indexed, so you can search what a picture shows, not just what someone captioned it. And every person, place and vehicle a document names is pulled out for you.
Search it, map it, lay it on a timeline, and ask it questions. Every answer comes with a citation.
Capabilities
Ten tools that all work on the same case file, so anything you do in one shows up in the others.
Hercules answers only from the documents in the case and links every claim back to the page it came from. It keeps what the documents support visually separate from what is still a theory, and when it wants to add a fact or an event, it asks first.
Upload a document and it is read, checked, and searched for every person, place, and vehicle it names, without you doing anything.
Pan and zoom a board of people, documents, and events joined by string, and start from a board suggested by what the case already knows.
Events group by month and day, uncertain dates render as ranges instead of false precision, and long empty stretches collapse so you can see the shape of the case.
⌘K searches documents, people, organizations, locations, vehicles, and evidence at once, and it looks across every case you can see.
CrimeCollab measures each redaction bar and reads any exposed initial, then ranks candidates from names that already appear in the case. Every fill-in is your own private interpretation: it is never published as fact, never shown to others as an assertion, and never alters the source document.
Upload your photos, documents and audio, build your own timeline, board and theories, and keep private notes on anything. It all lives in the same case file as the police reports, and every item is labelled with where it came from.
Read it as continuous prose with a Key Figures sidebar, or take the newspaper-style digest. Useful when what you owe someone is a script, not a database.
Locations geocode onto a map, and people, organizations, vehicles, and evidence each get a directory that stays in sync with the documents.
Threaded channels for discussion, and an activity feed showing every change made across the case, by whom, and when.
Method
Online case research goes wrong in one specific way: a rumor gets repeated until the repetition looks like corroboration. Every number on this page is designed to make that impossible to miss.
Who it’s for
Stop rebuilding what someone already built.
Ship faster, with everything sourced.
Discovery you can defend.
Structure a document set without losing the chain.
Responsible use
The corpus is already-public police, court, and FOIA material. Source bytes are stored unmodified, with a full revision history over everything built on top of them.
A case can stay entirely yours, or be opened to named people, a group, or the wider community. You decide per tool, and you can change your mind.
Speculation is visually separated from evidence, personal annotations stay personal, and every fact shows how many independent sources back it.
CrimeCollab is a research tool. It doesn’t publish accusations, and it doesn’t replace an investigation.
Pricing
Early Adopter pricing, held for two years while you stay subscribed.
Read the record, keep a case of your own, and try the tools.
Unlimited documents and uploads, transcription, and redaction recovery.
Everything in Pro, plus cross-case search, alerts, priority processing, and bulk import and export.
Working as a firm, a newsroom, or a production? Teams and Creators plans add seats for your people, with no limits and no asking chat mid-episode.
FAQ
It is a place to build a case file out of public records, together. You bring in documents, we read them and pull out the people, places, vehicles and events, and everything ends up in one file you can search, map and talk about. It is a research tool. It does not accuse anyone and it is not an investigation.
No. Join a case that already exists and start reading straight away. The documents, the timeline and the people are already there, and you can ask questions from your first minute. Plenty of people never upload anything.
Police reports, court filings, FOIA releases and transcripts, as PDFs or scans, one at a time or in bulk from a Google Drive folder. Your own photos, notes and audio are just as welcome, and they sit in the same case file. Every page gets read, including scans, so all of it becomes searchable, and each item keeps a label saying where it came from. Your original file is never altered.
You can read it immediately. The reading, the name extraction and the rest happen in the background, and the document fills out as they finish. Big scanned files take longer than clean PDFs.
The assistant that answers questions about your case. It reads only the documents in that case and shows you the citation for every claim, so you can open the page it came from. You can also ask it to stay strictly on the evidence, or to reason more freely, and the answer is visibly marked either way. When it wants to add a fact or an event to your case, it asks first.
Documents, Gallery, Timeline and Verified Records. Documents is everything you have brought in. Gallery is the photos, where the objects in each picture are identified so you can search by what a photo shows. Timeline lays events out in order, and Verified Records are the items whose source has been confirmed.
A page each for People, Businesses and Organisations, Locations, Vehicles and Evidence, built from what the documents actually say. Every mention of the same person collapses into one entry, however many ways the name was spelled, and each entry links back to the pages it came from. Locations also plot on the Location Map.
Red Threads is the corkboard: pins for people, documents and events, joined by string, and you can start from a board we suggest. Theories is where you write up what you think happened and keep it attached to the evidence. Consensus shows where independent members have converged on the same reading, with the counts behind it rather than a single score.
Yes, two ways. Full Narrative reads as continuous prose with a Key Figures sidebar. Case Digest lays the same material out like a newspaper, which is handy when what you owe someone is a script rather than a database.
One search box, and it covers documents, people, organisations, locations, vehicles and evidence at once. It also looks across every case you have access to, so a name that turns up in someone else’s file still finds you.
Partly, and carefully. Scanned releases often black out names. We measure each bar, read any letter left exposed, and rank the names already in the case that would fit. Whatever you settle on is your own private reading. It is never published as fact, never shown to anyone else as a claim, and never changes the document.
Upload the recording and you get a transcript with speakers separated and timings on every line, so you can click a sentence and hear it. The transcript is searchable like any other document, and names spoken in it join the rest of the case.
Yes. Forum gives you threaded channels for the case, and Activity Feed shows every change made across it, by whom and when. Feed is the wider view: what is happening in the cases and people you follow.
Yes, when you want to. Pages lets you assemble documents, photos and writing into something presentable, with a few themes to choose from. Individual official records can also be given a public link that anyone can open without an account.
This is the part you cannot get from a folder of PDFs. When another member documents a person, a vehicle or a date that touches your case, a hint turns up on yours. You read their source, then take the fact onto your own copy if you want it. Nothing is ever added behind your back, and you are never handed a conclusion.
Every claim carries two numbers: how many independent sources back it, and separately how many people have simply asserted it. A thing repeated a hundred times never starts to look like a hundred sources. You can also attach a document to a claim to support it or to contradict it, so a disagreement stays anchored to paper rather than to opinion.
Your profile shows what you have contributed and lets other people follow your work. Badges recognise kinds of contribution rather than volume, so grinding out edits does not earn them.
You choose. A case can stay entirely yours, or be opened to named people, to a group, or to the wider community, and you set that per tool rather than all at once. You can change your mind later either way, and your personal notes stay personal even in a case you share.
Joining is free and no card is required, and the free plan is a real one rather than a trial. Paid plans start at $9 a month if you pay annually, and if you subscribe now that price is held for two years while you stay subscribed.
Pro lifts the day-to-day limits: unlimited documents and uploads, far more storage and pages read, transcription minutes, and redaction analysis. Max adds the things that only make sense at scale, like searching across every case at once, alerts, bulk import and export, and priority processing.
Credits are how you thank people. Members get an allowance each month and can tip contributors whose work they relied on, and you can buy more if you want to. They are not money and they do not convert back into money. They are a way to credit people, not a fee you are charged.
Any time, from your billing page, and you keep everything you have paid for until the end of that period. Your cases and documents stay yours on the free plan afterwards.
The material is already public, but that does not make everything fair game. Names of minors are blocked from the tools that surface people, private individuals are treated differently from public figures, speculation is kept visually apart from evidence, and every fact shows how thin or thick the sourcing behind it really is. If something should not be here, tell us and we will take it down.
Bring in a single report and watch it become people, places, dates, and citations you can search. Or join a case that’s already underway and start reading.
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