Case File 071 · Investigation and Psychology

What Is an Investigative Timeline?

What an investigative timeline is, what it records, how it helps compare accounts, and why its entries must be treated with care.

By Murder Book Editorial TeamPublished 16 September 2026Updated 16 September 2026

An investigative timeline is an ordered reconstruction of the events relevant to a case, arranged by date and time. Each entry records what happened, when, and, just as importantly, where that information came from, whether a witness statement, a document, a record or physical evidence. Laying events out in order helps investigators see how different accounts fit together, where there are gaps, and where two pieces of information cannot both be right. The term is also used for a second, related record: the log of the investigation itself, showing what investigators did and when. The Los Angeles Police Department's murder book format, for example, opens with a chronological record of the investigation. A timeline is a working tool, not a verdict. Its entries are only as reliable as their sources, and human memory for time is often imprecise.

Key takeaways

An investigative timeline puts case events in order and links each entry to its source.
It is different from the chronological record of the investigation, which logs investigators' own actions.
Timelines help reveal gaps, overlaps and contradictions between accounts.
People are often inaccurate about times, durations and speeds, so a mismatch is not automatically a lie.
Research on a "timeline technique" for interviews found witnesses reported more correct details and made fewer sequencing errors.

What is the difference between an event timeline and an investigation log?

The word "timeline" can describe two separate records, and it helps to keep them apart.

	Event timeline	Chronological record of the investigation
What it tracks	What happened in the incident being investigated	What investigators did, and when
Typical entries	Movements, contacts, sightings, events described in statements or records	Interviews held, reports received, searches carried out, follow-ups needed
Main purpose	Understanding the incident and testing accounts	Accountability, continuity and supervision
Changes over time	Revised as new information confirms or contradicts entries	Added to as the investigation progresses

A 2018 profile of the LAPD Murder Book, published by the Police Foundation with support from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, describes Section 1 as a chronological record of the investigation. Each entry records the date and time and the name of the detective who wrote it. The profile says it should briefly describe the detective's actions, what was investigated and what may need further work, and point to where in the file the full report can be found. Its goal is that a reader "should be able to understand how the investigation progressed". You can read more about the file itself in What Is a Murder Book?

What goes into an event timeline?

Practices vary between agencies and cases, but a useful timeline entry generally answers a few basic questions:

When? A time or a time range. Many entries are approximate, so recording the range honestly is better than inventing precision.
What? A short, neutral description of the event.
Who? The people involved or present.
Source? Where the entry came from, such as a named witness, a document or a record.
How firm is it? Whether the entry is supported by more than one independent source, or rests on a single account.

Keeping the source attached to every entry matters. It lets anyone reviewing the timeline see which parts are well supported and which depend on one person's memory.

Why are timelines useful?

A timeline turns a pile of separate statements and documents into a single picture. That makes several things easier to see:

Gaps: periods where nothing is known.
Overlaps: points where two accounts describe the same moment and can be compared.
Conflicts: entries that cannot both be true, such as one person being described in two places at once.
Sequence: the order in which things happened, which can matter as much as exact times.

These are starting points for further questions, not conclusions. Comparing different people's descriptions of the same period is covered in how investigators compare multiple accounts, and testing one person's account of where they were is covered in how investigators test an alibi.

Why do timelines built from memory contain errors?

Human memory is poorly suited to precise times. In the introduction to their 1974 study of eyewitness memory, Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer noted that it is well documented that most people are "markedly inaccurate" when reporting numerical details such as time, speed and distance. They cited research suggesting people tend to overestimate the duration of complex events.

That means two honest witnesses can give different times for the same moment. One may anchor on a clock they glanced at, another on a feeling that "it went on for ages". A person may also remember the right events in the wrong order. As explained in why truthful accounts can still be inconsistent, a mismatch in an account is a reason to look more closely, not proof that someone is lying.

What is the timeline technique in interviews?

Psychologists have used the idea of a timeline to help witnesses remember complex events. In a 2013 study in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Lorraine Hope and colleagues tested a timeline technique for recalling an incident involving several people. Compared with free recall, participants using the timeline reported more correct details, both immediately and two weeks later, without losing accuracy. Their accounts included more correct information about what each person did and fewer errors about the order of events. The authors suggest the technique works by making use of how memory is organised around time and by reducing the constraints on how information is reported.

A 2019 follow-up in Law and Human Behavior by Hope and colleagues adapted the technique for remembering conversations. Across three experiments, participants using a timeline format reported more verbatim information and made fewer sequencing errors than those using free recall. In the later experiments they also attributed more statements correctly to the right speaker, without a drop in overall accuracy.

Time also plays a part in other interview methods. The cognitive interview, as summarised in the Ministry of Justice guidance Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings, includes an instruction to recall events in different orders, such as working backwards from the end. The guidance notes that research found people who recalled an event both forwards and in reverse remembered more correct information overall than people who recalled it forwards twice.

What are the pitfalls of an investigative timeline?

A timeline can create a false sense of certainty. Some common risks:

Precision that is not really there. An approximate time written as an exact one can look more solid than it is.
Fitting events to a theory. Once investigators favour one explanation, it is tempting to place uncertain entries where they support it. Kassin, Dror and Kukucka describe how preexisting beliefs can shape the collection and interpretation of evidence; see how confirmation bias can affect an investigation.
Treating single-source entries as facts. An event supported by one account is weaker than one supported by several independent sources.
Ignoring the gaps. An empty stretch of time is not evidence that nothing happened.

Good practice is to keep the timeline open to revision and to record why an entry was added, changed or removed.

How does this connect to Murder Book?

Murder Book: The Art of Interrogation is an upcoming narrative interrogation game from Gungrounds, an independent studio in Zagreb. Its cases focus on the parts of an investigation that come from people: unreliable stories, narrative gaps, avoidance and contradictions. Development screenshots show an evidence board that links statements together, and cases are designed for focused 5–10-minute sessions.

A timeline is a useful way to think about that kind of puzzle. When a story does not line up, the question is not only "who is lying?" but also "what else could explain this?" A gap may be forgetting, a wrong time may be an honest estimate, and a changed order of events may be a muddled memory rather than a fabrication. In Murder Book, as in real research, behaviour and inconsistency are clues to weigh, not proof. Read more about the game's format in why Murder Book cases are designed for 5–10-minute sessions.

Murder Book is in development for PC (Steam) and mobile, with release currently planned for the end of Q2 2027.