Our Investigative and Consulting Services

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The Hague Group offers a sophisticated approach to special investigative inquiries. The Principal Officer of THG is John Cencich, a retired law enforcement official who has worked at the local, state, federal, and international levels. Dr. Cencich has undertaken major inquiries to include violent crime, organized crime, serious frauds, and counterintelligence. He served a special attachment to Scotland Yard and was the former senior American War Crimes Investigator for the Office of the Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal. At The Hague, he led one of the largest and most complex international criminal investigations since the Second World War. These cases involved some of the world’s worst criminals, having perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination, murder, sexual assault, hostage taking, and torture. He is the co-architect of the prosecution theory of the Joint Criminal Enterprise, which was used in indicting the first sitting head-of-state in history. Upon his retirement from law enforcement, he began a second career as a tenured full professor and criminologist at Pennsylvania Western University, just outside Pittsburgh. At PennWest, he is the director of the Pennsylvania Center for Investigative and Forensic Sciences where he continues to investigate and provide consulting services to local, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies and defense teams in the areas of cold case homicides and wrongful convictions. He is the architect of the first professional Doctor of Criminal Justice program in the United States. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh where he teaches International Criminal Law as well as the Law of Armed Conflict. 

While at PennWest, Dr. Cencich has been called upon to assist the National Institute of Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice, a legislative Advisory Committee for the Study of Wrongful Convictions, and the United Nations, including the International Independent Investigation Commission Relative to the Assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, which was established by the U.N. Security Council. He also previously served as the Chair of the International Section and Vice Chair of the Law and Public Policy Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He holds a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice from Virginia Commonwealth University, advanced law degrees from the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of Pittsburgh, and the degree of Doctor of Juridical Science (International Human Rights Law) from the University of Notre Dame. He is considered an expert in the behavioral analysis of violent crime with unmatched results in forensic interviews of criminal suspects (including psychopaths), victims, and witnesses. He is a certified Master Threat Assessment Trainer with the Department of Homeland Security and a Certified Fraud Examiner. His investigative work has been recognized nationally and internationally, including the Meritorious Service Medal from the U.S. government and a formal Resolution from the Senate of Virginia commending him for his “outstanding service to the Commonwealth, the Nation, and the United Nations.” He is the author of The Devil's Garden: A War Crimes Investigator's Story.