Kenna's research focuses on various aspects of homicide including serial and mass homicides, missing persons, unidentified dead and prostitutes as serial homicide victims. Most recently, she is a co-author of The Will To Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder with Jamie Fox and Jack Levin. Kenna authored Prostitutes as Victims of Serial Homicide: Trends and Case Characteristics from 1970-2009 and The Missing Missing: Towards a Quantification of Serial Murder Victimization in the United States. Kenna was the first to contribute her entire dataset to this effort.