Category Archives: Crime scene

Getting the Ax

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pickaxe

 

It won’t inspire an episode for a high-tech forensic TV show, but it’s still a good detective story.

On March 15, Michelle Hunter reported a crime on The Times-Picayune website, a burglary of a New Orleans pharmacy. Somebody had chiseled a hole through the store’s cinderblock wall and crawled through. The burglar left with a load of narcotics, but left a pickaxe behind. The pickaxe had a price sticker from a nearby home improvement store.

Detective Darrin Parent brought the tool to the improvement store, where staff scanned the barcode to determine when and where the axe had been purchased. With this information, they checked the store’s video surveillance footage to watch a man purchase the pickaxe.

An owner of a store near the burgled pharmacy contacted Detective Parent. On the night of the crime, his CCTV camera had captured images of the same man around the time of the burglary. The video footage also recorded the license plate number of the vehicle driven by the suspect.

Warrant in hand, Detective Parent visited the suspect’s house, where he found drugs stolen from the pharmacy. An arrest followed for burglary and drug possession.

ME Time

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Morgue

Have you noticed how detectives can call their favorite medical examiner minutes after they left a crime scene for a report? Does this timeframe seem too brief for your own story? In real life, detectives can wait a considerable time before they see anything from a medical examiner.

On September 21, 2012, The New York World posted an article about these delays in New York: “More Work, Fewer Staff Add Up to Longer Waits for Medical Examiner Reports.” For example, the Medical Examiner office needed about 46 days to provide DNA test results in sexual assault cases. Toxicology reports required about 60 days. Can’t detectives grab a bite after visiting a crime scene and then call the ME for autopsy results? Sure, but they shouldn’t expect an answer. An autopsy takes about 70 days to complete.

So, if you want to delay the appearance of test results in your story, then don’t worry about it. Any delays will just make the story more realistic.

Blood Can Run, But It Can’t Hide

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Camera

 

Bloodstains are really tough to eradicate. Tiny drops of spatter patiently wait on walls for luminol to uncover them. Blood seeps into carpet padding, behind baseboards, and inside of drains.

Now, forensic scientists in Australia show that even paint cannot hide bloodstains. Rachel Ehrenberg’s Science News article, “Camera Hack Can Spot Cleaned-up Crimes,” describes how infrared photography can reveal blood hidden under paint. Even six layers of black paint could not hide blood spatter. The article includes tips by a specialist in art conservation and imaging about the type of paint a murderer might use to cover a crime.

Hair Evidence Speaks

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Photomicrograph of lice egg case on hair.

Photomicrograph of lice egg case on hair. Source: Douglas W. Deedrick and Sandra L. Koch, “Microscopy of Hair Part 1: A Practical Guide and Manual for Human Hairs,” Forensic Science Communications 6(1) (January 2004).

 

NOVA posted an article all about hair – hair evidence, that is. “Strands of Evidence” describes how scientists can determine where a strand of hair came from based on analysis of hydrogen and oxygen in a local water supply. The idea is that consumed water creates isotope traces in hairs.

Researchers in the US and Europe have been applying and refining techniques of this type of hair analysis. By studying variations along a single strand, for example, a researcher may be able to glean a timeline of a person’s travels. Isotopes in hair also reveal information about the person’s diet, and if the hair’s owner had starved for a while. These types of details can help to identify a murder victim.

If you’re interested in more details about isotope analysis, then take a look at the IsoForensics website, and the recent NOVA posting, “Stable Isotopes in Forensics.”