Tag Archives: crime scene

Getting the Ax

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

Hunting Burglars with DNA Tests

Posted on by
DNA

Source: Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. science.energy.gov/ber.

Forensic DNA analysis is usually cast as an important tool for the investigation of a violent crime. However, investigators also use the technology to solve property thefts.

The September-October 2012 issue of Evidence Technology Magazine features an article by Joseph Blozis on “Using DNA to Fight Property Crime.” He explains how New York City’s Biotracks program demonstrated this new use of DNA testing. The NYPD recovered DNA samples from burglary cases with no suspects and forwarded the samples to private companies for analysis. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner Biological Laboratory then uploaded DNA profiles to the FBI’s CODIS system. Eventually, the efforts led to the identification of burglars in no-suspect cases and established links between apparently unrelated burglaries.

The successes of the NYPD program and similar programs in other jurisdictions have proven the value of DNA testing to solve property crimes. Finding the funds and staff to run extra DNA tests is another challenge.

Blood Can Run, But It Can’t Hide

Posted on by

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.