UTILIZING FORENSICS

When I first started out working homicide, I was at a crime scene with a forensic team that was assisting us in the crime scene investigation.  One of the items of interest in this case happened to be a box that had fallen from either a table or a shelf to the floor.  I remember that the Forensic team kept running multiple test experiments with the box to see if it fell in the exact place each time.  When I questioned them, they advised me they were testing to see if it always fell in the same place or if it had been moved there by the suspect.

Forensic people look at things from a scientific and analytical viewpoint.  If something happened to a person, item etc., there must be a cause and effect as to how a it happened.  Could a body weighing the same as a suicide victim have hung themselves from a certain height and item (Pole, railing, shower rod etc.) without the item breaking or falling?  Could a spent cartridge at a shooting scene have landed in a certain location?  Could a left handed suspect have stabbed an individual incurring the same wounds as the stabbing victim?  Could a pry tool allegedly used by burglary suspect have made the same indentations as the ones at your crime scene?  Forensic people are always running tests to see if this is the case.

Whether you’re a police detective or a private investigator, the key thing to take away from this is don’t just assume that everything at a crime scene or accident scene is as it should be.  Question things!  If necessary, seek out experts.

FORENSICS: IT’S WHAT YOU KNOW AT THE TIME THAT COUNTS

When I was a young homicide detective we had a case where a young woman had been strangled and her body was left in a vacant field.  The body was naked except for her panties.  An examination of those panties revealed some small plant-like material inside them.  My partner and I took the material to a botany professor at a very prestigious university nearby.  After examining the residue, he advised us it was pink heather.  Additionally he told us it was a small plant that grows back east, not in southern California.  He also said it was it was used for garnishment in floral displays.  This really caught our attention.  The victim’s boyfriend was employed at the time at a flower shop.  Once we had this information we raced up to the flower shop and detained the boyfriend.  We took him back to the station where he eventually confessed to the murder.  The next day we got a call from the botany professor.  He was extremely apologetic and advised us that he had been incorrect in his analysis.  During the criminal trial of the boyfriend, the court ruled that the confession was admissible because the detectives were acting on the information they knew at the time, which was based on the expert botany professor’s analysis.  Every time I go into a flower shop, I still think of that case and pink heather.