Double Whammy. The blog about what s real and what s not in the world of TV crime investigation. And does it matter? ABOUT ME. I am Nita.

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The blog about what s real and what s not in the world of TV crime investigation. And does it matter? ABOUT ME 08 January Double Whammy People often ask me what my favourite TV crime show is.

For example, I discovered this one only because I was looking for ways to procrastinate instead of cleaning my apartment last night!

The ME says the student died from the impact of her head with the car s windshield.

Then a kid comes into the police station crying his eyes out about how he hit a girl who was crossing the road.

It turns out the victim was hit by another car first, which caused the fatal injuries; then she stumbled into the road and got clipped by the kid. Click here to find out more about me.

Paint from the car gets chipped/scratched and deposited on the person; same with glass from the windshield.

1 The blog about what s real and what s not in the world of TV crime investigation. And does it matter? ABOUT ME 08 January Double Whammy People often ask me what my favourite TV crime show is. The answer depends pretty much on the day of the week and what I ve seen most recently. And I can t even keep up with them all! For example, I discovered this one only because I was looking for ways to procrastinate instead of cleaning my apartment last night! (ugh) Show: Traces of Crime Episode: Double Whammy Type: mockudrama I am Nita The Summary A university student is walking home from a party and gets hit by a car. The ME says the student died from the impact of her head with the car s windshield. Investigators get to work collecting samples of hair, skin, and clothing from the victim, as well as traces of car paint and windshield fragments. Then a kid comes into the police station crying his eyes out about how he hit a girl who was crossing the road. Samples taken from his car match some of the samples from the victim, yes but the kid s windshield is intact! It turns out the victim was hit by another car first, which caused the fatal injuries; then she stumbled into the road and got clipped by the kid. Click here to find out more about me. My Go-To Guy Click here to find out more about him. Photo of the Week The Science You wouldn t believe how much material gets passed back and forth when car meets human. Paint from the car gets chipped/scratched and deposited on the person; same with glass from the windshield. Hair and skin from the victim can be transferred to the car body at the point of impact, along with fibres from clothing. In some circumstances, an expert can actually make a physical fit between a torn piece of fabric and the piece of clothing it came from. TV vs. Reality The investigators in the show used something called an automated comparison system to match paint samples and samples from the victim s hair and skirt with samples recovered from the kid s car. I don t think so! No such equipment exists, and even if it did, it s still up to the human expert to make the call, using a good old, low-tech comparison microscope. What s more, no forensic science professional would ever use the term match. Evidence like paint, hair (minus the DNA part) and fibres are never unique, so professionals use terms like consistent with or of similar composition backing it up with statistical analysis. more... Be in the Know Learn all the cool forensic terminology here. The Conclusion Hollywood technology aside, this show really gets into the technical nitty-gritty of forensic science. The good writing and nice dramatic twist at the end means I ll be looking for another episode. Reality Rating: Page 1

05 January Sponsors: Flash Did you see Crime Pays last night? This episode had it all: hot crimes (LOL), great acting, a twist or turn every minute, and some forensic stuff that almost stumped me.

) Show: Crime Pays Episode: Flash Type: drama The Summary Nick Goh, on leave because of that, um, temper tantrum he threw last episode, is hanging out in a little corner of Quebec where a lot of

2 05 January Sponsors: Flash Did you see Crime Pays last night? This episode had it all: hot crimes (LOL), great acting, a twist or turn every minute, and some forensic stuff that almost stumped me. (Yes, I said that!) Show: Crime Pays Episode: Flash Type: drama The Summary Nick Goh, on leave because of that, um, temper tantrum he threw last episode, is hanging out in a little corner of Quebec where a lot of wealthy people have cottages you know, luxury lakeside homes they live in for maybe two weeks every summer. A few of these cottages have burned, and the owners are coming down hard on the local constabulary, insisting they find the arsonist. Goh is called upon to help out with the fourth fire, when investigators uncover a body. They figure it was some kind of vagrant who had been squatting in the cabin and didn t get out in time but then the lab comes back with the news that this fire had been set using a different accelerant from the first three fires. Maybe the arsonist ran out of BBQ lighter fluid; or maybe, Goh thinks, it s a copycat crime... or a cover-up. He IDs the victim and starts snooping around, learning about his life, which leads, eventually, to the answers. The Science An acquaintance told me with complete assurance that he knows all the arson cases on TV are totally fake, because everything s burned up, so how can investigators tell it was arson? But actually, fire investigators CAN tell arson from accident. They look for the presence of accelerants, like gasoline, or streamers, which are intensely burned trails that connect to one another, showing where an arsonist spread the accelerant. Also, because accelerants are typically liquids and flow to low points, an arson-induced fire shows more intense burning on the floor than on the ceiling. Anyway, in this episode we got to see the investigators poking around the charred remains of the third cottage fire and putting bits of debris and ashes in little bags. Wrong! Plastic reacts with the hydrocarbons in the samples. Real fire investigators use paint cans you know, those metal cans with the tight-fitting lids. Back in the lab (we don t see this in the show), they heat the can up, stick a needle in the lid, draw out the vapour, and test it using some high-tech equipment. (Real equipment! It s called a gas chromatograph.) From this they can tell what type of accelerant was used, and link it to whatever remains of said accelerant on the suspected arsonist s clothes. The scientific content of this blog is based on fact. This Website is ficticious and for educational purposes only. TV vs. Reality The timing of the investigation work was pretty accurate. But apparently, TV land arsonists can t keep their mouths shut about their crimes. The team on the show tracked the perp down and tested her clothes pretty quickly! And then there was the kicker: in the end, it all came down to the physical fit of a SINGLE MATCH used to start the blaze and found a short distance away. The pack it came from was found in the pocket of the murderer/arsonist s jacket! The Conclusion The kicker was pretty extreme... but definitely in the realm of the possible, given enough time and a talent as big as a Nick Goh s for connecting the dots! Reality Rating: Page 2

3 28 December Redhawk Down It s funny. Motive is such an important part of any criminal investigation. If you don t have motive if it s just a random act of unkindness, or it s your first time and your fingerprints or DNA aren t already in the system it s a lot easier to get away with something criminal. Consider, for example, the show I caught last night... Show: Redhawk Down Episode: n/a Type: docudrama The Summary About a decade ago, in a small American city (can t remember which one!) an overpass on an unfinished highway called the Redhawk Parkway was bombed. Someone was killed in the explosion, and everyone thought the Eco Avengers were responsible you know, that group that believes the natural world should be defended from human destruction by whatever means necessary. They d been stalling the parkway project for years, trying to save what they called a sensitive wetland and what the developer, Metaco Developing, Inc., called mud. EA denied committing the crime, but the investigation began in the developer s archive, which contained records of every threatening letter, package, and phone call they d received since the stall campaign had started, three years previously. After extensive investigation, police narrowed it down to two suspects. A librarian recognized one of the suspects from photographs on TV, recalling that the suspect and another person had spent an awful lot of time in the library, using the printer and photocopier and reading and copying from books on you guessed it! explosives. The police recovered the library printer, and its output matched a number of the letters received by Metaco. Thanks to autosave, the library computer s back-up files provided complete records of everything checked out on the suspect s library card. But the stroke of luck was a slip of paper found inside one of the books, which carried an impression of the suspect s handwriting on it. The team deciphered it using oblique or side lighting, and matched it to the most recent threatening letter in Metaco s collection. The perp was arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentenced. Case closed! The Science I was glued to the screen because the story involved one of the more interesting areas of forensic science: document examination and voice recognition. I guess criminals have never heard of Locard s Principle, which states, Every contact leaves a trace. Each person s handwriting is unique, each typewriter is unique because it has random imperfections in the typeface, each printer has defects unique to that printer and no other, and each human voice has a unique voiceprint. TV vs. Reality Being a true story, the science here was technically accurate. But you get the impression from the show that the investigative work took a few weeks. In fact, it took the Redhawk team nearly a year of sifting, sorting, and linking handwriting, typed letters, and computer printers into unique groups. They analyzed threatening voic messages, too, using a sound spectrograph. I also thought it was strange that it all came down to that slip of paper in the book. They said that police lacked enough evidence to force the suspect to supply handwriting samples, but couldn t they have just got a court order? Go-to Guy cleared that up for me (via desperate midnight !). He writes, At that stage, anyone who had sent a letter of a threatening nature, etc., would have been considered an equal suspect. Although the police had narrowed it down to two, that was for investigative purposes only. There was simply not enough evidence under the law to obtain a court order in this instance. Thank you. Page 3

4 The Conclusion The case actually had an interesting twist before it closed. The prime suspect was an Eco Avenger, but the actual bomber wasn t. It was her boyfriend, the former owner of a smaller development company that had been put out of business by Metaco years before. Revenge... now that s a classic motive! Reality Rating: Be in the Know accelerant: substance that makes things catch fire and burn more quickly archive: a collection of official or important documents arsonist: a person who sets a malicious fire; arson is the act of setting such a fire autopsy: medical examination of a dead body ballistics: the science of firearms and projectiles (i.e., guns and bullets!) comparison microscope:a pair of microscopes linked so that you can look at two slides at the same time forensic: having to do with, or used in connection with, courts of law gunshot residue: traces of gunpowder, smoke, and so on, that remain after the discharge of a firearm malicious: intending to do harm ME/medical examiner: a public official who is medically qualified to investigate suspicious deaths and perform post-mortems motive: reason for, or circumstance in which, someone might commit a crime oblique lighting: lighting that comes from the side, creating revealing shadows around things in depression or low relief perp: a person who commits a crime; short for perpetrator post-mortem (examination): medical examination of a corpse to determine the cause of death. Also called an autopsy. prime suspect: most-likely, or favoured, suspect in a crime investigation sound spectrograph: machine that makes a visual record of sound statistical analysis: detailed examination of a collection of numerical data (usually to predict the likelihood of something) Page 4

About Me Jason Stitt/iStockphoto I grew up in Regina, SK, where my favourite game every recess, lunch hour, and weekend in the schoolyard and park behind my house was Homicide Detective.

!) I graduated from the Central School of Forensic Science, Ottawa, in 2006 and now work as a forensic analyst at the Royal Academy of Forensic Science in Victoria, BC, where the hiking season is a

5 About Me Jason Stitt/iStockphoto I grew up in Regina, SK, where my favourite game every recess, lunch hour, and weekend in the schoolyard and park behind my house was Homicide Detective. (Many thanks to patient friends for playing the parts of the murder victim, distraught relative, impatient mayor of frightened town, etc.!) I graduated from the Central School of Forensic Science, Ottawa, in 2006 and now work as a forensic analyst at the Royal Academy of Forensic Science in Victoria, BC, where the hiking season is a lot longer than anywhere else I have lived. Next goal: the West Coast Trail, Take #2! My Go-To Guy I admit, I don t know everything; so when I m stumped I ask my friend and mentor Liam Hendrikse to weigh in. He is an independent forensic consultant, specializing in the forensic examination of firearms and ammunition. He also analyzes crime scenes and performs post-mortem examinations (yeah the fun stuff!). Page 5

6 Photo of the Week Michael Krinke/ istockphoto Fire investigators believe the fire that badly damaged this Winnipeg home last weekend was deliberately set. They are currently investigating for arson. Page 6

ADHESIVE TAPES AS TRACE EVIDENCE

ADHESIVE TAPES AS TRACE EVIDENCE John Johnston, PSTC technical consultant emeritus. When Richard Drew of 3M developed creped paper masking tape in 1925, he began a revolutionary change in the way we live.