CSI: Crime Scene Idiots

Insect fact of the day

dammit--jim — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:28:56 +0100

The blowfly Chrysomya albiceps is a facultative predator, meaning that they will predate on other blowfly larvae if given the chance.

Because of this, care needs to be taken when determining postmortem interval in cases where C. albiceps have been found on the body in case they have arrived later than other species but have killed off their competitors.

spineye: amandaonwriting: Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) -...

dammit--jim — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:30:39 +0100

spineye:

amandaonwriting:

Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) - Resource for Crime Writers

SOURCE

well you never know when this might come in handy.

trcunning: pippinstewardofgondor: inebriatedpony: Science! wh...

dammit--jim — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:25:05 +0100

trcunning:

pippinstewardofgondor:

inebriatedpony:

Science!

what the fuck is this science bullshit

gif 1, explosive polymerization of p Nitro Aniline Video

gif 2, Sodium Polyacrylate mixed with water Video

gif 3, Sodium Acetate Video

gif 4, the smoke is vaporized wax, can still catch fire and travels back to the wick Video

gif 5, Ping Pong balls + Liquid Nitrogen in a trash can Video

gif 6, electrical treeing

gif 7, heating Mercury Thiocyanate

gif 8, ferrofluid sculpture Video

gif 9, flammable gas lit in a glass jar Video

Reblogging again because this version has the reactions listed and links to videos etc

Hi, I'm thinking about working in forensics. and was wondering what kind of course is best to take as undergraduate, as Forensic Science is generally only available as a masters where I'm from (the UK). I have offers to study either Biomedical Sciences or Natural Sciences as undergrad at good UK universities, which are both general science programmes. What is best then? Thanks!

dammit--jim — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:06:59 +0100

There are loads of undergrad forensics courses in the UK!

I’m at Derby, my second choice was Staffs and I also looked at Nottingham Trent.

I believe Wolverhampton does one too.

So those are four off the top of my head, but there are really a ton more. Just a quick Google is showing me UCLAN, Sunderland, De Montfort, Glasgow Caledonian….

Seriously, there are loads!

If you want a forensics based course but don’t want to study pure forensics, there’s always forensics with criminology (or just criminology), computer forensics, forensic psychology…

Hope that helps!

neoteotihuacan: A few months back, a small twitter hashtag got...

dammit--jim — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:16:43 +0100

neoteotihuacan:

A few months back, a small twitter hashtag got kind of crazy - #overlyhonestmethods

Its a hashtag full of scientists admitting shortcuts in research, along with the daily face palms and annoyances of a scientific lifestyle. Science is hard, yo.

I decided to steal some of the more popular tweets from the trending hashtag along with some random images of scientists from Google image search and combine them. This is the result. it works, I think.

The full album can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/x77kL

hi I'm also a Forensic student and the University of the Free State. You don't maybe know where I can find a precise step-by-step explanation of how to calculate PMI using isomegalen degree data, isomorphen degree data and ADD?

dammit--jim — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:23:58 +0100

Good question! I didn’t have anything to hand so I did some Googling, but I haven’t been able to find much that looks to be of any real use (at least, nothing that’s particularly step-by-step). I must admit to never having used one myself so I can’t give you a method that I’ve used for it either.

If anyone has anything useful, pass it along and I’ll share it!

Stacey and I are currently coming to the end of our degrees, and...

dammit--jim — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:39:26 +0000

Stacey and I are currently coming to the end of our degrees, and we’re really busy working on coursework, exam preparation and our dissertations.

While we’ve been at university, we’ve both been involved in outreach and work in schools, as part of our jobs as student ambassadors and advocates. This weekend we worked at a science event for children held at the city library.

We had a table set up where children (and some adults!) enjoyed making their fingerprints and learning a bit about how fingerprints are formed and how they are useful in forensic science, and we also set up a mock crime scene where people could search for evidence and sketch the scene. We had some interesting guesses as to what might have happened to Bob (as we have named our demonstration dummy) - one boy suggested he might have been run over by a train and others thought he might have been poisoned. My favourite theory is that he was beaten up by a lady using her handbag!

All in all we both had a really great day, and I think I can speak for both of us in saying that we find the outreach work very fulfilling. I would recommend considering it if you get the opportunity.

That’s all for now - I’ve still got lots of work to do on my dissertation but hopefully we will be back to a more regular posting schedule after we’ve finished for the year… good luck to all those who are also coming up to the end of their degrees and see you on the other side!

dick-tit-who: nintendofunclub: toastradamus: seeyou-in-disneyl...

dammit--jim — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:01:29 +0000

dick-tit-who:

nintendofunclub:

toastradamus:

seeyou-in-disneyland:

hobbyist codebreaker claims to have broken the zodiac killer’s 41-year-old code

WOW

OH SHIT

THIS IS THE COOLEST SHIT.

This is actually quite terrifying

thelaughingmagician: heavywoodenbox: beelzebosss: In the...

dammit--jim — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:57:36 +0000

thelaughingmagician:

heavywoodenbox:

beelzebosss:

In the nineteenth century, a morbid and curious custom has spread to various parts of the world: the photos were ”Post Mortem”.
”Post Mortem” comes from Latin, meaning after death.

The photos ”Post Mortem” apparently originated in England, when Queen Victoria asked to photograph the corpse of an acquaintance or a relative, so she can keep as a souvenir.
soon after, this idea spread around the world, keeping a morbid reminder of loved ones that have passed on.

Even today, as strange as it may seem, some places still have this custom.

The girl who is standing in the photo is the one who is dead.

This is a classic example of photographic art.

Notice the hands

for people wondering how the corpse is standing up, there is a posing stand supporting the body it’s very hard to see but the stand is supporting the neck, arms and back.

the girl in this picture has her eyes open, but in some cases the photographer will paint pupils on the eye lids to make it seem like they are wide awake

Since the eyes are the first to begin decomposing, I’d assume this is a very good example of the eyes being painted on rather than her real eyes. Some of the photographers were horrific at it, but others made it look realistic.

booksandbookporn: Killers in Cold Blood by Rodney Castleden,...

dammit--jim — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:58:05 +0000

booksandbookporn:

Killers in Cold Blood by Rodney Castleden, Ray Black, Gordon Kerr, and Ian and Clare Welch

Synopsis: Delving into the darker side of the criminal mind, Killers in Cold Blood tells of the most horrendous murders as committed by truly psychopathic men and women. These crimes are often the most frightening as they are committed with a motive which is only understood by the killer themselves, or they are a random attack with no particular motive at all. Covering aspects of cold-blooded murder from genocide to political assassinations and infanticide, this book provides the reader with a look at a wide range of interesting, if brutal, crime.

Opinion: Having an interest in many kinds of true crime, it makes a change for me to read a book which covers more than just one category of killer, for example. My edition also includes a black and white photo insert with photos from a selection of crimes detailed in the book. Whilst the information itself is engaging, the organisation of the book leaves something to be desired, although this does not present much of an issue and can be overlooked. Further to this, I found some of the sentence constructions a little strange or ambiguous, and I also found one or two instances of what appeared to be the incorrect word for the sentence at hand. I also spotted a couple of either typos or spelling errors which seem to have escaped being picked up at the proof reading stage. For those who like to fact check or go on to do further reading, there is unfortunately no reference list.

However, the negative points detailed above did not stop me from reading the book in its entirety, and it also included information about some murders which I have not heard of before. I would recommend this book to others, but with caveats - particularly regarding the standard of English throughout.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

DNA crime-fighting in the UK 'lagging behind'

dammit--jim — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:04:34 +0000

DNA crime-fighting in the UK 'lagging behind'

Criminals in the media!

jeremyrennersbiceps-deactivated — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:43:51 +0000

Criminals in the media!

One high profile case involving expirated blood was the murder...

jeremyrennersbiceps-deactivated — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:07:41 +0000

One high profile case involving expirated blood was the murder of Billie-Jo Jenkins in 2007, whose foster father, Siôn Jenkins, was acquitted of her murder after spending 6 years in jail. (BBC News, 2006). Part of the evidence used to originally convict Siôn was the presence of many small blood drops on his clothing (72 on his jacket, 76 on his trousers and 10 on his left shoe) (Justice for Siôn Jenkins, no date). There was a lot of ambiguity over how the blood got on to his clothing, as expirated blood usually implies that the person was still able to breathe when the blood was transferred to the object. In this case, that definition would mean that Siôn was with Billie-Jo when she was still alive. Some experts believed that the droplets were also consistent with resuscitation attempts. At the time of this case, there was very little research that had been performed on expirated blood, so both prosecution and defence needed to come up with plausible explanations, along with supporting research, as to how the blood got there.

It was after this case that most of the research around expirated blood has occurred, since this highlighted the lack of knowledge within this area, and the distinction of expirated blood from various other types of blood patterns. Due to the abnormal characteristics of expirated blood, it can occasionally be confused with high velocity impact spatter and fly activity at the crime scene (Clark, 2006). This paper was a meta-analytical review of research that was already available, aiming to compare the analysis of expirated blood patterns, high velocity impact patterns and fly activity, to determine if any, or all, of the different patterns had characteristics that were unique to that individual pattern type. This article provided a lot of background information on the characterization of blood pattern groups and the dynamics of blood pattern formation, which proved invaluable when trying to develop techniques to recreate expirated blood patterns. The results of this research were that the different types of blood patterns had defining characteristics, so it was possible to uniquely identify each type of pattern from one another.

In 2011, Denison et al looked at expirated blood in much greater detail than any other research that could be found. This research was performed because the authors failed to discover a reliable explanation as to how expirated blood is formed and the forensic aspects behind the identification of expirated blood and the distinction from other types of blood pattern. This research details several methods by which to create expirated blood patterns, the most obvious being drawing venous blood and exhaling it. This in itself was done several ways, through short straws that were coated in blood, mouthing words and spitting or nasal snorting of the blood. They also produced a model which mimicked how the nose works, thus eliminating the human aspect of trials. This paper has shown that it only takes a small volume of air, less than 60ml, to generate expirated blood, that expirated blood droplets can travel in excess of 1 metre from the original source and that individual blood droplets can vary greatly in size in an expirated blood pattern, from <1mm to >1mm. This paper has provided much needed clarification on the analysis of expirated blood patterns, and the mechanisms behind the formation of such patterns. This was the most relevant journal that could be found on the creation and analysis of expirated blood on its own, without being compared to another type of blood pattern. Research performed by Donaldson et al, also in 2011, shows further evidence of the formation of expirated bloodstain patterns. This research, however, indicates that beaded bloodstains must be interpreted with caution, as these types of stains were only found when the origin was in close proximity (300m) to the target, and when the target was a smooth, non-porous surface. The authors of the paper have accepted that further research is required to validate their own, since they only used one participant to generate the expirated bloodstains.

References

Clark, K. (2006) Differentiating High Velocity Blood Spatter Patterns, Expirated Bloodstains, and Insect Activity. IABPA News, September.

Denison, D., Porter, A., Mills, M. & Schroter, R. C. (2011) Forensic implications of respiratory derived blood spatter distributions. Forensic Science International. 204, pp. 144-155.

BBC News (2006) Case turned on 158 spots of blood. Available at: hhtp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_countries/4661302.stm (Accessed: 17/01/13)

UK Firearms Laws and Licensing

dammit--jim — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 11:30:00 +0000

UK firearms laws and licensing are strict and carry strong penalties. Firearms law is constantly changing and being updated in order to make improvements.

Laws

All firearms offenses carry a minimum 5 year sentence with no leeway.
Gun Control Network founded after Dunblane Massacre.
Also introduced after Dunblane Massacre - Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 - bans .22 cartridge handguns in England, Scotland and Wales.
Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 introduced after Hungerford Massacre to ban ownership of semi-automatic centre-fire rifles and restrict usage of shotguns with magazine capabilities of more than two rounds.

Licensing

Armed forces can carry weapons with no license.
No license is needed for air weapons. These can be bought and sold legally through dealers, however they must be low power and the buyer must be over 18 years of age.
Shotgun License - shotguns must be kept in a locked cabinet and ammunition must be kept separate, however live shotgun cartridges can be owned without a license if they are given to you (but not if they are bought).
Section 1 License - covers target practice and sport shooting with small ammunition. One license per weapon must be held.
Section 5 License - covers hand guns, machine guns; firearms not covered by section 1 License. Can only be owned by arms dealers and serious collectors and is very hard to get hold of. Also covers tasers and CS spray.
Black Powder License - covers gun powder weapons, flintlocks etc. Mainly used by living history and reenactment groups. These weapons are mainly muzzle loading and of obsolete calibre.
Museums License - covers the bearer for any kind of firearm but reasonable precautions must be taken. Bearer must be a museum as registered with the government.
No license is needed for replicas or certified deactivated firearms.

More on firearms licensing here via the Metropolitan Police Service.

Gunshot Residue Presumptive Tests

dammit--jim — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Presumptive tests for a substance such as blood, semen or gunshot residue are tests which tell the forensic investigator that the substance in question is likely to be the substance that the investigator is looking for. The results of presumptive tests can later be confirmed using more highly specific methods.

Gunshot residue (GSR) is a mixture of particles that is ejected from a gun when a projectile is fired. It typically settles on surfaces such as the hands, face and clothes of the person firing the gun. These areas can be sampled by a forensic investigator to see whether or not someone has fired a weapon in the recent past.

Presumptive tests for gunshot residue test for substances such as lead, barium, nitrates and nitrate compounds. These tests can be ineffective if the suspect has washed their hands or clothes before being tested. Since presumptive tests do not absolutely confirm the presence of a particular substance, it is possible to obtain false positives, but never false negatives.

Several presumptive tests are available to test for GSR. These can be used separately to one another, but when used in combination, the investigator can be more certain that the positive result is conclusive. It would still be common to perform confirmatory tests in these circumstances.

The following presumptive tests are all chromophoric (colour changing). This is common in presumptive testing.

Diphenylamine test - test for nitrates. False positives can occur from fertiliser and photographic products. Instantaneous change to blue colouration indicates a positive result.

Sodium rhodizonate test - test for lead. Environmental contaminants can cause false positives. Pink colouration followed by blue-violet colouration in the presence of hydrochloric acid indicates a positive result. The hydrochloric acid is always applied, as the pink colouration may be due to other metals but the blue-violet colouration is said to be specific.

Modified Griess Test - test for nitrite compounds. False positives can occur from nitrites from other sources including some disinfectants and cannabis. Localised orange colouration indicates a positive result.

————————

Picture credit.

The Jill Dando Murder

dammit--jim — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:17:03 +0000

On April 26th, 1999, popular British TV presenter Jill Dando was murdered outside her home in London. She had been killed with a single shot to the head with a smooth bore 9mm pistol.

(Sawer, 2012)

Following an appeal on Crime Watch and a reward of a quarter of a million pounds being offered, a 41 year old man named Barry George (also known as Barry Bulsara) was arrested for the murder. When the case came to trial, the jury found George guilty by a majority of ten to one. His lawyers immediately announced their intention to appeal.

The main evidence that had been found against George consisted of a single particle of gunshot residue that could have originated from the cartridge case found at the scene. The murder weapon was never found. Other evidence against the suspect was composed mainly of eyewitness reports, and some fibre evidence. Throughout the trial, George has always maintained that he is innocent.

In 2008, George was acquitted on the basis that the gunshot residue evidence was unsafe. The potential for the evidence to have been contaminated was great. The coat George was claimed to have been wearing at the time, and in whose pocket the particle of gunshot residue was found, was handled by police officers prior to being forensically examined. The detective responsible also later stated that he could not be absolutely certain the coat that had been examined was even the right one. The photographic studio in which the coat was photographed during the examination had previously been used for photographing firearms evidence from other cases. It later transpired that detectives who entered George’s property to recover the evidence had not been wearing full protective forensic clothing. There were several other incidences during which evidence could have been contaminated, as it is not known if any of the police officers had handled firearms before the search.

Since then, a theory has been put forward that Miss Dando was in fact murdered by a Serbian hit man.

References

Jackson, A. R. W. and Jackson, J. M. (2008) Forensic Science. Second edition. Pearson Education Limited: Essex.

Langford, A., Dean, J., Reed, R., Holmes, D., Weyers, J., Jones, A. (2010) Practical Skills in Forensic Science. Second Edition. Pearson Education Limited: Essex.

Sawer, P. (2012) Jill Dando ‘murdered by Serbian hitman’. The Telegraph. Online. Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9120523/Jill-Dando-murdered-by-Serbian-hitman.html. Accessed 19th December 2012.

The Daily Mail. Dando detective quizzed over evidence contamination. The Daily Mail. Online. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-48190/Dando-detective-quizzed-evidence-contamination.html. Accessed 19th December 2012.

The Daily Mail (2007) Timeline: The Jill Dando Murder. The Daily Mail. Online. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-463254/Timeline-The-Jill-Dando-murder.html#ixzz1ZoriJz6y. Accessed 19th December 2012.

dammit—jim: The scientists in the study I’m reading got to set off 15 pipe bombs during the...

dammit--jim — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:09:36 +0000

dammit—jim:

The scientists in the study I’m reading got to set off 15 pipe bombs during the course of their experiment.

“So darling, what did you do at work today?”

Forensic Photography

dammit--jim — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:30:38 +0000

From the personal website of my forensic photography/anthropology/medical photography teacher. Some great images here; well worth a look if any of your interests are covered. Lots of other photography and information/resources is also on the site; I have just linked to the most forensically relevant above.

Fact of the day...

dammit--jim — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:30:46 +0000

therealcsi:

The Kastle-Meyer presumptive test for blood can detect substance diluted down to 10^-7!!

Fact of the day...

dammit--jim — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:30:35 +0000

therealcsi:

When looked at under the microscope, silk fibres have a triangular appearance, allowing them to reflect light well.