Scene of the Crime

by Anne Wingate

  Given several pieces of glass, scientists can determine from which side of the glass the impact came, whether it was a blunt impact or a sharp impact, and sometimes the force of the blow.

  If the investigating officer or technician has made the usual careful records, it is almost always possible to determine whether glass was broken from the inside or the outside, even if an "inside job" was covered up by breaking glass and then putting the fragments inside to make it appear that the glass was broken from the outside.

  Documents

  Document examination presents some odd problems, and I'm not 100 percent sure it even belongs in a book that is primarily devoted to crime-scene work and subsequent laboratory work. It's another topic that would take several books this size to cover completely, and it is one of the few fields in which, in some ways, we are regressing rather than progressing. But there are reasons for the problems.

  Handwriting

  Please don't confuse handwriting identification with handwriting analysis. Handwriting identification is a science; handwriting analysis is considered by many people to be a pseudoscience. Handwriting identification attempts to decide who did, or sometimes who did not, write a particular document; handwriting analysis attempts to discern the personality traits of the person who did the writing.

  Handwriting identification looks at many factors, some of them conscious but many of them so habitual they are totally beyond conscious control. These include the slant of the letters, the way the letters are joined or separated, the use of capitals in place of small letters and vice versa, the shapes of individual letters, the shapes of buckles on letters such as K, the tails of letters such as Y and /. What the professional handwriting examiner looks at and what the amateur hoping to identify handwriting looks at are often totally different; therefore, what an amateur may think is an exact replica of someone else's signature may, to a handwriting examiner, betray dozens of major points of difference.

  Often a person will hope to disguise his/her handwriting by writing with the nonpreferred hand; that is, a left-handed person will write with the right hand. Although the writing to the untrained eye may look totally unlike the person's usual writing, the handwriting examiner can usually identify this writing easily by looking for brain-linked habits that transcend handedness.

  When a questioned signature is absolutely identical with a known signature, it is likely to be a tracing, which can almost always be identified microscopically by the types of hesitations that do not occur in fluent natural handwriting.

  For more information on handwriting identification, check the books in the bibliography. Your library should have many more; the subject is often addressed, and there are few major changes in the field. The Hand ofHauptmann is a fine book, which tells how handwriting identification helped to lead to the conviction of the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby.

  Printing and Typewriting

  This is where we are regressing. Fifty years ago, a typewriter was a typewriter was a typewriter. It sat on a desk or was carried about, if it happened to be a portable. It had keys. The keys were interchangeable only by a technician, and even the technician had to work at it. Document examiners maintained data bases of typefaces and type sizes of different makes and models of typewriters, and as the typewriters aged, the type wore and got out of line. Furthermore, even with a new typewriter, the way the keys were hit had a lot to do with how good the typing looked.

  Therefore, it was quite easy to look at the ransom note or the poison-pen letter and say, "This was typed on a five-year-old Royal 440 by an unskilled typist." And furthermore, when the typewriter was found, it could be definitely identified, and when various suspects were forced to type on that typewriter, there would be considerable likelihood of determining which suspect produced that vilely typed note.

  But now we have typewriters and dedicated word processors and computers with interchangeable type fonts of all types and sizes, from type balls to Daisy wheels to laser printers. A letter typed on an IBM Correcting Selectric II by an unskilled typist doing hunt-and-peck isn't going to look much different from a letter typed on that same machine by a highly skilled typist, and if the type ball is dropped in the river three minutes after the letter is typed, the chances for identification—unless the investigator can get lucky enough to find some other materials typed by the suspect with the same somewhat-worn type ball—are zip.

  That gives you something to play with.

  Of course, handwriting and typewriting are not the only things involved with document examination; there are questions about inks, papers, watermarks, and so forth. But inks and papers are examined the same way other trace evidence is examined: with chromatography and other laboratory microscopic and radiometric devices. The problem comes when a good forger —one of the Mark Hofmann caliber—uses authentic paper of the appropriate age, makes ink by the formula appropriate to the purported document, and uses appropriate typefaces. It's not always possible to detect artificial aging.

  Where do you go from there? (Read Jonathan Gash's mysteries for delightful insides on how fake antiques are created and artificially aged.)

  Watch the news very carefully. While this book was being prepared for the press, a startling new development in crime-scene work was first used in court. It is a computer program that allows investigators to reconstruct, on the basis of what they have learned from both eyewitness testimony and crime-scene investigation, what happened each fraction of a second as the crime was occurring. It creates a timed, moving crime-scene sketch. Setting up the program is time-consuming and costly, but once it is set up, the program can actually rotate the scene so that it can be viewed from several different points of view, and can rearrange the situation when eyewitness testimonies differ so that the scene can be viewed as each eyewitness saw it, letting the jury determine what is most likely to have occurred. If the testimony of one eyewitness is impossible according to the physical evidence, the program will make that clear; if the testimonies of several eyewitnesses vary, but each—according to the physical evidence—is possible, that also will be clear.

  Besides checking the feasibility of each witness's story, the program also allows the action to stop in a freeze-frame whenever the witness needs to explain something more fully, or the jury wants to consider what might have happened in that particular tenth of a second.

  As this book goes to press, the program is available from only one company, and has been used in court only one time. But by the time the book is in the reader's hands, almost certainly similar programs—even more sophisticated ones—will be available in many places. This tool, even more than most tools of crime-scene investigation, can be used by both the prosecution and the defense.

  The laboratory can do a lot of things. Individually, each one is only circumstantial. But how do they all add up?

  A Prototype Case

  Let's imagine a robbery and rape-murder.

  The victim, glamorous starlet Brigette Garbo, has been found dead in her palatial ski condo in Ski City, Utah. She is wearing a white silk bra and a turquoise mohair sweater; nearby on the floor, apparently ripped off her, are a pair of white silk panties embroidered with pink-and-turquoise nylon thread and a pair of turquoise-and-white wool slacks. Her body, lying on a sofa upholstered in a blue-and-beige, linen-and-cotton fabric, is covered with a fabulously expensive original Navajo blanket woven from natural, undyed, black, brown, and off-white wool. Fibers found on the body that did not come from anything in her condo include a light-blue dyed cotton and a white cotton-acrylic blend. Her hair, naturally black, has been bleached white and then dyed a sort of champagne blond; her pubic hair is still black. Tangled with her pubic hair, discovered by means of combings, are several brown pubic hairs, and one light-brown hair, about five inches long, is clinging to her mohair sweater. Alas, DNA fingerprinting is impossible; the perp seems to be aware of such things, as he apparently used a condom and took it with him, and none of the foreign hairs include the hair root.


  Suspicion soon centers on condo handyman Ralph Kallikak, who was seen leaving her condo at three o'clock the afternoon of the crime. He insists he was there to change a faucet washer, and presents as evidence the fact that Brigette had called the condo office to report a leaking faucet, which is no longer leaking. But Ralph was throwing money around somewhat freely later in the afternoon, and Brigette's fabulous diamond tennis bracelet has turned up in a pawnshop, left there by a man who meets Ralph's description—a man about 5'6" tall, blue eyes, light-brown hair worn in a ponytail.

  Police obtain a search warrant. When they examine the dirty clothes on the floor in Ralph's room (he doesn't seem to believe in hampers), they find a pair of faded blue jeans and a sweatshirt made of a white cotton-and-acrylic blend. On the jeans, they find microscopic fibers of white silk, turquoise mohair, turquoise-dyed wool, white-dyed wool, brown natural wool, black natural wool, and off-white natural wool, as well as blue-and-beige fibers of a mixture of cotton and linen. On the sweatshirt is one long hair, originally black but bleached white and dyed champagne blond. On his undershorts (yuck!) are a couple of black pubic hairs, but his own pubic hair is brown. Would you want to be Ralph's defense attorney?

  The police reports and lab reports from this case are in the appendix.

  TABLE 9_

  Sex-Crimes Evidence Collection

  These pages come from the Evidence Collection Manual, published by Sirchie Finger Print Laboratories, Inc., and are used by permission. The charts have been edited for use in this publication.

  Sexual assaults usually result in a physical struggle between the victim and the assailant. As a result of this struggle and the nature of sex crimes, physical evidence in some form is available to the investigator.

  • Consider what types of evidence might be available as a result of the struggle — at the crime scene, on the victim, and on her clothing.

  • Consider the type of weapon (if any) used in the commission of the assault.

  • Consider how the assailant and the victim reached the crime scene.

  Collection and Preservation

  When Possible, Bloodstained Materials Should Be Sent to the Lab lor Analysis

  • Air dry the bloodstained material.

  • Place the suspect material in a paper bag, affix an Evidence Collection Label, and mark with the date, your initials and an exhibit number. Seal the bag with an appropriate Evidence Integrity medium.

  • Each bloodstained item must be packaged separately and only after it is thoroughly air dried.

  • Collect standards for comparison.

  When Bloodstained Materials Cannot Be Sent to the Lab For Analysis

  • Using a clean blade, scrape the dried blood onto a clean piece of paper.

  • Scrape the area immediately around the bloodstain onto another clean piece of paper.

  • Fold and place each paper into the appropriate Rape Kit envelope.

  • Initial, date, and assign exhibit numbers to all envelopes, and seal.

  • Preserve and package the blade.

  • Collect standards for comparison.

  When a Sufficient Quantity of Liquid Bleed is Available

  • Fill vacutainer with blood.

  • Initial, date, and assign an exhibit number to the vacutainer.

  When a Whole Blood Sample Is not Available

  • Using a gauze pad, soak up the moist blood.

  • Air dry the pad.

  • Place the pad in the appropriate Rape Kit Evidence Envelope; initial, date, and assign an exhibit number.

  • Collect standards for comparison.

  Collecting Blood Standards for Comparison

  • Have a qualified individual collect whole blood from the victim and all suspects.

  • Label vacutainers with all pertinent information.

  DNA Analysis

  The possibility of confirming an individual's identity by DNA matching makes the collection of physiological evidence imperative. To assist in the proper collection of liquid or whole blood samples for DNA matching, Sirchie Labs is placing in each of its Sex Crimes Evidence Collection Kits, a lavender topped vacutainer marked "DNA Blood Testing Sample" containing EDTA.

  Collecting Saliva Samples

  • Air dry the saliva-stained material on a piece of paper.

  • Place the suspect material in a paper bag, affix an Evidence Collection label and mark with the date, your initials and an exhibit number. Seal the bag with an appropriate Evidence Integrity medium.

  • Each saliva-stained item must be packaged separately, and only after it is thoroughly air dried.

  • Collect standards for comparison.

  Collecting Saliva Standards for Comparison

  • Have the victim and the suspect(s) swab the inside of the mouth with the cotton swabs provided in the Rape Kit. Air dry and place in the appropriate envelope.

  • Initial, date, and assign exhibit numbers to all envelopes, and seal.

  Collecting Semen Samples

  • Air dry the semen-stained material on a clean piece of paper.

  • Place the suspect material in a paper bag, affix an Evidence Collection Label, and mark with the date, your initials and an exhibit number. Seal the bag with an appropriate Evidence Integrity medium.

  • Each semen-stained item must be packaged separately, and only after it is thoroughly air dried.

  Throughout this book, I've been writing as if your fictional detective will be a police officer. Of course I realize that may not be true; s/he may be a private investigator, or a brilliant amateur. Nevertheless, most of this information remains useful. What can and cannot be determined by examining evidence, as well as how a crime scene and its evidence should be handled, remain the same.

  But the unofficial investigator faces many problems that the police officer does not. To start with, simply gaining access to the evidence may be impossible. If the evidence has already been seized by the police, a court order—called a motion for discovery, obtainable by the defense attorney but not by the P.I. personally—may be required for the P.I. even to find out what evidence has been collected. The police, if they have not already been told by the prosecuting attorney not to, may decide to allow the P.I. to see the evidence, or they may not. (My usual practice, if I had no instructions from the D.A., was to allow the defense attorney to see the evidence only if it was so conclusive I felt my showing it would lead to a guilty plea.)

  The P.I. certainly will not be allowed to take custody of the evidence, and lengthy court maneuvering might be required before the defense can get access to the evidence for an independent expert to examine it. If the court rules otherwise, the defense will never get access. Period.

  The P.I. cannot, by law, get a search warrant, but if s/he enters illegally s/he may be charged with unlawful entry, burglary, or interfering with a police officer in the lawful discharge of his or her duty.

  At the very best, even if the police and the witnesses all decide to cooperate with the P.I., the fact remains that the scene has been thoroughly worked over before the P.I. gets access to it. The P.I. will almost never have the advantage of seeing an undisturbed scene; therefore, s/he must almost always work with, through, or around someone else's interpretation of the scene.

  And that "very best" situation rarely occurs. Usually the police will not cooperate, and the likelihood of a defense attorney's being hired and getting a court order requiring the P.I. to have access before the police are through working the scene is virtually nil—no matter how wealthy and well connected the suspect's family may be.

  For an idea of the difficulty involved, consider the Sam Sheppard murder case: It took years, well after the defendant's conviction, for the defense to gain access to most of the evidence.

  In addition to unavailable evidence and an already-worked-over scene, the P.I. may have another problem. Although police cannot actually compel possible witnesses to talk with them, they still carry some official clout, which the P.I does not have. If the
P.I. is working for the defense, the prosecuting attorney may order possible witnesses not to talk; even without an order, a hostile witness who might feel compelled to talk with police — even if s/he is lying—may easily refuse to talk with any other investigators.

  In real life, P.I.'s are rarely involved in murders; more often they are working with domestic matters or with corporate crime, where legal clout may be replaced with other types of clout. But in fiction, almost always the P.I. is working with murder or with something that may turn into murder.

  One way to handle these problems is the way Rex Stout's detectives (other than Nero Wolfe, who almost never left his house) worked it. Think about how many times Archie or Stout's other detectives somehow managed to be first on the scene of the murder.

  But even the most handy device can be used to excess. For an idea of what would happen in real life, let's look again at the murder of Brigette Garbo from the previous chapter. Let's suppose that Brigette's agent, Sam Snoop, who was hopelessly in love with her, has the idea that it was Brigette's husband-before-last, Peter Prowler, who killed her, and framed poor Ralph for the crime. So he calls you in—P.I. Anny Boddy. What are you going to do?

  You're going to tread carefully, because, buddy, that California license doesn't mean Jack in Utah. You have no authority at all, legal or otherwise.

  The first thing you want is access to the scene, and that's your first hurdle, when you find out that Brigette was still married to Peter Prowler when she bought the condo, and it was joint property. So now Peter owns it, and is he going to let you inside?

  Scratch that.

  So you go down to the Ski City Police Department and ask to speak to the investigating officer, Molly Murphy. Molly is in charge of the sex-crimes unit, and she has no time to talk to you, and anyway, she disapproves of Sam Snoop for very good reasons of her own which she sees no reason to discuss with you. What does that mean?