At the Crime Scene: Finding the Evidence

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The goal of the evidence-collection stage is to find, collect and preserve all physical evidence that might serve to recreate the crime and identify the perpetrator in a manner that will stand up in court. Evidence can come in any form. Some typical kinds of evidence a CSI might find at a crime scene include:

· Trace evidence (gunshot residue, paint residue, broken glass, unknown chemicals, drugs)

· Impressions (fingerprints, footwear, tool marks)

· Body fluids (blood, semen, saliva, vomit)

· Hair and fibers

· Weapons and firearms evidence (knives, guns, bullet holes, cartridge casings)

· Questioned documents (diaries, suicide note, phone books; also includes electronic documents like answering machines and caller ID units)

With theories of the crime in mind, CSIs begin the systematic search for incriminating evidence, taking meticulous notes along the way. If there is a dead body at the scene, the search probably starts there.

Examining the body
A CSI might collect evidence from the body at the crime scene or he might wait until the body arrives at the morgue. In either case, the CSI does at least a visual examination of the body and surrounding area at the scene, taking pictures and detailed notes.

Before moving the body, the CSI makes note of details including:

· Are there any stains or marks on the clothing?

· Is the clothing bunched up in particular direction? If so, this could indicate dragging.

· Are there any bruises, cuts or marks on body? Any defense wounds? Any injuries indicating, consistent with or inconsistent with the preliminary cause of death?

· Is there anything obviously missing? Is there a tan mark where a watch or ring should be?

· If blood is present in large amounts, does the direction of flow follow the laws of gravity? If not, the body may have been moved.

· If no blood is present in the area surrounding the body, is this consistent with the preliminary cause of death? If not, the body may have been moved.

· Are there any bodily fluids present beside blood?

· Is there any insect activity on the body? If so, the CSI may call in a forensic entomologist to analyze the activity for clues as to how long the person has been dead.

After moving the body, he performs the same examination of the other side of the victim. At this point, he may also take the body temperature and the ambient room temperature to assist in determining an estimated time of death (although most forensic scientists say that time of death determinations are extremely unreliable -- the human body is unpredictable and there are too many variables involved). He will also take fingerprints of the deceased either at the scene or at the ME's office.

Once the CSI is done documenting the conditions of body and the immediately surrounding area, technicians wrap the body in a white cloth and put paper bags over the hands and feet for transportation to the morgue for an autopsy. These precautions are for the purpose of preserving any trace evidence on the victim. A CSI will usually attend the autopsy and take additional pictures or video footage and collect additional evidence, especially tissue samples from major organs, for analysis at the crime lab.

Examining the scene

There are several search patterns available for a CSI to choose from to assure complete coverage and the most efficient use of resources. These patterns may include:

The inward spiral search: The CSI starts at the perimeter of the scene and works toward the center. Spiral patterns are a good method to use when there is only one CSI at the scene.

· The outward spiral search: The CSI starts at the center of scene (or at the body) and works outward.

· The parallel search: All of the members of the CSI team form a line. They walk in a straight line, at the same speed, from one end of crime scene to the other.

· The grid search: A grid search is simply two parallel searches, offset by 90 degrees, performed one after the other.

· The zone search: In a zone search, the CSI in charge divides the crime scene into sectors, and each team member takes one sector. Team members may then switch sectors and search again to ensure complete coverage.

While searching the scene, a CSI is looking for details including:

· Are the doors and windows locked or unlocked? Open or shut? Are there signs of forced entry, such as tool marks or broken locks?

· Is the house in good order? If not, does it look like there was a struggle or was the victim just messy?

· Is there mail lying around? Has it been opened?

· Is the kitchen in good order? Is there any partially eaten food? Is the table set? If so, for how many people?

· Are there signs of a party, such as empty glasses or bottles or full ashtrays?

· If there are full ashtrays, what brands of cigarettes are present? Are there any lipstick or teeth marks on the butts?

· Is there anything that seems out of place? A glass with lipstick marks in a man's apartment, or the toilet seat up in a woman's apartment? Is there a couch blocking a doorway?

· Is there trash in the trash cans? Is there anything out of the ordinary in the trash? Is the trash in the right chronological order according to dates on mail and other papers? If not, someone might have been looking for something in the victim's trash.

· Do the clocks show the right time?

· Are the bathroom towels wet? Are the bathroom towels missing? Are there any signs of a cleanup?

· If the crime is a shooting, how many shots were fired? The CSI will try to locate the gun, each bullet, each shell casing and each bullet hole.

· If the crime is a stabbing, is a knife obviously missing from victim's kitchen? If so, the crime may not have been premeditated.

· Are there any shoe prints on tile, wood or linoleum floors or in the area immediately outside the building?

· Are there any tire marks in the driveway or in the area around the building?

· Is there any blood splatter on floors, walls or ceilings?

The actual collection of physical evidence is a slow process. Each time the CSI collects an item, he must immediately preserve it, tag it and log it for the crime scene record. Different types of evidence may be collected either at the scene or in lab depending on conditions and resources. Mr. Clayton, for instance, never develops latent fingerprints at the scene. He always sends fingerprints to the lab for development in a controlled environment. In the next section, we'll talk about collection methods for specific types of evidence.

Consider This · Crime scenes are three dimensional. CSIs should remember to look up. · If a CSI shines a flashlight on the ground at various angles, even when there's plenty of lighting, he'll create new shadows that could reveal evidence. · It's easy to recover DNA from cigarette butts.

Evidence Collection

In collecting evidence from a crime scene, the CSI has several main goals in mind: Reconstruct the crime, identify the person who did it, preserve the evidence for analysis and collect it in a way that will make it stand up in court.

Trace evidence
Trace evidence might include gun-shot residue (GSR), paint residue, chemicals, glass and illicit drugs. To collect trace evidence, a CSI might use tweezers, plastic containers with lids, a filtered vacuum device and a knife. He will also have a biohazard kit on hand containing disposable latex gloves, booties, face mask and gown and a biohazard waste bag.

If the crime involves a gun, the CSI will collect clothing from the victim and anyone who may have been at the scene so the lab can test for GSR. GSR on the victim can indicate a close shot, and GSR on anyone else can indicate a suspect. The CSI places all clothing in sealed paper bags for transport to the lab. If he finds any illicit drugs or unknown powders at the scene, he can collect them using a knife and then seal each sample in a separate, sterile container. The lab can identify the substance, determine its purity and see what else is in the sample in trace amounts. These tests might determine drug possession, drug tampering or whether the composition could have killed or incapacitated a victim.

Technicians discover a lot of the trace evidence for a crime in the lab when they shake out bedding, clothing, towels, couch cushions and other items found at the scene. At the CBI Denver Crime Lab, technicians shake out the items in a sterile room, onto a large, white slab covered with paper.

CBI Denver trace-evidence room

The technicians then send any trace evidence they find to the appropriate department. In the Denver Crime Lab, things like soil, glass and paint stay in the trace-evidence lab, illicit drugs and unknown substances go to the chemistry lab, and hair goes to the DNA lab.

Body fluids
Body fluids found at a crime scene might include blood, semen, saliva, and vomit. To identify and collect these pieces of evidence, a CSI might use smear slides, a scalpel, tweezers, scissors, sterile cloth squares, a UV light, protective eyewear and luminol. He'll also use a blood collection kit to get samples from any suspects or from a living victim to use for comparison.

If the victim is dead and there is blood on the body, the CSI collects a blood sample either by submitting a piece of clothing or by using a sterile cloth square and a small amount of distilled water to remove some blood from the body. Blood or saliva collected from the body may belong to someone else, and the lab will perform DNA analysis so the sample can be used later to compare to blood or saliva taken from a suspect. The CSI will also scrape the victim's nails for skin -- if there was a struggle, the suspect's skin (and therefore DNA) may be under the victim's nails. If there is dried blood on any furniture at the scene, the CSI will try to send the entire piece of furniture to the lab. A couch is not an uncommon piece of evidence to collect. If the blood is on something that can't reasonably go to the lab, like a wall or a bathtub, the CSI can collect it by scraping it into a sterile container using a scalpel. The CSI may also use luminol and a portable UV light to reveal blood that has been washed off a surface.

If there is blood at the scene, there may also be blood spatter patterns. These patterns can reveal the type of weapon that was used -- for instance, a "cast-off pattern" is left when something like a baseball bat contacts a blood source and then swings back. The droplets are large and often tear-drop shaped. This type of pattern can indicate multiple blows from a blunt object, because the first blow typically does not contact any blood. A "high-energy pattern," on the other hand, is made up of many tiny droplets and may indicate a gun shot. Blood spatter analysis can indicate which direction the blood came from and how many separate incidents created the pattern. Analyzing a blood pattern involves studying the size and shape of the stain, the shape and size of the blood droplets and the concentration of the droplets within the pattern. The CSI takes pictures of the pattern and may call in a blood-spatter specialist to analyze it.

Hair and Fibers

A CSI may use combs, tweezers, containers and a filtered vacuum device to collect any hair or fibers at the scene. In a rape case with a live victim, the CSI accompanies the victim to the hospital to obtain any hairs or fibers found on the victim's body during the medical examination. The CSI seals any hair or fiber evidence in separate containers for transport to the lab.

A CSI might recover carpet fibers from a suspect's shoes. The lab can compare these fibers to carpet fibers from the victim's home. Analysts can use hair DNA to identify or eliminate suspects by comparison. The presence of hair on a tool or weapon can identify it as the weapon used in the crime. The crime lab can determine what type of animal the hair came from (human? dog? cow?); and, if it's human, analysts can determine the person's race, what part of the body the hair came from, whether it fell out or was pulled and whether it was dyed.

Fingerprints

Tools for recovering fingerprints include brushes, powders, tape, chemicals, lift cards, a magnifying glass and Super Glue. A crime lab can use fingerprints to identify the victim or identify or rule out a suspect. There are several types of prints a CSI might find at a crime scene:

· Visible: Left by the transfer of blood, paint or another fluid or powder onto a surface that is smooth enough to hold the print; evident to the naked eye

· Molded: Left in a soft medium like soap, putty or candle wax, forming an impression

· Latent: Left by the transfer of sweat and natural oils from the fingers onto a surface that is smooth enough to hold the print; not visible to the naked eye

A perpetrator might leave prints on porous or nonporous surfaces. Paper, unfinished wood and cardboard are porous surfaces that will hold a print, and glass, plastic and metal are non-porous surfaces. A CSI will typically look for latent prints on surfaces the perpetrator is likely to have touched. For instance, if there are signs of forced entry on the front door, the outside door knob and door surface are logical places to look for prints. Breathing on a surface or shining a very strong light on it might make a latent print temporarily visible. When you see a TV detective turn a doorknob using a handkerchief, she's probably destroying a latent print. The only way not to corrupt a latent print on a non-porous surface is to not touch it. Proper methods for recovering latent prints include:

· Powder (for non-porous surfaces): Metallic silver powder or velvet black powder
A CSI uses whichever powder contrasts most with the color of material holding the print. He gently brushes powder onto the surface in a circular motion until a print is visible; then he starts brushing in the direction of the print ridges. He takes a photo of the print before using tape to lift it (this makes it stand up better in court). He adheres clear tape to the powdered print, draws it back in a smooth motion and then adheres is to a fingerprint card of a contrasting color to the powder.

Powders and brushes at the CBI latent-fingerprint lab

· Chemicals (for porous surfaces): Iodine, ninhydrin, silver nitrate
The CSI sprays the chemical onto the surface of the material or dips the material into a chemical solution to reveal the latent print.

· Cyanoacrylate (Super Glue) fuming (for porous or non-porous surfaces)
The CSI pours Super Glue into a metal plate and heats it to about 120 F. He then places the plate, the heat source and the object containing the latent print in an airtight container. The fumes from the Super Glue make the latent print visible without disturbing the material it's on.