March 3rd, 2010
In New York City, it seems that there is slim pickings of mugging victims, or so ex-convict Jermaine Washington seemed to think. Washington was in Riverside Park, NY looking for someone to mug when he decided to pull his fake gun on two police officers who happened to be walking by. The two officers pulled their real guns and quickly took Washington into custody, and from there Washington no doubt went straight to prison.
The National Museum of Crime and Punishment wants to say congratulations to America’s Most Wanted for nabbing genuinely hard to catch criminals for 1000 episodes!
 AMW 1000 episodes cake
Tags: Add new tag, America's Most Wanted, Crime, Punishment, Scandal
Posted in Museum Events, Senseless Crimes | No Comments »
February 25th, 2010
Recently the case of Natalee Holloway has resurfaced due to yet another confession from Jordan van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the Natalee Holloway disappearance. Natalee Holloway made headline news in 2005 when she failed to catch her flight back to the USA from Aruba at the end of a school trip. She was last seen getting into a car with Jordan van der Sloot and two of his friends; Natalee was never seen again. Since 2005 Jordan van der Sloot has remained the prime suspect. Jordan has told many different stories in regards to what happened to Natalee; he has said he and his friends dropped her off at her hotel, that he left her on the beach alone, that he sold her to a man in a boat for $10,000, that he had a friend dispose of her body after she died from a seizure during a romantic interlude on the beach, and now that he dumped her body in a swamp. In fact, Jordan van der Sloot’s story has changed over 20 times. So why is Jordan van der Sloot not in jail? Why have charges never stuck?
The case, unfortunately, lacks any forensic evidence. There is no body and there is no physical forensic evidence. This complete lack of physical forensic evidence means that police have to rely on witness testimony and cell phone and computer trails alone. And although there is evidence showing communications between suspects, there is nothing substantial for the prosecution to hang their hats on due to the lack of physical evidence. This leaves testimonial evidence, such as Jordan’s confessions.
Confessions cannot be taken at face value without corroboration, if Jordan confesses to the crime revealing an act that could not have actually taken place then the police cannot accept the confession as true. Prosecutors claim that his stories have never made total sense and could not have taken place as he has said. So why would Jordan van der Sloot confess to the crime and not tell the truth? Perhaps he does not want to get caught, and having had a lawyer/judge for a father he knows how to confess without giving police the details needed to able to charge him. So why should he talk at all? Jordan confessed not only the crime to a friend of his (a confession he later claimed was fictitious and was told solely for bragging rights) but he also confessed he planned to file a lawsuit and make lots of money off his multiple arrests and releases. Van der Sloot has already written a book titled The Natalee Holloway Case, and most likely plans to profit off of the Holloways’ tragedy as long as he can.
All future upsdates on this case will be posted on Forensics: Cases from the Media page of this blog.
Beth Holloway and the museum have partnered in forming the Natalee Holloway Resource center to raise awareness and help find missing people; click here to read more.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 16th, 2010
The museum just opened its newest temporary exhibit called Art Crimes: Crimes in the Arts, which may lead some to wonder “What is art crime?”. There are many different types of art crime, including smuggling art, looting archeological digs/sites, and theft from collections. Art comes in many shapes and forms; art is not just a painting hanging in a museum or a sculpture adorning a pedestal, art can be a fossil, a rare book, an ancient samurai sword, or a comic book. Art, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.
What most people don’t know is that most art crimes are committed not by individuals but mostly by organized groups, or organized crime families. This is because it takes a lot of resources to commit major art crimes. Though it may be easy to steal a piece of art work it is not easy to then find a way to successfully ransom it or to smuggle it out of the country in order to attempt a sale on the black market . An individual would not have the connections or pull to be able to successfully gain anything from stealing art, except maybe a prison sentence.
To learn more about Art Crime check out the museum’s exhibit, on display until April 26, 2010. To read more about Art Crimes click here.
Tags: Art Crimes, Crime, Evidence, Museum, National Museum of Crime & Punishment
Posted in Forensics in The News, Museum Events | No Comments »
February 9th, 2010
That you can cast shoe impressions in the snow? Though it may seem like impressions in the snow couldn’t be cast without destroying the impression or its details, it actually is possible to get a pristine cast of a shoe impression in the snow. There are two main concerns when casting in the snow, 1. The casting material, usually castone, gives off some heat while setting, potentially melting the impression, 2. The castone may freeze instead of set in a cold environment. Once these hurdles are overcome a court quality impression can easily be cast form the snow. The way to overcome the first problem is by using something called snow wax. Snow wax is a material that is sprayed on top of the impression that creates a barrier between the impression and the castone. Since snow wax is applied via an aerosol spray, it evenly covers all the individual characteristics left behind by the print. Once the snow wax is covering the impression entirely it can act as a heat absorber and can protect the impression evidence from the heat of the castone. Sometime, when no snow wax is available, aerosol spray paint can be used as a substitute. Keeping the cast from freezing instead of setting can be accomplished by covering the impression and castone with a box and some newspaper to keep the immediate cold, and possible falling, snow out . Often times a car is driven so its engine is over a cast print in snow so that the car engine can keep the castone from freezing while it sets. After 45 minutes or so the cast should be set and ready to be lifted.
Tags: Add new tag, CSI, Evidence, Forensic Science, impression evidence, snow, Trivia
Posted in Fun Facts, Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 2nd, 2010
When Fannie Henson of Virginia found a man’s lost wallet she must have thought it was her lucky day. She took one of the man’s credit cards and ran up almost $400 in charges from a gas station and a grocery store combined. Her undoing? Ms. Henson was a smart shopper and she was sure to scan her personal discount card before paying for her groceries with a stranger’s credit card. She was soon linked to the stolen card and was arrested for credit card theft, a felony.
Tags: National Museum of Crime & Punishment, Scandal, Story, Trivia
Posted in Forensics in The News, Fun Facts, Senseless Crimes | No Comments »
January 28th, 2010
That when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris in 1911 it was fingerprint evidence that led to the capture of her thief? In 1911 the Mona Lisa was unceremoniously stolen off the Louvre walls and carried out of the museum after it closed. It took detectives two years to apprehend a suspect, Vincenzo Peruggia a Louvre employee in 1911. It was the fingerprint Peruggia left behind on the protective glass that had been shielding the Mona Lisa that finally definitely tied the thief to the crime.
For more on crimes against art come see the museum’s Temporary Crimes in the Arts exhibit, up from February 12 thru April 26, 2010. Click here for details.
Tags: Art Crime, Evidence, Fingerprint, Fingerprints, Forensic Science, National Museum of Crime & Punishment
Posted in Forensics in The News, Fun Facts, Museum Events | No Comments »
January 21st, 2010
3D facial reconstruction is the art of reconstructing what a face might have looked like from a skull. This technique is most often used on discovered skeletal remains where the identity of the victim is unknown; it is a last resort for when all other modes of identification have failed to provide the victim’s identity. 3D facial reconstruction is not a legally recognized technique for positive identification and is not admissible in court as expert testimony.
Facial reconstruction starts with assessing the owner of the skull’s race, sex, and age. The race and sex can be determined with relatively good accuracy from the skull alone and certain age groups can be very loosely approximated from the skull as well. The process of reconstruction starts with making a mold of the unknown skull with the jaw attached and false eyes in place. Depth markers are placed on 21 different “landmark” areas of the mold of the skull to approximate the facial tissue thickness that lay on the skull. These tissue thicknesses are approximated from averages of other people of the same age, sex, and race as the skull is assumed to be. Facial muscles are placed on the mold next and then the face is built up with clay to within a millimeter of the depth markers as tissue. The nose and eye setting are very difficult to estimate due to the enormous amount of variation possible, mathematical models are used to make the approximations, the mouth is assumed to be the same width as the distance between the pupils. In facial reconstruction the eyes, nose, and mouth are mostly guess work. Characteristics such as birthmarks, wrinkles, weight, scars, and such are guesses at best and cannot actually be determined from the skull.
No single methodology has been established for 3D forensic facial reconstruction so there are a number of different methods, in the end facial reconstruction is a scientifically based artist’s rendition of what a face might have looked like. 3D facial reconstruction is considered to be inherently inaccurate and different artists, given the same skull, will always come back with different looking faces.
Tags: Add new tag, anthropology, CSI, Decomposition, facial reconstruction, Forensic, Forensic Science
Posted in Forensics in The News, Fun Facts | 1 Comment »
January 15th, 2010
Detective Washington stood in the doorway looking at the dead body in the den, the body of Mr. Abrams Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln lay on the floor with blood still flowing from the obvious bullet hole in his back, the blood slowly saturating the carpet. The phone lay next to his body. Mrs. Lincoln stood in the doorway crying “I should have come home, I should have called the police” she sobbed. Mrs. Lincoln then repeated her story to the detective “I was on the phone with Abe this morning a few minutes after I arrived at work, I had forgotten to take the dog out and had called Abe to remind him to take Wolfie out.” The shaken woman continued, “We were talking when he said that he heard a crash, he said the dog probably knocked something over and then I heard a loud bang and the phone went dead. I thought Wolfie had just knocked something over and I went back to my busy day.” Mary Lincoln sputtered “I tried calling a couple of more times but the phone was always busy, but I didn’t think anything of it.” After a few deep breaths she continued “I came home and found him like this and immediately called the police. I wish I had called them when the phone went dead but I thought it was the dog and I had meetings all day, I was just so busy, I was in meetings until 6pm” finished Mary.
The detective stood and thought for a minute and asked Mary Lincoln what time she had left for work in the morning. “I left for work around 8:30am, I had gone to work early because I had so much to do, I called Abe probably around 9am” answered the widow. The detective proclaimed “Mrs. Lincoln, either you are lying to me or there were two separate incidents at this house because your husband was not shot while you were on the phone with him.”
What would cause the detective to say this?
The answer will appear in the comments section of this post on February 17, 2010
Tags: Forensic, Forensic Science, Murder, Mystery
Posted in Games & Trivia | 2 Comments »
January 6th, 2010
 Forensic Crossword Across:
3. A class characteristic of fingerprints
4. You can use different lights to differentiate these on paper
5. Shoe _: A type of she evidence,like in mud (also the name of one of the NMCP workshops)
8. The shell of a bullet
11. _ & Valleys : The two features that make up fingerprint patterns
12. A kind of glue used to find latent fingerprints
14. The over the counter pain reliever that was tainted with cyanide and killed seven in 1982
16. _ & Forgeries: One of the NMCP workshops
20. _ Light: A common term for UV light
21. _ Writing: A type of written evidence
22. A class characteristic of fingerprints
23. One of the words from DNA
Down:
1. “pertaining to the law”
2. The study of firearms
6. Friction _: Raised skin on the fingertips that is responsible for leaving fingerprint marks
7. Blood _ Analysis: Study of bloodstain patterns
9. Type of evidence that covicted Ted Bundy
10. One of the words from NMCP
13. Clyde’s partner in crime
15. A chemical used to detect blood
17. These types of blood cells have no nucleus and no DNA
18. One of the words from CSI
19. Type of killer who kills multiple people in a series of incidents
20. _ & DNA: The name of one of the NMCP workshops
Answers will be posted in the coments section of this post on Feb 10th, 2010
Tags: Add new tag, crossword, Evidence, Forensic, Forensic Science, Workshops
Posted in Games & Trivia | 3 Comments »
December 30th, 2009
What do forensic anthropologists do? They study human bones to determine a biological profile and to assess potential trauma and pathology. What does that mean? It means forensic anthropologists use bones to try to understand what a given person looked like and if they suffered any trauma when they died.
So what can a forensic anthropologist tell from bones? Bones can tell age, sex, stature, bone pathology, nutrition, and sometimes repetitive activities the person had engaged in. Repetitive activity can change the morphology of a skeleton and bones; repetitive, heavy use of certain muscles can affect the size and density of the bones to which they are attached. Poor nutrition also shows up in bones. Rickets, a disease caused by vitamin D and calcium deficiencies, causes bones to become soft, fractured, and deformed.
The age of the person the bones belonged to can be determined relatively accurately using bone fusions and teeth up to the age of 21, after the age of 21 exact age is all but impossible to determine from bones, except for relative old age. Sex can be determined from close examination of the pelvis, which has gone through evolutionary differentiation between men and women, and the skull. Small shape and size differences in these bones can help determine the sex of the skeleton. Race can also be determined, somewhat. Race can be narrowed down to black, white, or Asian using the features of the skull and sometimes the shape of certain teeth. This is becoming more difficult in an age where different races interbreed freely and skull morphology of mixed races is not telling of any one race.
Forensic anthropology also concentrates on potential causes of death, although forensic anthropologists lack the legal authority to declare any official cause of death their opinions are taken into consideration by the medical examiner or coroner. The potential cause of death can sometimes be determined if there are obvious perimortem fractures to the skeleton or gunshot holes or blade cut marks in the bone.
Tags: anthropology, Evidence, Forensic, Forensic Science, Mystery, Science, Trivia
Posted in Forensics in The News, Fun Facts | 4 Comments »
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