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In February of 2001 Don Berkebile added a one page codicil to his will saying it was added; “in the event that I should suffer an accident before a new will is prepared.” Then in 2003, he added a sticky note to a letter to the Editor he sent to a reporter at a local news agency, noting that he felt his life was in danger: “Keep this in mind, should something happen to me, and request a thorough investigation.” They say justice delayed is justice denied. Over a year has passed since Don Berkebile; retired curator of the Smithsonian...

The Los Angeles County coroner's office officially ruled the death of Michael Jackson a homicide and said he died of "acute propofol intoxication." According to a statement from the coroner: The "manner of death has been ruled homicide. Cause of death was established as acute propofol intoxication. Other conditions contributing to death: benzodiazepine. The drugs propofol and Lorazepam were found to be the primary drugs responsible for Mr. Jackson’s death. Other drugs detected were midazolam, diazepam, lidocaine, and ephedrine. The final coroner’s report includes a complete toxicology report will that remain on security hold at the request of the Los...

Dr. Bass became head of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee. There dead bodies are studied, rates of decay and other nasty stuff, to help solve crimes, identify the long dead or just so people like myself can read some really interesting stuff about it. Not for the squeamish.

The old-fashioned police sketch is getting a makeover. Researchers are identifying genes that give rise to a person's physical traits, such as facial structure, skin color or even whether they are right- or left-handed. That could allow police to build a picture of what a criminal looks like not just from sometimes-fuzzy eyewitness accounts, but by analyzing DNA found at a crime scene. Forensic experts are increasingly relying on DNA as "a genetic eyewitness," says Jack Ballantyne, associate director for research at the National Center for Forensic Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, who is studying whether...

CAMP TROY, Iraq, March 24, 2009 – When an improvised explosive device is detected, most people run and take cover, but a team of servicemembers here heads straight to the site to start the crime-scene investigation. Members of the weapons intelligence team provide counter improvised explosive device intelligence through collection and analysis in support of Multinational Corps Iraq, in Iraq, February 2009. By collecting evidence and staying ahead of the enemy, the team helps prepare U.S. and coalition forces for future attacks. Courtesy photo   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The airmen, soldiers and sailors of the weapons...

The U.S. Congress’ Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation on Tuesday heard from a panel of forensic expert witnesses that some issues dealing with the validity of forensic science need better review procedures and more rigorous standards. The hearing focused on a recent report released by the National Academy of Sciences regarding the status of U.S. crime labs, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. The study found that, with the exception of DNA analysis, most forensic disciplines are in need of further scientific evaluation to determine their reliability and accuracy. “Forensic science is a key factor in...

BASRAH — Crime scene investigators here are now working in a modernized forensic laboratory thanks to a $263,000 renovation, completed Feb. 22. “I’m very pleased with the new capabilities our renovated Basrah Criminal Evidence Department Laboratory offers,” said Iraqi Police Capt. Bassim. “This is the first time in ten years our facility has been upgraded.” The five-month project improves the investigator's ability to effectively analyze crime scene evidence and solve crimes, he explained. “The completed project provides Basrah a great facility to conduct criminal forensics,” said Arthur Davey, project engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Gulf Region...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Police and medical examiners who thought a man died of natural causes changed their minds after funeral-home workers found bullet holes in his head. The Kansas City Star reported Thursday that three bullet wounds — two of them in Anthony Crockett's head — were noticed after the man's body was embalmed Friday. The funeral home returned the 49-year-old Kansas City man's body to the Jackson County medical examiner's office, and police counted the death as a homicide.

FORENSIC investigators have recovered the charred remains of most of the 9/11 hijackers - to honour a pledge that they would never be buried with the victims. The £30million CSI-style probe has taken seven years. Flesh or bone from 13 of the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists who flew passenger jets into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington have now been identified. In the most intense crime scene investigation in history, scientists sifted through a mountain of concrete dust, buckled iron and shattered glass to find what was left of the terrorists. The final tally was...

http://www.theage.com.au/world/of-murder-science-and-blood-ties-20081004-4txb.html?page=-1Cannot be posted, per rules.

The defense attorney for one of two men accused in the murder of physicist Eugene Mallove said today that he expects the state to stop prosecuting the men based on the discovery that the state forensics lab mixed up key physical evidence that had initially appeared incriminating. Mallove, 56, a prominent scientist from Pembroke, N.H., was found beaten to death, struck about the head and neck, in the driveway of his late mother’s house on Salem Turnpike in Norwich on May 14, 2004. The same weekend, New Britain police arrested Gary McAvoy and Joseph Reilly in a car stolen from...

DETROIT - The Detroit police crime lab was shut down by the city's new mayor and police chief after an outside audit found errors in some evidence used to prosecute cases involving murder and other crimes, officials said Thursday. An audit by Michigan State Police found erroneous or false findings in 10 percent of 200 random cases and subpar quality control compliance at the lab, said Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy. The report revealed a "shocking level of imcompetence" in the lab and constitutes a systemic problem, she said at a news conference. When it came to recognized work standards,...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2008 – Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have begun, thousands of American soldiers have been welcomed home with elaborate parades, gymnasiums packed with tearful spouses and children, and commanders proclaiming from podiums great deeds done in battle. Navy Rear Adm. Donna L. Crisp, who commands the JPAC, talks about emerging technologies that are boosting efforts to recover and identify missing servicemembers. Defense Dept. photo by Fred W. Baker III  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Still others have had more tragic homecomings, instead returning in flag-draped coffins to grieving spouses and families; their ceremonies...

When DNA from hundreds of people is pooled together, it has been impossible to identify any individuals. In what could be a boon for crime-fighters, however, a statistical technique now makes the task possible--allowing forensic detectives to determine whether a suspect handled a gun, for example. But the technique also creates a privacy concern about health data; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, is now backpedaling on a policy mandating genetic sharing developed just 8 months ago for fear that the health information of people who participated in the studies could be identified. The authors of the...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Today Sgt. John Allen with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department confirmed what Channel 9 has been reporting since Wednesday. There was a dead body in the trunk of Casey Anthony’s car, and that body was Caylee.Four Orange County Sheriff’s Detectives joined Texas EquuSearch and about two-hundred volunteers Sunday morning in the search for Caylee Anthony.Orange County Sheriffs and EquuSearch are asking that individuals interested in assisting in the search go to the staging area. That is located at the Holiday Inn Select at 5750 TG Lee Blvd in Orlando.Casey Anthony awoke in the Orange County jail,...

FOB KALSU — The Iraqi Criminal Investigation Department visited Arab Jabour, April 14, to investigate and confiscate cars that were stolen by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to plan and commit terrorist acts. It is believed that AQI stored the vehicles so they could be used to build vehicle borne improvised explosive devices or be sold to finance AQI operations. Using four flatbed trucks and a crane, 26 cars were loaded and taken to CID headquarters in Dora for investigation. The cars were at a house in the village of Bayija, used by AQI since early 2007 as a meeting and...

State Police in Delaware say new technology has helped them to solve a two-year-old murder case. 29-year-old Jamace Green was killed at a Days Inn in Talleyville, Delaware in 2006. Police recovered a beer bottle and a shell casing from the crime scene but did not realize their value until the evidence was entered in a national database. Through the database, police say they were able to link Green's murder to a suspect who killed another man in Chester. Police arrested 31-year-old Jamar Harper on Monday. They say he committed both crimes. "We compared his DNA to DNA recovered from...

LIVINGSTON, Tenn. — Four days a week Todd Matthews earns $11.50 an hour working for an automotive parts supplier. He punches in at 4:15 a.m., punches out nearly 11 hours later, then drives half a mile to his little beige house on a hill where, in the distance, he can glimpse the Appalachian mountains. He spends the next seven to eight hours at his desk, beneath shelves lined with miniature plastic skulls, immersed in a very different world. Their faces seem to float from his computer — morgue photographs, artist sketches, forensic reconstructions — thousands of dead eyes staring from...

The appearance of nuclear weapons materials on the black market is a growing global concern, and it is crucial that the United States reinforce its team of nuclear forensics experts and modernize its forensics tools to prepare for or respond to a possible nuclear terrorist attack. Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we...

Abraham Lincoln was the rarest of men, and John G. Sotos believes that extended all the way to his chromosome 10. A physician, connoisseur of rare ailments and amateur historian, Sotos believes Lincoln had a genetic syndrome called MEN 2B. He thinks the diagnosis not only accounts for Lincoln’s great height, which has been the subject of most medical speculation over the years, but also for many of the president’s other reported ailments and behaviors. He also suspects Lincoln was dying of cancer at the time he was assassinated, and was unlikely to have survived a year. He thinks cancer...

Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found. The science, known as comparative bullet-lead analysis, was first used after President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The technique used chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on the theory that each batch...

The Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of nine U.S. servicemen, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors. They are 1st Lt. David P. McMurray, of Melrose, Mass.; 1st Lt. Raymond Pascual, of Houston, Texas; 2nd Lt. Millard C. Wells Jr., of Paris, Ky.; Tech. Sgt. Leonard J. Ray, of Upper Falls, Md.; Tech. Sgt. Hyman L. Stiglitz, of Boston, Mass.; Staff Sgt. Robert L. Cotey, of Vergennes, Vt.; Staff Sgt. Francis E. Larrivee, of Laconia, N.H.; Staff Sgt. Robert...

State lab manager quits after she's accused of signing false statementsAllegations that the manager of the state toxicology lab has repeatedly signed false statements over nearly seven years could raise questions about criminal cases and prompt hundreds of drunken-driving suspects to challenge their breath tests. Ann Marie Gordon resigned July 20, several days after the Washington State Patrol began investigating an anonymous tip about work done in its own Seattle toxicology lab. Gordon is accused of signing sworn statements -- under penalty of perjury -- that she tested ethanol-water solutions used to make sure breath-test machines are working properly even...

Forensic analyst Dexter Morgan leads a double life as serial killer of criminals whom have gotten away with murder through legal technicalities. He hides his double life from his vice squad sister Debra, his co-workers at the Metro Miami Police Department where he works, as well as his commitment-minded girlfriend, a troubled divorcée named Rita.

Biblical passage and forensic analysis suggest new theory on human remains at Masada The Associated PressPublished: June 22, 2007 MASADA, Israel: An Israeli anthropologist is using modern forensics and an obscure Biblical passage to challenge the accepted wisdom about mysterious human remains found at Masada, the desert fortress famous as the scene of a mass suicide nearly 2,000 years ago. A new research paper published Friday takes another look at the remains of three people found in a bathhouse at the site — two male skeletons and a full head of women's hair, including two braids. They were long thought...

TUCSON (AP) -- Rapes and most other serious crimes that happened before 1997 can't be prosecuted because the statute of limitations has run out, even if law enforcement unearths new DNA evidence tying a suspect to the crime, a state appeals court has ruled. The ruling by the Arizona Court of Appeals came in the case of two accused rapists who were linked to assaults by DNA tests conducted in the past two years. The court, ruling against the Pima County Attorney's Office, said the statute of limitations begins running in nearly all felony cases when a crime is committed...

There are generally two methods by which you can challenge an argument. First is by challenging its logical structure, either by its premises, conclusions, or use of various logical fallacies. This is effective when you are debating people like Howard Dean, or your local college student, who sputter nothing but arguments dripping with fallacious reasoning. However, when you are debating more well-reasoned individuals, as you should be doing, you may need to apply the second technique, which is to concede a point yet offer a stronger alternative.

A mother whose daughter died at the hands of a man obsessed with violent internet porn has won her fight for a ban on possessing such images. The government has announced plans to make the possession of violent porn punishable by three years in jail. It follows a campaign by Berkshire woman Liz Longhurst whose daughter Jane, a Brighton schoolteacher, was allegedly strangled by Graham Coutts. Mrs Longhurst's campaign was backed by MPs and a 50,000-signature petition. Hidden bodyIn November last year the petition won cross-party support when it was presented to the House of Commons and was backed publicly...

Killer Black Bear Confirmed, With an Unexpected Twist Campground Reopens June 16 posted June 14, 2006 Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency officials say a black bear captured and euthanized soon after the fatal mauling of a girl was not the killer. TWRA Assistant director Ron Fox said today forensic tests have implicated a second bear captured four days after the April 13th attack. “Various laboratories including the TWRA, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently provided reports on a variety of forensic tests conducted on the two captured bears. The items submitted brought us positive...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCERhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/183007_crimelab22.html Rare look inside state crime labs reveals recurring DNA test problemsThursday, July 22, 2004By RUTH TEICHROEBSEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERFor the detective working the case, it looked like a sure thing. The 58-year-old suspect had confessed to raping his young niece. He had a prior sex-crime conviction. related features - DNA testing mistakes at the State Patrol crime labs - Produce lab error rates, some urge - How DNA is tested in crime labs (PDF; 165K) - "Shadow of Doubt" special report DNA evidence extracted from the 10-year-old girl's underwear would be the clincher.Charged with child rape, the road-crew worker...

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. - As he walks to the stage of a Hofstra University lecture hall, Robert Leonard’s attire is every bit the college professor: blue blazer and shirt, charcoal slacks, yellow tie, glasses. He’s a long, long way from the summer of 1969 when the uniform of the day was a gold lame jumpsuit. Leonard was a founding member and bassist for Sha Na Na, a zany doo-wop group that played one of its first gigs at Woodstock. Leonard’s specialty today is forensic linguistics — employing the science of language to help identify the writers of ransom notes, threatening letters...

A push to require all convicted criminals in New York to submit their DNA to a central database is gaining crucial support in Albany, where officials say it could create the most comprehensive DNA collection system in the nation. If the proposal becomes law, it would make New York the only state to require collecting DNA from everyone convicted of felonies and misdemeanors, including youthful offenders convicted in criminal court, officials said. Currently, 43 states require that people convicted of all felonies submit DNA, but none require samples from those convicted of all misdemeanors, and New York has required those...

RICHMOND, Va. — Death penalty opponents said new DNA tests confirming the guilt of a murderer who was put to death in Virginia while still proclaiming his innocence will do nothing to end their fight to abolish capital punishment. The test results, announced Thursday by Gov. Mark R. Warner, prove Roger Keith Coleman was guilty of the 1981 rape and murder of his sister-in-law, putting an end to a debate over his guilt that has raged since he was executed in 1992

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new DNA test confirmed the guilt of a Virginia man who proclaimed his innocence up until his 1992 execution for rape and murder, the Virginia governor's office said on Thursday. "We have sought the truth using DNA technology not available at the time the (Virginia) Commonwealth carried out the ultimate criminal sanction" against Roger Keith Coleman, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said in a statement. "The confirmation that Roger Coleman's DNA was present reaffirms the verdict and the sanction." Coleman was executed in May 1992 for the 1981 rape and murder of his 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy....

RICHMOND, Va. - New DNA tests confirmed the guilt of a man who went to his death in Virginia's electric chair in 1992 proclaiming his innocence, the governor said Thursday. The case had been closely watched by both sides in the death penalty debate because no executed convict in the United States has ever been exonerated by scientific testing.

Mystery of Mozart Skull Deepens By VOA News 09 January 2006 Forensic scientists say they have failed to unravel the 200-year old mystery of the skull of legendary Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Austrian television commissioned American and Austrian scientists to carry out DNA tests on a skull that some experts insist is Mozart's. The scientists hoped to match its DNA to genetic samples taken from what they believed are the skeletons of Mozart's grandmother and niece. The scientists said on Austrian television Sunday that the skeletons do not match the skull, and that the skeletons are also unrelated -...

It was his eyes. She was flipping through a newspaper, and suddenly his eyes were staring at her from a police photograph in the crime pages. Even before she read the headline, she felt shock. Then nausea. "The way he came at me with that knife, I can't forget those eyes," she said, recalling the stranger who climbed through her Manhattan apartment window one night in late 1972 and raped her. The man's photograph, published last April, brought it all back in an instant for Stefanie Aubry, the victim. It brought back her agonizing decision to submit silently so he...

Police made a major break Wednesday in a 2004 double murder that shocked the wine country. The day after Halloween last year, police found the brutally stabbed bodies of Leslie Mazzara and Adriane Insogna in their Napa home. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, officers arrested 26-year-old Eric Matthew Copple, and charged him with two counts of murder. Police say the Napa resident was involved in the fatal stabbings. Mazzara, 26, was a former beauty queen from South Carolina, who was working at a winery near Napa. Insagana, 26, was an engineer with the Napa Sanitation District. Their killer...

p>World-renowned Los Angeles liturgical artist Isabel Piczek earned accolades for "opening new doors of research" at the Dallas International Shroud of Turin Conference held at the Adolphus Hotel Sept. 8-11. The landmark event drew 160 scientists, artists and physicians from around the world sharing the latest research on the shroud, believed by many to portray a full-length image of the crucified Christ. Using a statue she created as a visual aid measuring one-third the actual size of the man depicted on the shroud, Piczek presented her explanation of the image's "Concealed Bas-Relief Effect." She theorizes the image of the shroud...

HERE'S a test I would like you to take. I would also like the staff of Houston Police Department's crime lab, the district attorney and his staff to take it. An analysis was done of 86 criminal convictions that DNA evidence later found to be wrong. Please rank the factors most often found to have contributed to the wrongful convictions: •Incompetent defense lawyers. •Police misconduct. •Eyewitness errors. •False testimony by forensic scientists. •Prosecutorial misconduct. •False confessions. •Errors in scientific testing. •False testimony by lay witnesses. •Dishonest informants. If you ranked false confessions last, you are right. But did you guess...

Irvine, Calif., September 13, 2005 While forensic scientists have long claimed fingerprint evidence is infallible, the widely publicized error that landed an innocent American behind bars as a suspect in the Madrid train bombing alerted the nation to the potential flaws in the system. Now, UC Irvine criminologist Simon Cole has shown that not only do errors occur, but as many as a thousand incorrect fingerprint “matches” could be made each year in the U.S. This is in spite of safeguards intended to prevent errors. Cole’s study is the first to analyze all publicly known mistaken fingerprint matches. In analyzing...

BOSTON -- No two fingerprints are exactly alike. For nearly a century, that widely accepted belief has been enough for police, juries and the general public to feel confident that a fingerprint match in a criminal case is all the proof needed for a conviction. But lawyers for a man who is facing his second trial in the killing of a Boston police officer are challenging the accuracy of fingerprint analysis and asking the state's highest court to prohibit its use in criminal trials until its reliability can be proven through scientific testing. The Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to...

[caption] The faces of a 40-year-old man (first two photos from left) and a 17-years-old girl (last two photos) of the Mongol race are shown in completion. They are considered the first portraits of the Dong Son people in Viet Nam’s history of archaeology.

A Hayward man was arrested last Wednesday in connection with the 1978 murder of an elderly gas station attendant. Richard F. Strain, 45, is charged with one count of murder in the second degree and murder in the third degree and appeared last Thursday in Sawyer County Court before he was extradited to face murder charges in Minnesota. On Jan. 11, 1978, 73-year-old gas station attendant Fredrick Charles Hess was murdered at the SurfCo Station at Bernard and Roberts Streets in West St. Paul. The case was cold for decades until new information was received in June. According to the...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - As he combed the murky depths of the Scioto River, Ed Schillig wondered how he would find the 21-year-old man's body. "Am I going to bump into him? Is he going to press against my mask?" said the six-year veteran of Franklin County's dive-rescue team, recalling the assignment on June 4. Eventually, Schillig's hand brushed the torso of David Roller, who had fallen out of a boat about three hours earlier. "It's a personal experience, because there's no one else there," Schillig said. Dive teams are expecially busy in the summer, when people flock to waterways throughout...

Working with the preserved bodies found in bogs throughout Europe has led to a branch of forensic research that could be on a TV show. "It's like 'B.S.I.,' really: Bog Scene Investigation," says archaeologist Sandra Olsen, making a parallel reference to the popular crime show, "C.S.I.," that deals with crime scene investigations. The curator of the section of anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History will give two talks during the exhibit of "The Mysterious Bog People." Both will examine how modern scientific methods are enabling researchers to find out more about the bog people than they could have...

Man's body found 42 years ago is identified By Deanna Boyd Star-Telegram Staff Writer FORT WORTH - A homicide victim whose skeletal remains were found 42 years ago in a creek bed near the Benbrook dam finally has a name. Major case Detective Bryan Jamison said DNA tests have confirmed that the bones are that of Kenneth Bennett Glaze, a 35-year-old man who disappeared from Fort Worth in 1963. "It was a critical first step," Jamison said of the identification. "I'm glad it happened so quick so we can get down to the business of solving this crime." The remains,...

WASHINGTON, May 6 - A sharply critical independent audit found Friday that Virginia's nationally recognized central crime laboratory had botched DNA tests in a leading capital murder case. The findings prompted Gov. Mark Warner to order a review of the lab's handling of testing in 150 other cases as well. Among the auditors' eight recommendations, all of which were accepted by Mr. Warner, were that the governor restrict the work of the lab's chief DNA scientist, Jeffrey Ban; review 40 cases that Mr. Ban has handled in recent years, along with a sample totaling 110 additional cases; and develop procedures...

The suspect in the 1973 rape of an aspiring Manhattan actress claimed yesterday to be stunned when a Post reporter told him he's been linked by DNA to 24 other attacks in three states. "I thought the past was behind me," Fletcher Anderson Worrell said at Rikers Island. Worrell didn't admit committing any of the crimes — but his comments were punctuated with long sighs when asked if he was guilty. "I really can't talk about any of this," he said, and shook his head. Worrell jumped bail in 1978 after being convicted of an attempted rape in Queens, and...