LIsa Black
Cape Coral, FL
Female, 49
I spent the five happiest years of my life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office I analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now I'm a certified latent print examiner and CSI for a police department in Florida. I also write a series of forensic suspense novels, turning the day job into fiction. My books have been translated into six languages.
Sure, mine. Well, not DNA--I believe DNA is done by specialists who are kept busy enough that they don't have other duties. If your lab doesn't have enough personnel or casework for DNA then it would be sent to another lab. But otherwise, how general or specialized your casework is depends on the size of the agency/lab. If it's small, you do everything. If you have lots of personnel, they can specialize.
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I have not, but I would love to.
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Sorry, I didn't realize the first time you weren't talking about DNA. I couldn't begin to guess what the holdup is. This sounds like they need a crime scene reconstruction, which would take all the available information to try to reconstruct the sequence of the crime. If the case gets passed to experts in different fields (ballistics, DNA, etc.) then it could take quite some time, and I have no idea how backed up the average good reconstructionist might be. I'm sorry I can't help. The DA or the cops would have to actually talk to the forensic person and ask.
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Again, I don't like the stress of people asking for the impossible, then assuming you aren't delivering it because you're lazy. There are tons of cases I worked, especially at the coroner's office, where I never found out what happened--unless I'm called to testify in the trial, I have no idea if the killer was ever caught or if the case remains unsolved. The cops would tell me if I asked, but I forget to ask because by then there's new cases. There are fingerprint hits I've made where the person wasn't arrested, and I don't know if it's because the person had a good reason to be in the home, or if the prosecutor got cold feet, or whatever. I could probably find out if I tracked down the detective in charge and reminded them of the exact case, etc., but who has that kind of time? Then there are other cases that I do so much work on, go through a trial, and I know everything about them.
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Use 2 clean cotton swabs--try using just the swabs first, and if the drops just flake off, then you can moisten the swab with (preferably sterile) water. Or do it first thing in the morning when the window is damp with dew. Put the swabs in a clean envelope or small box, something NOT air tight.
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Clothing is kind of interesting because there's so much variety to it and it can give you a lot of information, with blood, gunshot residue and holes made by weapons. I also enjoyed working with fibers because there is a lot of variety to them as well, and they're colorful, but often I'd have way too many and then it would get tedious. No one examines fibers any more, they're not unique enough.
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I'm afraid I don't have any idea. I've never met one, only forensic anthropologists. At the coroner's office our forensic anthropologist was a professor at Kent State and would come up and give a report on our skeletal remains when requested.
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