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.
I have never done an autopsy, as I’m not a doctor. I’ve attended many, many autopsies, and they generally take about two hours, but can go up to four or five if there are a lot of injuries. At that point they will be done with the body, but the autopsy report can take much longer depending on if they have to send out samples for toxicology analysis (most places do) or have to wait on some other kind of specialty report. In one case I remember we had to wait a long time for a pediatric x-ray analysis. That can be weeks to months depending on who you’re waiting on and how big their backlog is.
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Stay in school and take lots of science courses. Scholarships would be offered by different schools and/or organizations. What land are you in now?
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They would most likely have rope fibers on their hands whether they hung themselves or were strangled. No, the furrow will usually get less deep and maybe disappear, depending on how tight the rope is, toward the spot where the knot is since it is usually higher up on the body as gravity pulls the body downward. As far as I know the location of the knot will depend on where it’s tied, if it’s slid around before suspension occurs, and the structure of the knot (if it slips or not). Being right or left handed shouldn’t make a difference therefore.
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I"m sorry, I know I posted an answer to this question but apparently it disappeared into cyberspace. As far as I know, no, it wouldn't be possible. The DNA results would show a mixture so that you could say 'it could be a mix of these two people, meaning there's no alleles that could NOT have come from them' but you couldn't positively state that it is a mixture. And it wouldn't be possible to tell which came first as the sample is put in a liquid medium and mixed to analyze.
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Are you required to report it if you find something suspicious or illegal on a client computer?
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Does it get aggravating answering people's dumb questions all day long?
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That's called the 'CSI Effect' and it can be a problem for juries to have unrealistic expectations. One instructor described it as "Juries don't know as much as they think they know, but they really do know a lot more than they used to know."
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What was it they were testing?
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I'm sorry, but again that is way too broad a question. Most forensic science is based on biology, physics and chemistry, so it's all 'natural' science.
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