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.
That determination is made by the pathologist doing the autopsy, and there are a number of ways--body temperature, rate of decomposition, rigor mortis, but it will be an estimate, not the precise number that you might see on TV. All those things can depend on the environment where the body is, temperature, exposure, physical characteristics of the victim, medical conditions etc. Entomologists can help if there is distinct bug activity at the scene as well.
Hope that helps!
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I think it would certainly be an asset!
Best of luck.
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I’m sorry, no. I don’t feel qualified to do that.
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That’s an exceedingly broad question that could take a stack of textbooks to answer.
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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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As far as I know, no. The DNA tests of the shirt will just show a mixture of the victims, so that the analyst would only be able to say the blood could have come from these two or three people--in other words there are no alleles that definitely couldn't have come from those three. But because it is a mixture, they can't say it did come from these three exact people. And they couldn't tell, again as far as I know, which blood was deposited first.
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Most people are cross-trained in more than one area. In smaller agencies people might have to wear a lot of hats.
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