4 Case Scenarios for Crime Scene Investigation

Case Scenario #1:  The Wrong Race Investigation

In a serial killer case that lasted for nearly two years, police had received countless tips and several eyewitness accounts. Eyewitnesses can be your best friend in some cases and your worst enemy in others. The following case illustrates the pitfalls of trusting eyewitness accounts over scientific evidence.

THE CASE

The perpetrator’s DNA linked him to six homicides within a fairly well defined area. His DNA profile could not be found in the national DNA database of registered offenders and eyewitness reports lead investigators to believe that he was most likely to be a Caucasian male. This belief lead to the subsequent collection and analysis of hundreds of DNA samples from men in the area who fit the description.

Figure 1: Sketches released to the media.

THE COST

When trying to determine the cost of an investigation it is easy to forget how quickly an agency’s budget can be exhausted. Chasing leads that turn out to be nonsense can be the largest waste of a department’s budget and in a serial killer case those expenses can grow exponentially. In some cases the cost of not knowing your suspect quickly, can be life itself.

THE SOLUTION

Using DNAWitness™ investigators were able to narrow the field of suspects to individuals who fit the profile and exclude whole populations of people. Within two months of receiving the DNAWitness™ results, they had a suspect in custody. This suspect’s CODIS profile matched the profile linking many of his victims. The investigators who decided to utilize this innovative bio-intelligence test had essentially given themselves a “fuzzy photo” of their suspect.

Figure 2: DNAWitness™ profile from crime scene DNA and interpretation of how the suspect may appear.

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Case Scenario #2:  Conflicting Eyewitnesses

In a cold case where a man was seen fleeing the scene in darkness, police interviewed several eyewitnesses and were told that the man was both “black” and “white”. Many factors can play into how an eyewitness perceives what has happened and who was committing the crime. The following case illustrates the pitfalls of trusting eyewitness accounts over scientific evidence.

THE CASE

The perpetrator’s DNA linked him to a double homicide in a residence. His DNA profile could not be found in the national DNA database of registered offenders and with conflicting eyewitness accounts of what the suspect looked like, investigators could not rule out two major populations of people.

Figure 1: Sketches from conflicting eyewitnesses of a man fleeing the scene

THE COST

It may be difficult to measure the overall cost of time and effort put into chasing false leads. Depending on the size of the investigation and the number of people working on the case, the costs associated with chasing false leads could buy a new squad car in some cases. The time spent on false leads can effect time needed to solve other cases, possibly causing a cascade effect from case to case of missed opportunities caused by faulty eyewitnesses. This makes calculating the cost that it may have on other cases even more difficult.

THE SOLUTION

The investigators were about to begin swabbing possible suspects in both populations when they decided that using a bio-intelligence test such as DNAWitness™ would greatly reduce the amount of hours needed. The test was not only able to confirm the ancestry profile of the person who left the DNA at the crime scene but the DNAWitness™ test also provided photographs from a database of tested individuals that have a similar profile. The photographs will not be of the suspect but of volunteers who have provided images so that investigators will have a better idea of what the DNAWitness™ profile means.

Figure 2: DNAWitness™ profile from crime scene DNA and interpretation of how the suspect may appear.

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Case Scenario #3:   Victim’s Remains

Identifying victims from the remains can be difficult, especially if the body is in an advanced state of decomposition or parts are missing. The fingerprints and the dental records can prove invaluable in determining the identity of the victim but what if it’s not possible to use these more traditional means?

THE CASE

The torso of a woman was found in a wooded area but her other body parts were never found. The Jane Doe was initially thought to be Caucasian by crime scene investigators. The medical examiner, when asked, inferred that she was “a possible Hispanic or Caucasian woman”. The population make-up in the area where the body was found may have played into this idea, being largely Hispanic.

Figure 1: Rendering of victim’s remains.

THE SOLUTION

The bio-intelligence provided by DNAWitness™ in this case was able to dispel the notions thought by both the investigator and the medical examiner. Using DNAWitness™ eliminated the guesswork and speculation about the ancestry of the victim. Jane Doe turned out to be a high percentage of East Asian. When presented with the example photographs from the database comparison, the investigator indicated that there was a much smaller East Asian community in his area.

Figure 2: DNAWitness™ profile from the torso and interpretation of how the suspect may appear.

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Case Scenario #4:  No Good Leads

Usually the perpetrator of a crime gets caught because someone who knows about the crime decides to talk. In some cases though, all the leads are dead ends. These are the cases that become cold cases and wait for years for the criminal to strike again. Essentially waiting for fresh blood and new information to be injected into the investigation.

THE CASE

A family of four was brutally beaten and shot to death in their home in what appeared to be a home invasion. Months later, detectives found out that the perpetrator left his blood in several places at the crime scene. The family was from China and lived in a predominantly Asian community, which led to the speculation that the perpetrator may be East Asian. When the perpetrators blood made it from the crime scene to the lab, the lab was inundated with work and the sample analysis was stalled. Eventually the perpetrator’s DNA profile made it into CODIS, the national database of offender profiles, for comparison. There was no match.

THE SOLUTION

By using a bio-intelligence test like DNAWitness™ within a few weeks of the crime, you are affording yourself specific population data about your key suspect while the trail is still hot. This can save your investigation time and money. For example, if a trail of blood leaving the crime scene appears to be that of a potential suspect and DNAWitness™ is used to produce the profile below, the investigator need not question anyone appearing African American.

Figure 1: DNAWitness™ profile and interpretation of how the suspect may appear

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Case Scenario #5:  Cold Case Files

Cold cases can span years and even decades without resolution. You have to ask yourself, “What is the mechanism that causes a case to go cold?” Of course there can be several factors, but chasing leads from faulty information or eyewitnesses can be the defining factor that allows a criminal to evade capture. After years of stagnation, some agencies are tackling these cases and finding that a good number of them can be solved with DNA. In fact, the National Institute of Justice makes grant money available specifically for solving cold cases.

THE CASE

In Small-town USA, a young Caucasian woman who liked to run with a rough crowd was raped and murdered over twenty years ago. At that time, DNA testing was not possible but evidence was collected from the woman’s body and semen was identified. Detectives suspected her boyfriend initially, who was Caucasian, but ruled him out. The general thought about the race of the perpetrator was that he was Caucasian because that’s who her social group was. When the cold case was resurrected, the suspect’s DNA profile was checked against the national DNA database with no luck.

THE SOLUTION

The detective now assigned to this case was looking for information that would come from the physical evidence. She realized that DNAWitness™ could tell her an important bit of information about the suspect, what he looks like. To her surprise, the profile came back a major percentage of Sub-Saharan African indicating that the suspect was not Caucasian. The output from the photo database also let her know what people with a DNAWitness™ profile similar to her suspect would look like. This information has brought new life in this decades old investigation

He Said She Said

On the heels of a state championship, gridiron star Omar (T-Diddy) Smalls is basking in the after-glow and fending off the attentions of sundry females in his Charleston high school inclined to incline to his physical needs while he waits to head off to Miami for college. Given to referring to himself in the third person, Omar is pellucidly a player or playa as the vernacular would retain it. Senior Claudia Clarke couldn't be more different from Omar. She's a straight A student and school newspaper editor, bound for Harvard. When one of his friends wagers that T-Diddy will fail to delectate her and coax her to bed, T-Diddy puts all his efforts into doing just that. The two become the bellwethers of a student protest against the extreme cuts their school is experiencing. The library hours are reduced, edifiers are put on part-time status, and many extracurricular activities, and including dance, drama, and the band are cut. It turns out that there is more to both T-Diddy and to Claudia than is evident on the surface, but can their possible romance survive all of the strikes it has against it? Albeit the plot is pretty prognosticable, I relished the characters and the chapters told in the alternating voices of Omar and Claudia. The conception of verbalizing up by remaining silent is a fascinating one supplementally. The dialogue here crackles with life, and teen readers will relish the inclusion of tweets and Facebook ingressions as well, sanctioning the comments to appear rapidly. The inclusion of the rival football team members that kept exhibiting up was marginally vexing and diverted me from the main event.

Everything about this book was over the top cliché, like the story and characters emerged from a sausage grinder mashing together the plot of every inane YA book ever to come afore it where the keenly intellective, no-preposterousness valedictorian girl and the hard-on-the-outside, obnubilated-gooey-depths-on-the-inside football quarterback spar and clash afore getting together in the terminus. I can only surmise that the great reviews this book received were yet another product of reviewers being unnecessarily impressed with a prosperous adult author indites a YA book—not realizing that YA books incline to be a much higher caliber and dumbing down a plot for teenagers is just vexing for everyone. And affirmative, as everyone keeps noting, the dialogue is great and fresh feeling. But please—when everything they're verbalizing is incoherent, how they're verbalizing it doesn't matter as much.

This novel is told through alternating narrators. The first narrator is Omar "T-Diddy" Smalls. He's the football MVP - all around sultry stuff playa with the ego to match. The second narrator is Claudia Clarke who is headed for Harvard and not the least bit fascinated with someone like Omar. When he optically discerns her at a party "looking homogeneous to Beyoncé" he gets it in his head that he has to retain her. After everyone tells him she won't give him the time of day, he makes a wager that he'll ambulate away with her panties. Of course she wants nothing to do with him, not when she has far more consequential things to deal with, like the fact that teen pregnancy is running the school and the school board is laying off edifiers, closing the school library, and cutting their arts fund. T-Diddy gets it in his head that he can woo Claudia by picking up her cause and leads the school in a silent protest against that school board's actions. With him leading, the whole school gets involved and Claudia commences to cerebrate he might not be as lamentable as she cerebrated. Concurrently, T-Diddy commences to fall for her in ways he's never felt for girls afore. However, when his past commences to catch up with him, his relationship with Claudia is put to the test.

This novel is told through African-American characters, so at times the dialect takes getting utilized to (I'm not entirely sure what "ish" designates or "woadie," but it doesn't detract from the story). For the prodigious majority of the novel I did not relish Omar "T-Diddy." Even when he commenced to transmute and lose the ego, his posture and motivation rubbed me the erroneous way. Even Claudia seemed to facilely swayed by his ways for being such a keenly intellective woman. Maybe, though, it was just a cultural thing that I couldn't connect with. Despite my disrelish for the characters, this is a puissant story about standing up for what you cerebrate is right and utilizing the civil rights history to transmute the world today. It is about transmuting your ways, and how one person can make you a better person. This book has the puissance to be inspirational.

A unique high school story, He Verbally expressed She Verbally Expressed is a remotely cliché teenage romance that endeavors to portray a deeper message with a comedic tone. A tale of witty satire and filled with the conventional high school drama, this novel marginally falls short on being a gratifying book. Compared to other teen novels, this book falls short in terms of quality and ingeniousness. The characters in the book start off exhibiting remotely of potential but fail to achieve any authentic connection with the reader. While the book does endeavor convey a good message about gregarious protest, the way it goes about just seems to diminish the authentic topic conveyed.

He Verbally expressed She Verbally Expressed is a novel predicated on the romance of two high school seniors who of course face a pivotal time in their lives. Omar Smalls is an All American high school quarterback who seems to have the world at his fingertips. With people fundamentally osculating the ground he ambulates on, Omar ostensibly lives life without a care in the world. Next comes Claudia Clarke, the benevolent girl who’s bound to go to Harvard and transmute the world. Having been hurt afore she guard’s her heart ferociously, not letting just anybody get proximate to her. Predictably these two don’t hit off at first but anon their romance blossoms into a classic teenage love story. To go along with the romance the novel supplementally has a plot line about a gregarious protest that endeavors to show the potency of verbalization and teenagers in general. In my opinion this book has a couple quandaries that obstructs it from being authentically good. The first quandary I have is dolefully the characters of the novel. To me the main characters seem coerced and don’t authentically grow or show progress in their development. Claudia, one of the main characters, is the typical astute good girl who wants nothing to do with guys. 

On a whole there’s nothing erroneous with her character, you just don’t get a sense of connection. At one point of the story you do feel some sympathy for her but in authenticity as a reader it was facile to optically discern peregrinated, Omar, the other main character, causes a prodigious amount of feelings, some good and some deplorable. At some points he is the most exasperating person to ever live, while later on you visually perceive the potential he has to become a great character. Ultimately though he falls short in becoming a memorable main character in a novel in desideratum of a standout character. The second quandary that I have with this novel is the dialogue utilized by everyone in this book. As a teenager I ken the language we as a younger generation use deals with an abundance of slang, but in this novel I was scarcely astonished at how some of the teenagers were verbalizing. At one point I veraciously commenced laughing just from some of the language utilized. For some people this would be a major turn off in reading this book. Overall this book has an abundance of potential, but the marginally cheesy dialogue and characters ultimately take away from what could have been a consequential book.

Thou Love

But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth 
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee;
That you were once unkind befriends me now,

The imprisond absence of your liberty;
Yourself again, after yourselfs decease,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.

He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
A maid of Dians this advantage found,
Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, 
Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,

O! know sweet love I always write of you,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

The Worst Luck

There once was a man who had the worst luck
If you asked him how his day went, he’d say it would suck
This burly man, who went by the name of chuck
Would get beaten, bruised, and covered in muck

Day after day, he wallow in fear
Of having something “accidentally” sent up his rear
Or watching the skies and checking everything near
For one day bad luck would take what he loved dear

Run over by a bus, survived in agony
To him, life was just tragedy after tragedy
It wasn’t that hard to see
That luck was to be the end of he 

My Father Told Me

Hey, once upon a younger year
When all our shadows disappeared
The animals inside came out to play
Hey, went face to face with all our fears
Learned our lessons through the tears
Made memories we knew would never fade

One day my father—he told me,
“Son, don’t let it slip away.”
He took me in his arms, I heard him say,

“When you get older
Your wild heart will live for younger days
Think of me if ever you’re afraid.”

He said, “One day you’ll leave this world behind
So live a life you will remember.”
My father told me when I was just a child
These are the nights that never die
My father told me

I Am

I am facetious and precise

I wonder why humming birds are in such a hurry
I hear clouds crashing in the sky
I see oceans in the air
I want a fluffy cat
I am facetious and precise

I pretend that I am a world traveler
I feel fine on a summer day at the beach
I touch the wings of a butterfly
I worry that all is not well
I cry about nothing at all
I am facetious and precise

I understand why play is fun
I say we should play all the time
I dream about fish that fly in the air
I try to be artistic
I hope my parents live long lives
I am facetious and precise

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