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THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION iecsfm.indd i 10/23/07 10:59:33 AM iecsfm.indd ii 10/23/07 10:59:34 AM THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION Michael Newton Foreword by John L. French Crime Scene Supervisor, Baltimore Police Crime Laboratory iecsfm.indd iii 10/23/07 10:59:34 AM The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation Copyright © 2008 by Michael Newton Foreword Copyright © 2008 by John L. French All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing, Inc. 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Newton, Michael. The encyclopedia of crime scene investigation / Michael Newton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-6814-2 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 0-8160-6814-3 (hardcover) 1. Crime scene searches—Encyclopedias. 2. Criminal investigation—Encyclopedias. 3. Evidence, Criminal—Encyclopedias. I. Title. HV8073.N49 2007 363.25'2—dc22 2007004406 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Text design by Cathy Rincon Cover design by Salvatore Luongo Printed in the United States of America VB CGI 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. iecsfm.indd iv 10/23/07 10:59:34 AM Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization. —Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet. It won’t change the desire or the direction, but it can greatly speed the passage. —Charles M. Allen “Unity in a University,” speech at Wake Forest University, 25 April 1967 iecsfm.indd v 10/23/07 10:59:34 AM iecsfm.indd vi 10/23/07 10:59:34 AM Contents FOREWORD ix AUTHOR’S NOTE xiii INTRODUCTION xv ENTRIES A–Z 1 GLOSSARY 291 APPENDIX 1: Inorganic Compounds 297 APPENDIX 2: Organic Compounds 301 BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 INDEX 319 iecsfm.indd vii 10/23/07 10:59:35 AM iecsfm.indd viii 10/23/07 10:59:35 AM Foreword A BIT OF HISTORY innocence once accused of a crime. The real criminal As long as one man has and another wants, there was not likely to confess, nor was law enforcement will be always be crime. The second story of the likely to admit the possibility of mistakes. Justice Bible is that of people breaking established rules. It was swift, punishment brutal, and mistakes were is followed by an account of the first murder. And doubtless made. not much has changed since then. Murder, robbery, It was not until the latter part of the 19th century theft, and rape are part of mankind’s history. that matters began to improve. Advances in science To maintain order, most societies establish laws, aided both law enforcement officials and those who rules of behavior that people are expected to obey. stood falsely accused of crimes. Those who do not are punished as an example and One concern of the justice system was the iden- a warning to the rest. Laws that go unenforced soon tification of repeat offenders. Until the late 1800s, cease to be effective. So when a crime is committed, it police relied upon their memories to identify those is vital to society to quickly identify the lawbreaker. who had been previously arrested. Then, in 1878 the Only by the swift detection, capture, and punish- development of the dry-plate photographic process ment of the criminal can order be maintained. made it possible to record images of people taken That is society’s interest. Those who would break into custody. Police, however, were slow to make use the law have another, mainly to cover up their crimes of this new technology. and elude detection for as long as possible, prefer- In 1879, while working for the French prefect ably forever. of police, Alphonse Bertillon proposed that a series For a long time, the advantage was with the crimi- of 14 different measurements taken of a prisoner nal. If he could commit his crime and leave the scene would positively identify him. In November 1882, undetected, he stood a good chance of escaping jus- his system was adopted on a trial basis and in Feb- tice. Those charged with law enforcement had to rely ruary 1883, a prisoner calling himself Dupont was on luck, witnesses, and any obvious clues that the identified as one who had been previously arrested criminal may have left behind. Luck was often with under the name “Martin.” By the end of 1884, Ber- the careful criminal, who made sure not to leave tillon’s method had led to the identification of more behind any incriminating personal effects. than 300 repeat offenders. By then, Bertillon had A larger danger in these times was that the wrong embraced the new technology of photography, estab- man could be arrested and convicted for a crime. lishing a rogues’ gallery of felons, their images pre- Victim and witness identification is not 100 per- served in what is now the traditional full face and cent reliable. Suspects developed by police through profile “mugshots.” witnesses, analysis of past behavior of known fel- The Bertillonage system was universally accepted ons, and the interpretation of whatever evidence was until the turn of the last century when two cases, found on scenes had little chance of proving their one in England and the other in the United States, ix iecsfm.indd ix 10/23/07 10:59:35 AM The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation Thepointed Encyclopedia out its deficiencies.of Crime Scene In InvestigationEngland in 1901, one Smith, medicolegal adviser for the British govern- of a pair of identical twins, Albert and Ebenezer Fox, ment in Egypt, led to the methods of firearms identi- stood accused of theft. But which one? Their Bertil- fication that are being used to the present day. lon measurements identical, they could be identified Of course, just as law enforcement used technol- only through fingerprints. Once their identities were ogy to combat crime, the criminal class was not slow established, Ebenezer went to jail and Albert was set to employ it for their own ends. free. To cite one example, fingerprints have long been Two years later, a prisoner named Will West a bane to the criminal, especially those who do not arrived in Fort Leavenworth Prison. However, based wear gloves on crime scenes. Efforts to disguise or on his Bertillon measurements, “Will West” was alter prints have been made throughout the years. already incarcerated there. As it turned out, there Most were unsuccessful. The only known case of a were two men, one William West, the other Will— man succeeding in fully and permanently eliminating with the same features and the same Bertillon mea- his prints was that of Robert Phillips, aka Roscoe surements. Only through fingerprints could the men Pitts. In 1941, Dr. Leopold Brandenburg grafted skin be separately identified. from Phillips’s abdomen onto his fingertips, success- At the same time, the use of fingerprints to solve fully obscuring his fingerprints. Unfortunately for crime was growing. The earliest known case was in Phillips, when he was next arrested, police used his Tokyo in 1879 where Scottish doctor and mission- palmprints to identify him. ary Henry Faulds used a sooty handprint left on the scene of a theft to exonerate the man police had THESE DAYS arrested for the crime. A second man arrested a few In 1977, I began my career with the Baltimore Police days later confessed, his handprint matching that Department’s crime laboratory. As a crime laboratory found on the scene. technician and later as a supervisor, my job was (and In 1892, Juan Vucetich of the Argentine police still is) to document crime scenes and the evidence solved the double murder of two children, using a found on them. My job was also to search for and bloody print found on a door post to show that their find that evidence with the goal of identifying those mother had committed the deed. Scotland Yard had involved in the crime. In doing so, I found myself its first arrest and conviction using fingerprints in using much the same techniques described above. 1902. This was for a burglary. Its first murder con- Fingerprinting on the scene was still being done with viction from prints came in 1905. brushes and powders. Once a latent print was found, Other methods of identification were also being it could only be identified if there was a suspect, or developed. In 1902 came the first attempts to employ else after a long and tedious search through arrest ABO blood typing to solve crimes. In 1916, Dr. records and open case files. Likewise, while spent Leone Lattes of the University of Turin’s Institute of cartridge cases and fired bullets could be matched to Forensic Medicine used ABO grouping to exonerate recovered weapons, linking them to other crimes in a suspect in an assault. which the weapon had been used again required the Some years later, the growing science of forensic long process of manually sifting through evidence ballistics was beginning to allow investigators to from past cases.