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>> Deborah Blum: Hi, well, I apologize for the delay,
at the first Wisconsin Science but we're glad to see you here
I do want to mention, in case you didn't do this, we're having Festival.
athe front, which include,e prI'm going to come down here.t
The prizes in front of me, we're
going to do a drawing for them at the end of this session. If your name is not on a piece
of paper in this little canister, you would want it to
be there if want to be entered for the drawing before this
session is over.
These prizes include a complete set of Annelise Ryan's Mattie Winston Mysteries,
all autographed. Some autographed copies of my book,
The Poisoner's Handbook. A fingerprinting kit from the
Madison Police Department,
Department. whiAnd Beth Amos, one of ouryou sspeakers, has also generouslyl donated 119 syringe pens, which
we'll be giving away as well
My name is Deborah Blum. at the end, and you need to use those very carefully. So welcome.
I'm fortunate to be the moderator of this very distinguished panel.
I came to it through being the
author of a book called The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic
Medicine in Jazz Age New York.
My book is set in the 1920s, and it's really the story of
a way, to find a way to catch killers when there really was no two scientists trying to build
to cities or police departments, forensic medicine at that time. There were no chemists attached
and, in fact, this was in a period that people used to refer to as the golden age of
poisoners, because it was so
easy to get away with those kind of murders. And you may know this already,
but at that time, the nickname
for the poison arsenic was the inheritance powder. So that gives you a sense of
sort of how pervasive this was
in society. After I did this book, I started thinking about this.
We live in an age in which
we take for granted. We live in what I'll call the CSI kind of era.
We take for granted that we have
forensic scientists working to help us solve murders, to detect crimes, working willingly
with the police department. That did not used to be true
in this country, and, in fact, we did not formally start
teaching forensic medicine
until the 1930s. The first department to teach forensic medicine wasn't
established in this country until 1934. So in the early 20th century, instead of having scientists and
police officers work together,
from my own book in the mid-1920s, involved a case, a very gruesome case involving And one of my favorite cases
and many bloody knives in which, a dismembered body, a lethal gas
literally, in the court room the scientists were on one side,
and they were accusing the police were on the other,
each other of not knowing the answer to the crime. We have come a long way since
then, and our idea of what
a murder is, how to solve it, how we approach the catching a criminal has changed hugely
thanks to these changes.
So my idea for this panel was that we would bring together a real variety of perspectives
and knowledge and viewpoints on the art and science and murder. I'm lucky to have with us three really distinguished
practitioners from our area here in Wisconsin, and
I'm going to briefly introduce all of them.
Beth Amos, who is next to me
here, is an ER nurse working in Stoughton, who is also a very
and murder mysteries. Her most recent series features a former nurse turned assistant coroner named Mattie Winston.
And the third of those books, Frozen Stiff, just came out this month. When I was doing
on her books, I was rather the research
impressed to see that one of the people who had given her
was Tess Gerritsen, who writes a "I love this book" notice
Next to her is Melanie Hampton, twho works in the CSI Divisions of the Madison Police to pleaseDepartment.ite more.
Melanie has been
a law enforcement officer for more than 12 years and a crime scene investigator
in the forensic unit
in the city of Madison. She has a master's degree, I'm thinking in environmental.
What was your master's? >> Civil engineering. >> Civil engineering, and a long background in working
in science. And to my far left
professor in the Department of Pathology is Dr. Michael Stier. Dr. Stier is an assistant
and Laboratory Medicine here at the University of Wisconsin.
Prior to coming here in 2001, he was a medical examiner in Charlottesville, Virginia, and an instructor in pathology
at the University of Virginia.
He specializes in not only autopsies and forensic science, but child death
and seizure deaths. We're going to begin with Beth. I've asked each of them to give you a brief picture of how
they see the world of murder, and then we'll take questions.
You're welcome to stay at your seat or come up here, Beth.
Beth Amos: I'm going to try and stay seated.
Yes, okay, all right. All right, thank you for the Can everybody hear me okay? Yes? No?
notice that the name of the author on the books that are very nice introduction. I do want to clarify that you'll
I write under a pseudonym for this particular series. The pseudonym is Annelise Ryan. The reason for that is twofold.
Number one, if I was your nurse in the emergency room...
[LAUGHTER] You might feel a little
uncomfortable knowing that
I spend my spare time thinking of clever and unique ways to kill people.
[LAUGHTER]
Number two, it's a marketing ploy that's used by the publisher.
I had some other books that were
published under my real name back in the late '90s that were more thrillers rather than
mysteries, and all of those used hard science as well as
My very first book called The Cold White Fury was dactually, two different things the softer sciences, as well.
One was a newspaper article that that stimulated that idea.
I read in the Richmond Times Dispatch. I lived in Richmond, Virginia,
at the time.
And it was about studies on serotonin, and how serotonin can affect aggression in people.
The second thing was a patient
a Vietnam vet, and he had some many, many, many years ago in another state and another life, it feels like, who was
shrapnel in his head, and he used to come into our ER
that people were talking to him through the metal in his head. all the time and tell us
We were pretty sure that there was nobody talking to him,
but you never know. And I took those two things and combined them together
with a pretty good novel for it. and ended up coming up
involving organ cloning, which It was actually the first novel I was able to sell. My second novel was actually
is something that wasn't being done then, but I think is being dabbled with a little bit
with now. But it also played around some
involved restoring sight to the blind using a method that was wonly being explored back then. And then my third one actually
restore sight to blind people. It is actually now being used to
The person who had sight And the softer science that I used in that one was actually interpreting auras.
restored was seeing auras. My current series is much more
as Deborah said, it's a nurse who becomes a deputy coroner forensic-oriented because,
for the medical examiner in a small town in Wisconsin.
There's a lot of Wisconsin humor
in the books. There's a lot of humor in the books.
I know people don't think death is funny, but there's a lot of
And I don't see anything wrong stuff about death that can be funny.
with laughing. I think, actually, laughter is the best medicine.
For my current series, the
actual impetus for that series, interestingly enough, came about when I was going
for my bachelor's degree
in Richmond, Virginia. I had an opportunity to do an independent study in sociology
where I was looking at people who work with death and dying on a regular basis. I was a hospice nurse at the
time, so I was kind of curious
about people who work with dead bodies, dead people. What makes them do that?
Is there anything about those people that's common? Is there anything that drives them to it?
Something in their personality, their background, where they grew up. So I crafted this study and
then I spent time with funeral
directors, hospice workers, homicide detectives; they were very entertaining.
And also the medical examiner's office in Richmond, Virginia, with Dr. Marcella Fierro, who is actually sort of the
character that the Kay Scarpetta
character is based on that Patricia Cornwell writes about.
And one of the things that I was
worried about is I had never seen an autopsy before, so I was
or not I was going to be able to deal with it. a little concerned about whether
wasn't too worried about that, I had seen surgeries, and I had seen people cut open, so I
but those were live people in an OR. I had seen all kinds of
manglings and injuries, because I had worked in an ER before. So I had seen a lot of stuff, but I had never seen a dead
person cut open that way. So I was a little concerned about how I was going to do with it, and I was hoping for
a very ordinary type of autopsy,
actually a teenage boy who had just a basic, died yesterday, simple autopsy. The first one that I got was
drowned three months before, and had just surfaced.
for quite some time, So he had been in the water
and so I was a little nervous about how I was going to be able to deal with this.
So I stood by watching
as they began the autopsy, and when they finally cut him open, the one thing that I was really
worried about was smell, because
smell can be a very potent trigger for things, and I was worried that it was going to
smell really bad, and that was going to affect me.
in my head was, hmm, the inside of a dead body doesn't But when they cut him open, the first thought that I had
smell all that different from the inside of a live one.
And just like that, I went, what a great line for a novel.
[LAUGHTER] And that actually became the
first line in Working Stiff, which was the first book in the current mystery series. So it was sort of art
science blending together there.
my brain going, hey, that would make a great first line being thfor a novel.nd then the artistic part of it being
to think up clever ways to kill people off, which does make some I do spend a lot of time trying
those who know who I am. of my patients nervous,
There's so many different areas of science, I was looking back through some of my other
plot ideas, and different books and different things, I have all
the different areas of science that I've looked at and explored
in developing ideas and plots for books, and all of them have something to do with forensics. I was looking at agriculture
with plant hybrids; obviously anatomy for your cause of death;
anthropology, the study of bones; biochemistry, like
bacterial activity on decaying
in vitreous fluid which can be flesh; biology; botany, plant evidence; chemistry, like potassium levels
used to determine time of death; gas chromatography; computer science; Earth science.
Earth science involved
like soil analysis and diatoms. If you don't know what diatoms are, they're funny, cute little
single-celled algae that form in
of interesting shapes and sizes. water, and they actually have these silica type outer shells, and they come in all kinds
Entomology, which is bug evidence. Environmental science, is there
presence of some kind of
polluting substance that could help somebody figure it out.
footprint analysis, genetics, mathematics, like figuring out You got fingerprint and
the geometry of a bullet path. Medicine, diseases,
exposure to contagion.
Pathology, or autopsy, and I'm Microbiology, blood type. You have odontology, which is bite mark analysis.
sure Dr. Stier will get into that a lot more.
blood splatter analysis, Physics, ballistics,
tool markings. Those are things that are involved with physics.
Psychology, not a science in some respects the way we all think of hard science, but
with figuring out motives for people, figuring out, identifying nervous ticks psychin people when you'revolved
interviewing them.
I think I have a fairly good I use those, I employ those quite a bit, and that's something as a nurse that
skill with myself. Sociology, like geographic
And then zoology, animal behavior. analysis.
If you have a body that some animal has scattered the bones,
or if you find some sort of rare scat on somebody's shoes,
zoology, animal behavior could help you figure that crime out.
So the basis behind all this
you leave something behind. isThe perfect example of thate. is if you come to my house and something with you, and
on your clothes, you're pretty you can leave without a pet hair
impressive, because I could probably pick one off right now. I have two golden retrievers
who shed like crazy,
plus a couple of cats. And anybody who comes into my house leaves with a few
of my pets' hairs on them.
You shed hairs all the time. Usually people that come into my house leave something behind also though.
You shed skin cells. You walk through things that can fall off of your shoes.
So all these little things, you can put all those clues together
and help build a story by using science.
And that's basically what I do
in medicine that when you hear when I come up with the plots for my stories. There's also a saying
the sound of hoof beats, you're supposed to think horses and not zebras.
And that means you're supposed
to look for the most obvious causes first, not the real
I always go for the obscure and bizarre ones, when I'm working obscure bizarre ones.
The zebras the ones that people don't think of right away. on my novels because I like the zebras.
readers guessing, the zebras And if you're writing a mystery novel and you want to keep your
are the better ones to look for. Occasionally, that mentality
in a patient that I'm caring for actually helps me find a zebra
in the ER. There's been one or two times when I've gone to the doctor
and said what about this, and they go, oh, I hadn't thought of
help solve a crime? It's not just finding the evidence, but it's also understanding that evidence and
interpreting it properly, and that's something I'm sure my other panelists are going
In fiction and in real life, to go into a little bit.
people make assumptions, and you have to make sure that
process if you're going to make assumptions in solving a crime. If I'm writing a mystery novel you're following the scientific
muddle things up if I want to, I can use assumptions to kind of
which is something that my other panelists probably don't have the privilege of being able
to do. In Working Stiff,
in my first book, I actually used a rare genetic disease that
link between two murder victims and eventually helped solve the crime. provided a
evidence. I had, let's see, in Frozen Stiff, which is Ithe most recent book,ed
there's a lot of evidence that
any of the crimes pothat are being investigated., but that's not the person who's actually committed
In Scared Stiff, there's a medical condition that leads
to a misinterpretation
of time of death. In the novel that I actually just finished writing
last night, as a matter of fact,
figure out the crime. So for me, it's like taking all rof these little scientific something that eventually helps
and dealing them out and trying to figure out which ones pieces like a deck of cards
I'm going to use and how I'm going to use them.
And in a lot of ways, the creative writing process
I have this wonderful little is very similar to the scientific process.
graphic that I printed off of the scientific process,
and going, that's exactly how I write a book. With the scientific process ayou start out with askingit
a question, and with my writing process I ask what if,
Scientific process next, which is a fun question to get your imagination going.
you do background research. I do my forensic research. You construct a hypothesis next
for the scientific process, and I construct a plot
for my novels. The scientific process,
you test with an experiment.
I test with a first draft. You analyze your results, you draw conclusions.
I edit and assess for believability and continuity. For scientific process, your hypothesis proves true,
in which case,
and evidence that all follows you thand is continuous,ults. If it works when I write my novel, then I have story lines
then I have a final draft. But in the scientific process,
if your hypothesis proves wrong,
then you've got to go back and think, and try again, sort of go back to the start.
And that's the exact same thing I have to do with my writing. I've tried different clues and
in my writing, and it's like tried to use different things
that's just not working. I can't make it work. So I have to toss that out,
pick another card from the deck,
To me, I think science and art go back and start over. So it's not a real linear process for me.
are very much connected, and I think it's a very thin line between the two of them.
I've had science in my life pretty much from the get go.
I've always loved science. My father and I used to sit
and watch science shows on TV all the time when I was little. My field of nursing certainly is a scientific field.
I'm not sure how the artistic part of it got involved, but I
I can't draw worth a darn, guess I have a small artistic side, not a big one because
I can't play an instrument worth a darn, can't sing worth a darn.
So my only artistic ability really is the writing, and
science has played a huge role in that for me, and I don't see
how I could ever write anything that didn't involve science.
And that's pretty much all I have to say.
So I'm going to hand it off to Melanie. >> Thank you, Beth, that was wonderful.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Melanie Hampton: Okay, I want to thank Deborah for having me
I don't often get to talk to people. on this panel.
[LAUGHTER] I'm crime scene.
We don't interview people, which
is kind of one of differences between what you see on TV and what happens in real life
in most cases.
You'll probably also notice, I'm not wearing civilian
I am wearing my very shiny clothes, I'm not wearing heels,
court shoes. So you're all being treated to my court uniform today.
Our crime scene investigators are uniformed officers. We've all been patrol officers
and that kind of experience is something that's very for at least five years,
valuable when you're working a crime scene.
But it is a different path
Department, the parallel rank to to my rank, which ise, than to go the detective route. In the Madison Police
They're the ones who do the interviews, who do the writing investigator, the parallel rank would be detective.
Actually, in my role doing of warrants and writing of subpoenas, in most cases.
computer forensics, I do write some of those things, but that's
of a different kind of world. When I try to explain to, like, friends and family what I do, it's easy for me to say, okay,
you think CSI, that's what I do. Law & Order, that's what detectives do.
But it's not at all like it is That's kind of how this works.
on TV. I think most people realize that.
I don't have a lovely lab with glass walls where I can
just whoosh things around, and come up with a database that
would match rooftop material
to some particular manufacturer at this particular date and time with a delivery man that happens
to live at 122nd Street.
That does not work. A lot of it is very tedious, very time consuming, very,
very detail oriented, and the answers are not two or three
steps down the road. They are three, four,
or five steps down the road.
And a lot of the things that we do may not necessarily even
but are all supportive point directly an answer,
that there's communication, that we value what each person It's very important that we work together as a team,
to work that scene. We are seeing something called the CSI effect, to the product in trying
We're seeing that in the if you've heard of that.
court room, where jurors are actually believing that forensic
practicing forensic science, science, or those of us who are
or evidence technicians, can deliver what they see on TV.
like finding DNA, expectations There are expectations of things
of matching fingerprints that are not necessarily
But this is what makes up our selection of people for juries, and needs to be addressed throughout the course of a trial
which makes for a very tough job
the scientific methods for someone like me, as well as the prosecutor, to try and decipher, what were
when I hear them saying the scientific methods, a lot of And sometimes, since my background is in engineering,
is applying those scientific times I think yeah, scientific, see the world of engineering
in the theory and such. So I see the forensic science or making something out of them, not just kind of dealing
forensic practitioning a lot closer related to engineering
than to a strict science. I think that's one of the reasons why I gravitated toward the forensic department.
And that's the reason why I joined the Madison Police Department. I did my bachelor's here at UW
in civil engineering, and I went
to Northwestern University for a master's in civil engineering,
National Science Foundation fellowship working on my PhD and came back here to UW with a
So I never did finish the PhD. decided that that just wasn't where I wanted to go.
with the intent of going into I broke my forensics.heart, but I took all of that experience to the Madison Police Department
Of the other people that I work with, we've all been of
that mind set where when we came
onto the force we knew we were going to go and do forensics. It's a different mind set.
Madison is very unique in that
we do have our own forensic services unit, 24/7. There are three shifts of people
who do nothing but respond
24/7, and so oftentimes, given to crime scenes and process evidence. There are 12 of us to cover the
for the entire city at a time. vacations and training, and all the other demands and such, there might be one of us
Then, when a major event happens then the phone starts ringing,
and we all start rolling and everybody gets called in
next to the State Crime Lab, to the scene. I think we're the third largest crime scene unit in the state
obviously, and then Milwaukee. The Crime Lab are not commissioned officers.
In Madison we are all officers. I have a strong opinion in that being a commissioned
in doing that role. There have been instances when suspects have returned into officer is something important
and have attacked the crime scene staff. what were secured crime scenes
One of the men that I worked with did have to shoot
a suspect.
I worked a sexual assault scene, where I was upstairs in the bedroom diagramming where the
sexual assault had taken place, and it was between a husband
husband is at work, we're going to go get him now. and a wife. The officers assured us the
Husband's at work, grandma's downstairs with the daughter.
Okay, so I'm doing my work
upstairs, suspect comes into the room. Starts making for a closet.
I don't know that he's not going
I have to maintain my training for a gun in the closet, so I have to rely on my experience as an officer as well.
in fire arms, in defense and arrest tactics to be able to take a suspect down, cuff him
and secure the situation
until I can get other officers there.
and completely stable environments. That's why I appreciate all of So we are by far not in secure
received still as a commissioned the training that I have
officer. It means we're responsible
We've kind of got two jobs for an awful lot.
to do, but I think that's really best. Some of the things that we do
then, so what do these 12 people
do on a 24/7 basis? A lot of photography and videography.
One of our sole responsibilities
is documenting what's there. So we finally went to digital.
We actually only went to digital It took us quite a while.
You could take 15 pictures a couple years ago. Otherwise, we have been using medium format film cameras.
at a time, and the negatives were about that big,
So photography and videography. We dust and do other processing to find latent fingerprints. but you got great pictures.
Despite what you see on TV, fingerprint comparison We do fingerprint comparison.
I would not trust a machine to do fingerprint comparison. We investigate arson. It'We document autopsies.e.
I've been in the autopsy suite
on several occasions with Dr. Stier, to my left, which is always a fun occasion.
Well, not always. Oh, sure it is. He's a great guy. [LAUGHTER]
We do traffic crash reconstruction. My civil engineering degree comes in really handy for that.
So learning how to, we also do forensic mapping of crashes and crime scenes.
an awful lot out of forensics when they're in the box, Juries are expecting
expecting to find out, well, what was the scene like.
And so the best that we can do
to truly and accurately depict that scene, the better off. Blood spatter analysis,
that's always fun.
It's all geometry, That's one of the best things I'd like to demonstrate for the junior high kids.
but they love it. I get a little stressed out. One of my areas of expertise,
though, is computer forensics,
and that's a relatively new field. I've been doing it
almost exclusively. I go out to major crime scenes
forensics. now, but almost exclusively I'm in the lab doing computer
for artifacts and other data So I analyze computers, cell phones, digital cameras, any kind of flash memory
that are related to a crime. It has to be done in a forensic manner, meaning that we have to
examine it in such a way that we're not changing the evidence while we look at it.
a computer, just by the act of turning that computer on, So you know if you turn on
you've changed it. So we use special tools and
special processes to freeze the data as it currently exists from when we got it, and then use other tools to examine
the data that's in it.
Carving out deleted files, looking for really minuscule
times and things that might give us pieces of information relating to that crime. Things that are all relating to
the who, what, where, when and why. Those are the big ones. Timeline, a timeline is huge
in almost any kind of case, and if you think of how often people use their cell phones, use their computers,
what they're looking at and when
they give us huge insight to timelines and to what's going on in someone's head
at a given time.
is more interesting. I can talk a little about how we would respond to a call, probably like a major scene
to take photos or to dust We dofor prints, or both.tine work and that would be just one investigator showing up
But on a major scene, if one of us is working, we start rolling Preout to the scene of, say,ing a shooting, or a major sexual
assault homicide, something of that sort. We'll immediately start calling other people in, because
no one investigator can do
a large scene by themselves, not at all. It takes a team approach.
At that point we start
So you have a videotape diof how things were. Who's going to do the videography?
photography? right when everybody got there. Who's going to start doing
Who's going to do the evidence collection? And that will usually be
a couple of people. Then who else is going to start mapping out that scene? Every little piece of evidence,
where is it, so that we can create a picture, we can create that map of it later on.
Hours and hours. It takes hours.
And we take the same kind of painstaking detail on a fatality
That's why the roads get closed sometimes for a few hours, vehicle crash, as well.
has happened. Now we do an awful lot if you're on the Beltline and something terrible like that
to talk about for a little bit, because that's kind of one of ofthe big issues in forensic. DNA is something I'd like
My little girl is in third grade science at the moment.
and they're already teaching her something a little bit
Basically that we kind of all have something about DNA.
and it's unique to us, kind of like a fingerprint.
Fingerprints are actually more
unique. Your DNA is very durable, yes. It's very chemically stable.
It can be washed away and chlorine bleach can destroy it. It can be destroyed by UV.
in the sun for a long time, that can degrade it. So if something is sitting out
see somebody touch something, then they'll do the big close up But DNA is also transferable. So on TV a lot of times you'll
skin cell and then off shot and somebody takes a Q-tip and they'll swab up some little
the soundtrack goes, and they're doing the little pipettes into the centrifuge and
presto, it's this one profile.
Yeah, not so much. Since DNA is transferable,
brought in here by two people. this table has probably been
with or something that morning They may or may not have their DNA on it, depending upon who maybe they shook hands
If I touched this, if I have it may be on here, too. I shook hands with a couple of people earlier.
their DNA on my hand, it may be on here now too. So we could end up with
a real soup, and mixtures in DNA
a stain that is specifically analysis are very, very common. That's by far the norm. Unless you're dealing with
one substance. We look at a blood drop,
Then overwhelmingly it will be one pattern. But to look at a surface where and it's one blood drop.
it's just a surface, there isn't a visible stain,
take a swab, the chances of getting that nifty little skin flake that has
that one profile that pops out
and then they go to the database and it says their last known
That's not quite how it works, location and everything, no.
at all. The absence of DNA as well does not necessarily mean
the person wasn't there.
It just means that that particular sample, that particular swab,
doesn't have it on there. But it doesn't necessarily
totality of the circumstances. prove a negative. You would have to look at the
You have to look at the entire picture to make that judgment.
I'd also like to clarify, that's different than TV is that usually you see Gary Sinise One of the things that I think,
what's his name? or the red-haired fellow,
David Caruso, there we go. >> Horatio. >> Yeah, Horatio Caine, but I forget the actor's name.
He's got it all figured out He takesin his head.glasses first, and then off he goes to go get the suspect.
In forensics we can't approach it that way, because one of
the things that the system
is depending upon us to be is in pursuit of fact and unbiased. I'm not there to go after
a particular suspect. I'm not there to form a judgment
and prove that judgment. I am there to gather all the
facts as best and accurately
using the best methods that we have at our disposal
That's our job. It's not simply to support to the best of my ability.
the detective. the prosecutor, not at all. It's not to support
That separation is important, That'and it's a good ways why wof making that system work.d thenI think I'll close withment.
one of the things I wanted
to comment on with what you had to say about a live body smelling the same as a dead one
on the inside.
Oh, lord, I hope not. [LAUGHTER] So when we go out to a really,
really, really nasty death
scene, the smells are such that you get them in your head, and you know that smell.
There is nothing else that smells like that smell.
It's something you instantly remember.
We'll put on Tyvek suits, masks, and booties to try and keep it out of your hair
It gets in your hair. It gets in the hair in your nose, and then you're andstill smelling it.es.
So when we've been on some
really tough scenes, one of the secrets I have is we'll take Vicks VapoRub and put that up
your nostrils.
It keeps you from smelling the decomp quite so bad.
little tips and tricks. >> Blum: Remember that. >> Hampton: Remember that one! So that's kind of one our
[LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE]
Whatever, I just don't want to smell it. The death scenes, and I think
I have probably,
by far the images that I've seen doing computer forensics have been more bothersome to me
than anything that I've had to process out on scene.
after the fact, it's a lot On scene, because it is very much coming in
easier to deal with and know that we just have a job to do,
best of our ability. and we get it done to the
But I'm very happy to be here today to give you a little insight into what the forensics
unit at MPD does. Doc?
[APPLAUSE] >> Blum: That was great,
Melanie, thank you. And now Dr. Stier.
>> Michael Stier: All right. I'm going to stand, because I'm
one of those people that talks
with my hands. Before you leave, young man,
lights that go towards the board I want to ask if we can dim the
a bit, because this is going to be entirely a visual presentation mostly.
[INAUDIBLE] There we go,
okay, thank you. I want to echo what Melanie said
and that is a lot of what you folks see on television is not
exactly the way it's done in real life.
However, there is a lot of
parallelity. A lot of the script writers in
and Investigator Hampton Hollywood have folks like myself
on staff to give them ideas and some guidance. So what you're seeing on the
media is really a hybrid
of Hollywood and the excitement that they want to foster in a television program,
and some reality. One of the things that they always talk about and they say time of death
was 5:55pm, or whatever.
something that is not concrete. Unless you were there when the opportunity to establish, because time of death is
very difficult to determine. explosion occurred, or when the gun went off it's
There are a variety of parameters that we as forensic
as a forensic pathologist, scientists, me in particular
body, it's called algor mortis. We don't use that very often, because temperature of the body This dependent upon a varietyhe
of factors, which include temperature of the environment, clothing and its ability to insulate which is variable,
also the subcutaneous insulation
is actually fairly insulating. we have that is the fat under the skin, and varies from person to person and fat
So we don't use algor mortis very much.
rigor mortis or that is the stiffening of the musculature in There is another feature called
the postmortem time after death. If any of you have ever had
the unfortunate situation of a pet that died or experienced an animal that died or something that was deceased
for some hours, and you move it and you notice that it's stiff, it's because the musculature
process called rigor mortis. contracts and lends to this
That's a whole other subject. Lastly, there is a process of change of color
of the skin surface.
That is what I'm going to focus on.
many different things and have So rather than trying to go over
you leave here going, well, I heard a lot of little stuff, I'm going to try to really
teach all of you livor mortis,
so when you leave here you know what livor mortis is.
for inviting me and thank you for the introduction. I'm a professor of forensics So again thank you, Deborah,
So let's start with this at the UW.
question: what happens when death occurs?
that happen, but related to livor mortis or the change in color of the skin, is related to Well, there are a lot of things
stops. the fact that blood circulation
So right now everybody in this room has a pulse. You have the heart
that is beating.
called arteries. Blood is circulating. It is traveling away from the heart in vessels
It is traveling back to the heart in vessels called veins. But when you die, eventually
the heart stops, and
according to the forces that circuof gravity.ess stops. I think most of you here are redistribute within the vessels
of gravity, maybe there's a couple that don't, old enough to understand forces
That's what keeping the water in this bottle but gravity is what's keeping us all in our seat right now.
all around us, except in the toward the base here. Gravity is a force that exists
higher levels of the atmosphere. So when a person dies and the blood circulation stops, gravity
pulls the blood in the vessels
and lays on their back for some time, the back of that person will become more purplish-pink. So if That color is calledr back
livor mortis. Whereas, the surface of the body
will become very pale. away from the surface on which the body is resting
So the color of skin changes, as I've mentioned, and this color change
is called livor mortis. Now, how does livor mortis
relate to timing of death? Well, livor mortis
is a time dependent process.
So once circulation stops, it begins and then there is a gradual change in the degree
of livor mortis.
After a certain point in time, roughly 8 to 12 hours after,
after death, this redistributed blood will clot and become fixed. let's see, roOkay? 8 to 12 hours
Now what does that mean?
Prior to this time interval, let's say someone dies on their back, and about three hours
or four hours after they have passed away, someone comes along
and says, gee, Bobby had a big wallet and he always carried
a few hundred bucks,
to maybe look for something let'in the pocket.und and get the wallet out. And they roll him over
that livor mortis will shift The body is moved at that four-hour interval,
to the front of the body. But after about 8 to 12 hours, this redistributed blood, the
livor mortis will become fixed, such that if the person is moved
will be present on the back. after this 8 or 12 hours, that pattern, the livor mortis
So when they bring me someone that they say, Doc, let's say, Investigator Hampton goes
out to a scene, they say, well
this person was found laying on their stomach in an alley, and I look at the person, and
we check their whole body out and I see that the livor mortis,
let me correct myself, found laying on his stomach,
and we look at the body in the
morgue and I see that the livor mortis is in the back. I'll say, well, he may have been
found on his stomach, but it
looks like he died and was on his back for some time prior to being found.
Now the reason that this window is so broad is because there are
Persons that are on medicines that thin the blood, such as aspirin or Warfarin, or other we possess that influence that.
will cause blood to stay more fluid out to this 10- or 12-hour interval. things that you may be taking
that affect this. And that's, again, So there are a lot of variables
part of that CSI effect. You can't say that at
eight hours, it's always
going to be fixed. So before this interval,
as I mentioned, but livor can also be blanched livor can be redistributed,
I'll show you pictures of this, is when you have an area of this by firm digital pressure. And what I mean by that, and
on it with your finger, and if it becomes pale, you know livid discoloration, or of this purple discoloration, you push
that the person had died approximately 8 to 12 hours
prior to that observation being made. I'm going to go through a bunch of images and test you folks
on this at the end. It should be kind of fun. No, really. And livor mortis won't form
at all in areas where there's pressure on the skin. So the same example, someone
of the skin becomes kind of purplish, you'll see the color dies on their back, and the back
of livor mortis, but say their buttocks or the back of their
shoulders will not have livor forming, because the blood
I'll give you an example cannot get into that. Okay?
that you can all do right now. The color of your skin
is due to several things. It is due to the pigmentation that is inherent to your as you sit here
It's a reflection of the heritage and your ethnicity.
lighting that we have, but it is also a manifestation of blood circulating in the skin.
So if you take the back of one
hand and with the opposing hand, take a finger and push on it
four seconds and then take your finger off, you'll see that there's a pale mark, right? veThen in about four to six or
seconds it's all filled in again
have a pulse or have that's because you have a pulse and you have circulation. On a deceased person, they don't
circulation, but in these areas of lividity, if you push on it firmly, and there is a blanching
effect like we just did the experiment on the hand, you know that the person died approximately 8 to 12 hours
before that observation is made.
I'm going to show pictures from autopsy cases, just to prepare you.
I have screened these photos
so that they're not the real extreme things. I think they're fine for this
audience, but I just need to prepare you all. So this an image here, and again
a tad more now that would be if we can turn the lighting down
helpful, because I like to really have these things
If that's possible. I'll give these folks a minute project.
is an interface. while I talk. What you're seeing here
You're seeing the edge of the side of someone
As far as you can without compromising the videography that I've examined.
image, you have this very pale is great. So in the upper half of the
skin that is without circulation and there's no circulation going
But this is pale skin that is towards the surface of the body. on at all here.
So the surface is at the top of the screen.
The surface on which the person is resting is at
of the image down here, you can appreciate this kind of purplish the bottom of the screen. So in the lower half
discoloration. Can everybody see that?
Okay, so this purplish
Okay? discolorAgain, it's note seeing in theall black and white.image is livor mortis.
this is very pale up here. Some of you may notice
It is more purple down here, and there's kind of a pink interface
So things are not always here at the transition.
black and white. There is a zone of gray,
So, again, livor mortis is the collection and the pooling of blood if you will.
In areas of skin that are in contact with a rigid surface, according to forces of gravity.
is the skin of the side of livor mortis will not form. So what you're looking at here
you have this purple color someone who is being examined at autopsy. In the left half of the image,
of livor mortis. You all appreciate that?
contact with something rigid, and that rigid object was in contact with the skin Okay, this person died in
You see in the right half on the same patient, there is a pallor or a paleness, in tand there is no lividityage.
or no livor mortis. Do we all appreciate that?
Okay, what I'm going to do in the next image,
just to let you know, is I'm going to grasp this edge of the cut skin and pull it down, and you're going to see
what the vessels look like under
the surface of the skin, which is a manifestation
it looks the way it does. So pulling this skin down, of how lividity forms and why
you will see that in the left side of this image you see
the purplish discoloration, you see how prominent the vessels are, and how congested
This is what's giving the image of livor mortis from the surface of the skin. theOkay?ear?
You see in the other half of the
image on the same patient, there is no blood pooling in the vessel here.
There are blood vessels here, you just don't see them, because
there is something rigid in contact with the skin
on this part. Okay? So this is what lends to pattern
at autopsy which is very useful. formation that we recognize
Autopsy, as Investigator Hampton said, in death investigation
So we're putting it all together is very much a team effort.
and it's really a blast. I'll tell you, I really enjoy what I do and I encourage
all of the young participants in this forum here to pursue your dreams, regardless
wants you to do. of what anyone else
I took a lot of heat for going into the work that I do,
I guess it is. because it's kind of morbid.
It's kind of smelly, and it's fairly challenging.
and comes to me, When a patient dies
headache for the last three they don't cdays.nd say, hey, They are deceased so they have here or, hey, I've had a bad
complication of an illness. It's all up to me, pretty much, to figure out what's going on. sustained the ultimate
a person lying on their back So, as I've stated, just with
someone and there's livor mortis you will have areas of lividity forming, or livor mortis. You see here this is the neck of
here, and there's livor mortis along these edges, and in the curved surface of the back,
where the person was on contact with the surface of their floor,
you have no livor mortis here. Do you all see that?
Now what do you suppose these ridges are? These irregular lines that we have here?
Yeah, wrinkles from clothing
impart a specific pattern. That's what this is.
So now we're going to go through You see that.
some relatively simple exercises to see what kind of patterns
from these images. you can recognize
and we'll go through, and you'll see some of these on a particular object, that object may make an imprint
right now. Okay, so this is the back
of someone that was laying
on a particular object. That object is reflected here in this pattern.
What is that pattern? >> A comb.
This one is both easy and difficult. >> That's a comb, that's right. That's pretty easy.
here, and while you study that This is the chest of someone. There is an object that is right
and try to gather what kind of object that is, I'm going to tell you
that this curved part here, and this here, and these two, are related to this.
object is in the center of this image? So what do you think the main
TV remote, okay. Any other guesses?
Yes.
Okay, TV remote is really good. Anybody else want to take a guess? [LAUGHTER]
A strap of a case. [INAUDIBLE]
is right on spot. WelThis is the TV remote,s, in fact, a TV remote. So whoever guessed that
and this is part of the thumb, this is part of the palm
and these are two other fingers.
So this person was clutching the TV remote and passed away with the remote in hand
on the chest. So that's what you're seeing
and then this is the remote. right here. Here's part of the hand
Do you all see that now? >> So did it require pressure on it?
It does definitely. You came in late. This is all pressure
So they were on their stomach? from gravity.
>> That's correct. They were on their stomach.
Next one here.
This is one is kind of generational. Some of you folks my age and a
little older will get this, and some of the young folks may not.
>> A phone cord? >> A phone cord, yeah,
but not from a cell phone.
So yes, that's a phone cord. This is the old type of phone that was attached to the wall with kind of that curly cord.
have time for questions. Let's see where we are. Okay, so this isn't going to be much longer here, we want to
that's a general question, By the way, if you have a question for any of us, me included,
I ask that you kindly wait. But if you have a specific question that relates to what
you're seeing in the image, it would be appropriate to ask
while I'm giving the presentation so we don't have to
bring the image up again. So as I mentioned, lividity or livor mortis is blanchable in the first 8 to 12 hours
of death. So at an autopsy one of the things I'll do, is I'll examine a decedent, and I'll say okay,
here's an area of lividity
and I'll take my gloved hand and I'll push on that, and then see what it looks like.
If it looks like this and leaves a mark or an imprint,
person passed away approximately that means that it is blanched, and that indicates that the
8 to 12 hours prior to me performing the test. I have only one more slide.
I don't want you
of the back of someone to speak up just yet. This is the last slide for now. So this is an image
at autopsy. So this is an autopsy table. They did not die here.
Okay? They did not die here,
on the image, and the legs but there's the back. The head is off to the left
are off to the right. So this is an autopsy table. And just from this image,
I want to know what you think about how long before this photo was taken
And you can look at it did this person lose their life?
and study it. What's that? >> Less than eight hours.
Less than eight hours,
we have over here. Eight to 12 hours,
Okay, that's about the same, or less than 8 to 12.
but I like your answer better, because of the variability
Any others? You've got really pretty intense that I mentioned.
lividity here. But we've got something going on
here and we've got something
going on here. Any other guesses?
on the table? >> Half an hour, 20 minutes. >> How long has he been
Anyone else? Do you all agree with that
8 to 12 hours?
You don't think it's someone suffering from the very rare
[LAUGHTER] but fatal spotted butt disease.
No, in fact, you are correct. It is less then 8 to 12 hours, because what you're seeing here
is a pattern
the perforations are actually offorming a patterne. Yoon the decedent's buttocks.ss So this pattern was formed
at this table,
not where the person died. The same thing with the line here on the person's back
corresponds with this support ridge on the autopsy table
right there. So now, with that said,
you all understand livor mortis,
Blum: Well, I think we're avery lucky to have thish distinguished group of panelists [APPLAUSE]
so many different perspectives. We are now hoping that you have some questions walk us through crimes from
If you do, I'd like you to put up your hand. for each and any of them.
make sure everyone can hear it. I'll calOver here.nd then I'll repeat your question to
So the question has to do with [INAUDIBLE]
investigating a fire scene. There's some suggestion that or science suggests that some of
the assumptions we've made
about arson were incorrect. Have you seen this change at the Madison Police Department?
Hampton: Well, arson
investigation is a two-pronged approach. From Madison Police Department
we have several detectives and
one of our investigators, actually, who have specialized training in arson investigation,
but the Madison Fire Department does take the lead
on those investigations. Certainly, criminal charges
would come as a result of that
two-pronged investigation. Arson investigation isn't something that I have specific
specialized training in.
One of the effects of only having 12 of us to do 24/7, is that we all kind of have to
adopt a bit of a specialty. So we can all do the major crime
scene photography, videography and scene response, but then
if we tried to be experts in everything, we'd go nuts.
So I've got computer forensics and the fingerprint comparison.
I do more with photography
and videography. But I can't say I would know
because I'm not as versed with the arson investigation. >> Blum: Right here. the answer to your question
Do you often get patients or >> One question for Dr. Stier.
people who have died within that eight-- Do you often get patients within
that 8- to 12-hour time frame so that you have a chance to do this? It would seem like often you
wouldn't have that opportunity. >> Stier: Well, the patients
that I see, and I do call them patients, because
I'm a physician and I'm making
medical specialty. a terminal diagnosis, the range is extreme. It's more extreme than any other
We do see patients that have died in that short interval.
the best autopsy is conducted as soon after death as possible. The best postmortem exam,
showed, that person had passed But that's not always possible. So we, as this last image
away within 8 to 12 hours prior to the autopsy, but my longest interval is 30 years.
I autopsied someone in May of 2006, that passed away
fix time of death? in May of 1976. >> Blum: And did you
[LAUGHTER] >> Time of death wasn't the question, but it was
a spectacular case. It was adjudicated. It's gone through the courts, but I will, if anyone has
specific interest about that
caseover here, I thought.ents oBack here then.. >> Blum: [INAUDIBLE] question
Stier: I can repeat the question. The question is, is on
pressure and show blanching lividity pattern, as I showed, a deceased patient, if you apply
It depends. If you have the opportunity to does that refill? The answer is, usually not.
four, five hours, it may refill, examine someone very soon after death, we're talking two, three,
and sometimes it does. But the closer you get towards
the less likely it will refill. I should also mention, that 8-hour time, 8 to 12 hours,
since you asked that question, there is a gray zone where
you can have a mixed pattern, say about somewhere between five to six hours, where some of
start to form and stay, and if the person is repositioned, the lividity will actually
of redistributing. the lividity may have a secondary pattern
In fact, I just encountered that where a person had a dual pattern of lividity, indicating
death on the prone position,
That's exactly or in the front, but also had a lividity pattern indicating that they were on their back.
what had occurred. The person had died and was on
four to six hours, and then was shifted to their back. their front side for probably
And, again, it takes a lot of experience and a lot
of observational skills to dissect what we see
There have been three major revolutions that I can think of in crime detection from the beginning of the last century.
Fingerprinting, ballistics
Where do you think the next, analysis and now DNA, and undoubtedly many lesser revolutions.
from which branch of science do you think the next big revolution is going to come?
Blum: And all three of you
are welcome to take a crack at that. What do you think the future,
the next brilliant revolution in forensics will be? >> Hampton: Well, actually the
just released a report National Academy of Sciences
not too long ago evaluating the state of forensic science. The report was pretty harsh on
the forensic sciences community saying that a lot of, that there
lacked a lot of standards, credentials, and certifications
and such, that it wasn't uniform
and indeed it's not. In Madison, we have 12
forensic response. investigators for 24/7
We have different levels We're sworn officers, but our crime lab are not sworn officers.
of training. Training is not something that is dictated by
what certifications are needed. It's dictated by what funds we have available.
law enforcement throughout There are branches, municipal
the rest of the state, where they don't have anybody.
to respond in a timely fashion. It's as fast as crime lab can respond, which may be Sa couple hours or so.e
In terms of the science of it,
until the state of the forensics major revolutions and such, probably won't trickle down to municipal law enforcement
community and forensic science, I wouldn't call myself a scientist in the role that I am.
I'm more, based on my experience
in engineering, I really see that parallel to being an engineer.
It's more of
a forensic practitioner. But the biggest work
is in the standardization, that needs to be done
to the methods that are applied so that when we get to the court making uniform and lending more reliability and creditability
system, everyone has faith in what's being presented.
Stier: I would agree and also it would be a huge thing, it would be nothing short of a revolution if we could
unify death investigation in this country.
If you look at the map, there are counties that are still under coroner's jurisdictions, a hodgepodge.
capacities. Some of them with many years and coroners are of varying
of experience are fairly good. Some of them with lesser
experience, they're only as competent as their experience.
The requirements for a coroner means that you have to be
living in the county in which you serve, you have to be 18 years old, and you have to be
You don't have to be an investigator. You don't have to have a non-felon.
You don't have to have a college degree.
any of this. And as Melanie said,
to different crime scenes vary all over the place. the agencies that respond
I worked in Virginia as well. Virginia has a fairly good As Deborah mentioned, she worked in Virginia,
system where they have a state medical examiner system
that is run by physicians with death investigators
I will only reiterate that that have to have some competency in the field.
the best death investigation is done by a team effort, and the team is only as good
as the weakest link.
But if we could get a unification of death investigation systems in this
country, it would be nothing
short of monumentous, really. >> Amos: All right, I've got a slightly different answer.
Actually two answers. I think two things are going to revolutionize crime solving and investigation in the future.
One is the growing prevalence of cameras, and big brother everywhere we go. More and more things
are getting caught on film, computers with cameras. I had to buy a new laptop computer and it had one of those
little built in web cams. And I got to tell you,
of paper all the time. I'm a little paranoid about it. I keep it covered with a piece
[LAUGHTER] Not that I'm doing anything bad, but you just never know.
The other thing I think more
scientific-wise that I think maybe a future thing
Being able to interpret brain processes and such for either memory capture, or lie detecting is brain mapping.
There's a lot of really great advances being done right now with brain studies, so I think or something along those lines.
potential for a future. >> Blum: I've been wondering, I'm probably going to follow up with you, Melanie, on this
about computer forensics. One of the things is I've looked
looked at, the evidence has been at poison cases, and a number of the poison murders that I've
against the poisoners that they went and researched the poison on their home computer
and that search was found on the hard drive.
And, in fact, there was a case a couple years ago,
it was in Kenosha.
I don't know if you all remember this, but it was a doctor who murdered his wife.
He had put antifreeze in her wine.
they found all of his searches And when that all spun out, it was a fascinating case, but
to put it in on his computer. I've been forever saying and how it kills you, and what the best liquid drink
to people do your research at the library, which is
probably not what Melanie wants to hear.
[LAUGHTER] But one of the things
I've wondered is, if I did do it
on my home computer, how much can I really hide? Or can you find it all,
even if I'm trying to erase it? Go ahead and scare them.
>> Hampton: Computer forensics is a very new area in terms
of crime scene response,
because your computer can be the crime scene, or it can
information about it. And there is actually, the tell you an awful lot of
Caylee Anthony case actually involves computer forensics.
One of the big points of
contention was one computer forensics examiner said that there were 80-some-plus searches
for chloroform. Another computer forensic examiner analyzed that hard drive and said no,
I don't find nearly that many.
I think there were like three, or one, or something of that
the exact numbers. sort, I don't remember
of that software correctly. Kind of an embarrassing moment of software they were using and interpreting the results
for the sheriff's department deputy who did the computer
forensics exam on that machine
and reported results that didn't have the appropriate, without the appropriate
interpretation. Back when I first started doing computer forensics
it was dead box forensics, about five years ago,
that is, power gets taken from the computer, you bring the box in and we take
the hard drive out of it, hook
it up to our forensics machine and create an image of it so that we're working from
a bit by bit copy.
but all the space on it. That's a copy of all of the space, not just the space that has files,
Even the space you think is empty but it's probably not. Dead box forensics then
was great.
We would find probably almost everything in there. People just didn't
delete a lot of stuff,
20gig hard drive was like, didn't wipe a lot of stuff, and the size of the hard drives was significantly smaller.
woo-hoo, we can store all sorts of stuff on there. Nowadays, hard drives
are about 1.5 terabytes, or so, at least. That's huge.
a lot more often now. Secure web browsing, Encryption is being used
secure methods of deleting data, it's getting harder and harder
to find artifacts of web
browsing, and find artifacts of files being touched, and such, using dead box forensics.
It's not impossible.
looking for, they're storing it, In a lot of the cases we deal with the information that's on the computer that we're
they're keeping it, they're collecting it, they want to have images and such,
and so those are things that we're going to find. Cell phones are just about
and that's another huge area as big as computers now,
for forensic work. Mostly because there are so many
so many different vendors, different operating systems,
and there's no reason for them to standardize. Unlike Windows and Mac where you
basically have two platforms, for cell phones it's all over the place and they change within months, not just years.
So trying to keep up
with forensic methods to analyze cell phones is really quite a task.
It's resource intensive in terms
of time, in terms of training, and in terms of equipment.
of dollars to go into machines Thousands upon thousands
and processing and such, to do this kind of work,
that's just easily available for and it's not the kind of money
a municipal police department. That's another one of those areas where collaboration,
regional cooperation
would be helpful. >> Amos: I just want to say that if anybody around me dies
a suspicious death and they look
at my computer, I'm screwed. [LAUGHTER]
all kinds of interesting stuff. [LAUGHTER] Because I Google
And in fact, just yesterday I was flying back and I caught >> Blum: Actually I could probably say the same thing.
I'm going to go give this talk a cab from the airport, and I was saying to taxi driver
about my book, Poisoner's Handbook, and
to me I know how to kill people, literally the taxi driver says
okay, my life has gotten you put tomato leaves in their salad. And for a moment I thought,
so weird. [LAUGHTER] But, of course, then I go back
and I'm looking up, can I kill
you with a tomato leaf. [LAUGHTER] Not very effectively apparently.
My husband's safe still.
[LAUGHTER] I know we're running a little bit behind, because the
session before us ran so late,
so we'll only take a couple more questions, if there are any more
Yeah, way back here. questions.
Is there a microphone for her? So.
What has been the youngest
person that each of you have worked on that have died? >> Blum: Could you repeat that?
You're interested in a specific murder case?
>> No, she wants to know what the youngest person is
that any of us have worked on who has died. So the youngest death.
murder victim. >> Blum: Okay, so the youngest
The case involving the youngest person that you've worked with in a criminal investigation.
Stier: Preborn. >> Blum: Could you explicate? >> Stier: Not really. It's a case that is probably
Supreme Court material, but depending on definition of life,
And I suppose the other question and what not, but I've examined fetal patients.
infant cases as young as, I think, a couple of weeks or so. Infant cases are always hard. >> Hampton>> Very.ad several
Amos: As a nurse, I've
the preborns as well as newborns certainly taken care of pretty much every age death-wise, including some of
and very young babies. >> Blum: So we get into the fact
such a fun subject, right? that murder isn't always quite
Other questions? Anything else?
Hi, I'm just a little more Yes, over here.
curious about establishing the time of death,
If, for example, you've got a body that had been murdered 15 to 50 hours ago, anhow close could you get?u.
Could you get within a couple of hours, or is it a range
of 15 hours, and then how does that affect solving the crime,
and are there any clues when
you're investigating the scene that would help establish the time of death?
Every TV show they kind of start
with, "What were you doing between 10:00 and midnight?"
a real easy quick answer >> Stier: I can give you
and that is that time of death is established by a variety of parameters.
It's not just livor mortis. It's also rigor mortis. It's also cell phone records. It's also when was the last time
you picked up your mail?
What are the dates of expiration on things in the refrigerator,
Again, computer records. It's a combined approach from the law for example.
enforcement investigative side of cell phones
and what not, and then
what we see at autopsy. And that's why that window that I offered, 8 to 12 hours,
is so diverse.
for sure over a week, Iand they had no features ofn decomposition, no livor mortis, and that could be explained,
because the murder involved a fire arm and the person had bled in the process of sustaining that injury, and
livor mortis is dependent upon
blood in the vascular system. So we can get pretty good, but it's certainly not to the minute
unless you have satellite imagery that shows something
happening, but it's really a combined effort.
And, again, working as a team you can get pretty close. You can narrow it for several hours in some cases, and in
some cases you come as close
as saying within a day or two of such and such a date. So the accuracy is really
fairly divergent. >> Hampton: I would just echo what Dr. Stier has to say.
all those different factors. It really is dependent on
Having looked at as many cell phones as I have, those
we are. I've found cell phone text really do show how connected
messages that I believe were probably sent within minutes
of death, that was an overdose case.
Those kind of things can happen. But the team approach is the
only way that you can really
narrow down that kind of thing. >> Blum: When you're writing a murder mystery, Beth, do you
make an assumption about the
that as we do hear on television accuracy, the medical ability to determine time of death? How much do you rely on the idea
that you can narrow the time frame down very precisely?
as realistic as possible. I occasionally exercise a little >> Amos: I try to keep my books
bit of poetic license, but not usually with the science,
more with the process or the timelines
of getting the evidence. Time of death has been an issue
in a couple of the books. It's not a clear cut issue. There's a fairly large
In one, the time of death, time frame.
as I mentioned, was actually altered by a disease in a way.
Blum: So the next time you So that's all I can say.
see a crime show on TV and they identify the time
you have permission to roll your eyes. of death within 10 minutes,
[LAUGHTER] Is there one last question?
Yes, right here.
...what percentage of those could be caused or attributed to alcohol?
Blum: Like is alcohol a factor in crimes ranging
from murder to suicide, and do we have a kind of statistical
sense of how frequently it's a player.
is really epidemic. Mostly from accidents, >> Stier: The relationship of alcohol to premature deaths
drinking and ice fishing, drinking and dancing, drdrinking and doing, drinking and bicycling,
is an impairing compound. Even drinking and sitting home just about anything, alcohol
on the couch you might be at risk for falling off the couch.
I had a student who did a study with me, and of the accidental
deaths, I think it was somewhere between maybe 20% and 30%
involved alcohol, or some degree
of intoxication. As far as homicides go, I don't have a better number
for you because, fortunately, I don't work in Chicago or in other urban-- I'm not saying Chicago is bad
at all, but I'm saying in more
urban centers where the activity of gang and drug is more dense
homicide rate. and there's a higher
We really live in a fairly safe community. As far as suicides go, there
is some indication that drugs are involved in suicides, but more so psychiatric things
who commit suicide have an because, of course, most persons
underlying cause of depression. >> Hampton: I think in looking at the, say, the past 10 years
or so within the Madison
community, certainly homicides have been, I'd say the major
Drug activity has been a factor and domestic violence. factors have been drugs.
Alcohol can certainly fuel domestic violence, absolutely,
but I think those are our two major players within the Madison
Blum: I'd like to thank areour terrific panel.ted [APPLAUSE]