Crossing The Yellow Line: Part 2

There is a saying, "Dead men tell no tales." To the contrary - dead men (and women) do tell tales!

A good crime scene investigator can reconstruct any crime scene based upon physical evidence. For example, on the Nicole Simpson/Ron Goldman murder scene, investigators were able to decipher that Nicole Simpson was surprised by the attack and died instantly from her knife wound and Ron Goldman was alive and fighting for a while.

How did they know that? There was no blood on the bottom of Nicole Simpson's feet while the bottoms of Ron Goldman's shoes were soaked in blood, as were his trousers from rolling in the blood, probably during the struggle. Spray patterns and drops of blood usually can tell investigators how the victim was standing in relationship to the assailant, the distance between the two, whether the victim died instantly, ran, stood or walked after the assault, and whether the victim was dragged from one location to another.

In last month's column we started exploring how firefighters and paramedics can ruin a crime scene, destroying key evidence that may be could have been used to convict someone responsible for a murder or serious assault. The key to preservation of evidence at any crime scene is to disturb as little as possible.

Unfortunately, whenever there is a violent crime scene, everybody wants to take a look. If you have two medics on the ambulance and three or four people on the engine company, you can have five or six fire personnel trampling through a crime scene just to look at a body.

Whenever there is a suspected death on a crime scene, only one fire department representative should go into the "hot zone" with the necessary equipment to determine if the victim is a candidate for resuscitation or is viable for transport to a hospital. The medic should disturb as little as possible while making their physical examination of the patient. If the person is determined not to be viable, the medic should exit the crime scene after recording those findings. If it is determined that the victim is viable, only then should the additional fire department personnel be brought into the scene, again keeping in mind that as little as possible should be disturbed.

Anything done to disturb the scene should be recorded and reported to the investigators. Even a body completely covered by a blanket, sheet or comforter can be significant. A body that has been covered tells the investigators that there was an emotional relationship between the victim and the assailant. After the murder, usually it is difficult for the assailant to see someone they cared about in that physical condition, so they cover the body.

Once inside the scene, what seems irrelevant or not significant can be extremely important. Several years ago, an airline flight attendant was murdered in her apartment building in St. Louis. The only piece of evidence found on the scene was a fingerprint on a light bulb on the landing outside her apartment door. As it turned out, the light bulb had been unscrewed and the assailant probably hid in the dark, waiting for her to open her apartment door. After the apartment door was opened, the assailant probably pushed her into the apartment and killed her. The fingerprint was run through the law enforcement national fingerprint database with no results. When the homicide detectives ran out leads, the case was left open. Four years later, a man became involved a fight in a St. Louis bar and was arrested. As is protocol with an arrest, his fingerprints were taken and run through the computerized fingerprint database. A direct hit was scored with the fingerprint from the light bulb. Further investigation revealed the arrested suspect lived in the apartment building at the time of the murder. Upon questioning, he confessed to murdering the woman because she repeatedly rebuffed his requests for a date. Going back to the original murder scene, if someone had screwed in the light bulb to get more light on the scene, the only piece of evidence might have been destroyed and the killer would still be walking the street today.

Another factor to take into consideration on a crime scene is that the telephone should never be used. Many times, detectives will hit the redial button on a telephone to determine where the last call went, or depending on the telephone provider, will hit a series of buttons on the telephone, such as *67, to learn who was the last person to call a victim.

Firefighters and paramedics operating at a crime scene should not search through purses, drawers, pants, etc., for identification of the victim. More than once, investigators have shown up and find all the drawers opened and the victim's wallet open on a nearby table. The question in the investigator's mind is, was this a burglary/murder or the medics searching for identification?

Another mistake fire department personnel make on crime scenes is to smoke. Again, when investigators later examine the scene and find two different brands of cigarette butts, the question they must answer is who was smoking the cigarette. Other evidence on a cigarette butt that can tie a suspect to the scene is the DNA from saliva.

At the scene of a traffic fatality, it is part of our very nature to want to remove the body from the car and flush the scene. Unfortunately, in many locations, a police accident reconstruction team responds to the scene and recreates the accident based on many components, including the body and vehicle parts lying on the ground. Obviously, safety is a priority and if there are any combustible fuels on the ground, only then should flushing of the scene be done prior to the arrival of the accident reconstruction team.

Obviously, no one wants to see a murderer go free, but at the same time, no one wants to see a person wrongfully convicted. Only by disturbing as little as possible when operating in a crime scene can fire department personnel help prevent these travesties.