Ken Goddard's
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On Re-Collecting Human Remains from the Crime Scene:

Give the general process described above, it’s pretty rare for a crime scene investigator to actually collect and transport a human body from a scene, but it does happen … as you may recall from an earlier anecdote titled ‘on a Forensic Scientist’s First CSI Job.’  But it’s even rarer for a crime scene investigator to be sent back to the scene to re-collect the remains.

This happened to me as the result of an altercation in a bar that escalated into a knife fight and left a notorious outlaw biker named ‘Mad Dog’ face down and dead on the sidewalk.  Turned out he was given the nickname by his fellow bikers who thought he was certifiable (probably a relative term among outlaw bikers anyway), and really didn’t like him much --- a point of view which, apparently, lead to the altercation and the fatal stabbing.

So my CSI partners and I responded to the scene; observed Mad Dog facedown on the concrete; set a casual perimeter; took our pictures; made our scene sketch; listened to a few witnesses tell the detectives that Mad Dog was a mean bastard, and never much good with a knife anyway, and then ask (apparently out of some true uncertainty on their part) if it really was illegal to stab an SOB like that; waited for the coroner’s investigator to arrive and turn him over; noted that he was, in fact, stabbed; and decided that we’d done more than our share of work on Mad Dog’s behalf.  Whether or not it turned out to be illegal to stab Mad Dog (self-defense is a legal defense, even for outlaw bikers), we assumed the detectives would eventually arrest someone for the act.  And, if nothing else, it was likely to be an entertaining trial.

A couple of days later, I was busy doing something in the crime lab when I got a call from the Watch Commander advising me (in between apparently uncontrollable bursts of laughter) that we had to go back out to the bar and re-collect Mad Dog.

When I suggested this wasn’t an especially logical request, since --- as far as I knew --- Mad Dog had already been cremated and buried, the Watch Commander relayed the following story:

It seemed that the only person who actually sort-of-liked Mad Dog was his outlaw biker sister who apparently had a soft spot in her otherwise hard heart for her brother.  She was the one who took possession of Mad Dog’s ashes and then informed his fellow gang members that Mad Dog had always wanted a biker funeral parade --- which meant the entire gang riding down some street on their rumbling Hogs and ‘flying colors’ (wearing their finest outlaw biker gear, specifically including the flashy leather jackets), and presumably, transporting Mad Dog’s ashes along the way --- and she was going to see to it that he got one.

Unfortunately, as Mad Dog’s sister quickly discovered, no one in the gang had any interest in going to that much work on behalf of a guy they all pretty much despised.  The only thing they intended to do in the way of a ceremony was sit around, drink beer and watch TV.

This, apparently, didn’t go over well with Mad Dog’s sister, who called the gang a few uncomplimentary names, grabbed Mad Dog’s urn, hopped on her motorcycle, raced down to the bar, and began flinging his ashes all over the place.

The bar owner, apparently not thrilled by the re-appearance of Mad Dog or his sister, called the cops.  But by the time they arrived, sister was long gone, and the bar owner was in the process of sweeping an accumulated portion of Mad Dog (along with a nights worth of cigarette butts and other assorted bar debris) in the general direction of the sidewalk gutter.  The cops told him to stop sweeping while they consulted with the Watch Commander.

Approximately one hour later, one of my CSI partners and I re-responded to the bar, where we found two grinning motor officers, and a thoroughly annoyed bar owner with a broom in hand standing next to a small pile of ashes and assorted debris.

Figuring the motor officers would probably snitch on us if we simply told the bar owner to keep on sweeping, we got out a camera, loaded a roll of film, took a couple photos of the ash-and-cigarette-butt pile, and then looked at each other.

Mad Dog hadn’t looked especially sanitary face down in the street, and neither of us figured the cremation process had improved things all that much.  My partner finally pointed out that he was the ID tech and I was the criminalist.  Resigned to my fate, I gloved up, borrowed the broom and a dustpan from the bar owner, knelt down, and carefully swept Mad Dog (and everything else) into a plastic evidence bag while my partner cheerfully took more photos for posterity.

We then returned to the station, went upstairs to the detective bureau where the homicide detectives were awaiting our arrival, held up the bag, and asked what we were supposed to do with Mad Dog now.  After listening to several suggestions that mostly involved one of the detective bureau commodes (you can see how commodes and bars have gotten thoroughly intermixed in my memories), I gave up and called the coroner’s office.  Sure enough, I was told to hang on to Mad Dog until a coroner’s investigator arrived … which wouldn’t be right away.

Poor Mad Dog.  He never did fit real well into anyone’s set of priorities; except, I suppose, for those of a couple of crime scene investigators.

That’s the thing about CSI --- you never really know how you’re going to be spending your day, but it almost never fails to be interesting.

On Collecting Bullets at Seriously Bad Autopsy Scenes:

By the time I was in my second year of crime scene work, I’d attended a lot of autopsies.  Some had been more edgy or unsettling than others; but all things considered, I really hadn’t been overwhelmed by the experiences.

Until the day I got called out to a suspicious death scene at a small house located in a remote region of the San Bernardino County desert.

My boss responded with me to the scene.  It was unusual for him to be going out on ‘routine’ investigations like this; but I was still learning and he liked to teach ‘hands-on’.  So I didn’t think much about it until we got to the house and discovered that the two detectives and the first responding officer were standing by their vehicles some considerable distance away.

The reason why quickly became obvious.  The victim --- whoever he was --- had apparently died at least a couple of weeks earlier while lying in bed.  And he’d stayed there, baking away in the mostly air-tight cabin, until a neighbor happened by.

To say that my sensory systems were overwhelmed by the sight and smell barely describes the situation.  I was in the process of seriously reconsidering my choice of professions when I learned that the autopsy --- out of necessity --- would be performed on the victim’s bed, because he couldn’t be moved.  At least not intact, as the arriving pathologist cheerfully put it.

Oh yeah, the pathologist.  Interesting man.  More about him in a moment.

A few very long minutes later, four of us were standing around the most horrific excuse for a body I’d ever seen.  My boss and the homicide sergeant were standing at the end of the bed, examining the body while smoking green cigars.  The pathologist was on the far side of the bed and I was as far back as I could reasonably be on the other side --- wearing an old military gas mask, a jump suit and thick gloves --- and trying not to examine the body.  Then I realized the pathologist --- sans mask or cigar, and seemingly oblivious of the monstrous task awaiting his attention --- was staring at me.

”You okay?” he inquired, cocking his head.

I think I nodded.  I don’t really remember.

”Good.”  The pathologist smiled cheerfully.  “This will be an interesting one.  You ought to learn something.”  Then he got to work: probing, cutting, humming, muttering, and intermittently telling jokes in an off-handed way, as if to keep himself --- and his audience --- entertained while his hands and eyes and brain figured out the problem.

Many of the jokes were funny, and kept both my boss and the homicide sergeant chuckling --- and occasionally laughing --- in appreciation.

One was very funny, and, before I could catch myself, I laughed too --- which caused the seal on my gas mask to break.

I lunged away from the bed, dropped to my knees, and barely got the mask off in time before heaving my guts out in the corner of the bedroom.

I was told later, by the homicide sergeant, that the pathologist glanced over at my hunched form, smiled, said: “I told him he’d learn something on this one,” and then went back to work.

A couple of minutes later, my sympathetic boss helped me up and led me outside where the two detectives with a hose helped me wash my face, mouth and jump suit.  I took one look at the decidedly unwashed mask and gloves lying on the ground, shook my head, and accepted on of my boss’s green cigars.

Back in the room, and only moderately light-headed, I remember thinking that the smell might have moderated a bit by the relatively-less-foul odor of the cigar I was trying to smoke.  As I approached the bed, the pathologist looked up.

”Back again?” he asked.

I’m pretty sure I nodded this time.

”Good,” he said.  “Hold out your hand.”

I remember blinking, not quite comprehending the words.

”Hold out your hand,” he repeated, staring straight into my eyes.  “Palm up.”

I did so ... and he reached up with his forceps and dropped a gore-smeared bullet into my bare hand.

”The bullet,” he said calmly.  “I assume you want it?”

I remember looking down at the slimy projectile.  As the homicide sergeant later told his detectives, in my presence, my face turned about as green as the cigar I was trying to smoke.

But I didn’t throw up again.  And I did manage to get the bullet into an evidence bag.

Learned something, too, in the process; a couple of things, in fact.

First of all, no gas masks at the bad scenes and autopsies.  Foul green cigars work pretty well, unless you’re not accustomed to smoking.  But a dab or two of Vicks Vaporub™ in the nostrils and around the mouth works even better.  (Sorry, Vicks people, I’m sure that’s not what you were looking for in the way of a promotion, but it is the truth).

And the second thing: always stay gloved up at an autopsy.

You never know when you’re going to run into a helpful pathologist with a dark sense of humor.

On CSI Mistakes --- Arrival at the Crime Scene:

The crime scene investigator arrives at a scene and finds an out-of-the way spot to park his CSI van.  After exiting the van, he walks over to the officers at the scene, determines who’s in charge, and who was the first officer at the scene, acquires whatever basic information is available about the crime, goes back to his van to get his CSI gear, and then goes about his work.

Three hours later, our tired, dirty and extremely irritated crime scene investigator has determined that two apparently masked burglars wearing smooth-soled shoes entered the residence through an unlocked rear door, assaulted the victim (knocking her unconscious), ransacked the house looking for valuables, wore gloves (glove smears are easy to detect), found money and jewelry, exited the residence through the same rear door, ran across a well-manicured lawn to the asphalt road, hopped into their vehicle (which was parked down the street and off the road in nice soft patch of dirt) and took off in a cloud of dust.

The only useful evidence left at the scene:  the tire marks and tread patterns left in the dirt.

Which could have been very useful evidence, if the crime scene investigator hadn’t parked his CSI vehicle in that very same spot.

I’ve managed to do this twice in my CSI career … fortunately at different scenes.  I’d like to think it won’t happen a third time.

On Confusing Scenes … and Being a Little Too Emotionally Detached:

One of the first things we teach new crime scene investigators is the need to remain emotionally detached from all of the jarring images and emotions inherent to a violent crime scene.  The idea is to keep the scene investigators in a calm mental and emotional state so that they can concentrate on their work ... and successfully reconstruct the events of the crime.

But it’s also possible to get a little too emotionally detached, as three of us discovered many years ago at a very unusual and perplexing crime scene.

But before I go into the details, let me remind everyone that it’s easy to discover a great deal about a person --- especially in terms of what he might having been doing to get himself killed --- when you make a thorough search of his residence.

Or, at least, that’s usually the case.  And it’s certainly what I anticipated when our three-man CSI team responded to a homicide scene in which the victim, an apparently single man in his early thirties, had been found by his housekeeper lying face down beside his rumpled and unmade bed.  A single wound to the chest and some small blood splatters suggested that he’d probably sat up in bed, for whatever reason, got shot once with a small-caliber firearm, fell out of the bed, and died there on the floor.

The rest of the house was neat and tidy.  There was no suicide note, no recently-fired gun on the floor, no sign of forced entry, no sign of a hasty exit, and no indication that the house had been searched.

The victim’s business card indicated he was self-employed as a certified public accountant.  File cabinets in his den contained files on a few dozen clients, none of whom leaped out at the homicide detectives as having a criminal record.  Most of the accounts involved income tax preparation and retirement investments.  There was no indication that he was employed by an organized crime group --- or by anyone else --- to hide ill-gotten gains, and no sign of any hidden files; or, at least, none that we could find.

No hidden caches of money, love letters, pornography, or illicit photographs.

Absolutely no sign of any illicit drugs, no tobacco products, and no booze other than a few bottles of imported beer in the refrigerator.

His only ‘vice’ --- if you could call it that --- was an expensive stereo system and an impressive collection of records.

At this point, it really wouldn’t have been much of a surprise to find a monk’s robe in the victim’s closet, but no such luck.

According to the detectives, his neighbors had heard nothing, saw no-one, and couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone would want to kill or even threaten him.

A more detailed search of his desk and briefcase revealed the name, address and phone number of a ‘girl friend’ who, when contacted, turned out to be much more of a ‘casual friend’ who hadn’t heard from the victim in a while, but hadn’t been concerned because “that was the way he was.”  She was saddened to hear of our victim’s demise; but wasn’t exactly broken-hearted, and claimed to have no idea if he was straight, gay, or celibate … and really didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

An examination of his savings and checkbook revealed modest amounts in both --- plenty to live on, but not extravagantly.  And a quick scan through his last few months of cancelled checks showed nothing but routine purchases of groceries, gasoline and office supplies.

We made another check of the walls and windows, on the off-chance that the explanation turned out to be a randomly fired ‘magic’ bullet that just happened to rip through the victim’s house just as he was getting up to get a drink or go to the bathroom; but, again, no such luck.

A little while later, three extremely frustrated crime scene investigators --- an ID technician, a crime scene photographer and myself --- found ourselves sitting on the victim’s bed, comparing notes, and drawing a complete blank.  That was when one of us looked down (I think it was me) and realized we all had our feet propped up on the body as if it were an ottoman stool.

I’m always telling students, during my CSI lectures, that crime scene investigators quickly learn to ‘put up blinders’ around their emotions, mostly for mental health reasons, and that the body at a crime scene rapidly becomes ‘just another piece of furniture’; but I was always speaking figuratively … or, at least, I thought I was.

As it turned out, converting a mysterious victim into a handy prop for our tired legs was a little much, even for a trio of hardened investigators.  Embarrassed, we looked around to see if any of the detectives had noticed our illicit act, quickly got up, brushed the body off, and went back to our search.

I don’t think it really bothered us that we’d had our feet up on the victim’s body.  After all, we’d long since stopped thinking of him as a living and breathing human being.  But leaving shoeprints on the back of his clean, white T-shirt wasn’t very professional on our part … and would have been very difficult to explain in court!

On CSI Mistakes – and Taking the Easy Way Out:

The dumped-body scenes are often the most confounding ones to work, mostly due to the lack of evidence.  In the classic body-dump, the suspect will drive a van out to a poorly lit and rarely used road in the middle of the night, toss the body out (on the road or in an adjacent field) and then drive away.  When the crime scene investigators arrive, they find a body with no identification, no tire tracks, no footprints … and, essentially, no crime scene.  The only real hope is to either quickly ID the victim, or to find something on the body that leads back to the actual crime scene.

I responded to such a situation many years back in which the fully clothed body of a young male was lying face down in a field a few feet from an asphalt road.  No footprints, no tire tracks, and nothing in the way of a wallet or other identification materials.

We searched the field around the body in a radius of about thirty feet, in the hopes of finding some running-away shoe prints, but no luck.  The only sign of anything that even vaguely looked like evidence was a bunch of litter --- mostly fast food wrappers and bags, most visibly old and sun-bleached --- scattered along a stretch of chain link fence about fifty feet from the body.

It looked as if the litter had been there a while, probably blown against the fence by the strong off-shore winds, so I decided not to go through the considerable effort of documenting what would probably amount to little more than some civic-duty trash collecting.  Instead, I followed the coroner’s investigator back to the morgue and put my efforts into a futile search of the victim’s clothing and body.

A few weeks later, the homicide investigators had a suspect.  I responded to his residence, walked up his driveway with CSI kit in hand, glanced casually over at the old station wagon parked in the driveway, and stopped dead in my tracks.

The back of the station wagon was filled with dozens of visibly old, sun-bleached fast food wrappers and bags.

It didn’t take long to figure out that the suspect was a real fan of fast food, but not especially interested in trash disposal.  After consuming a take-out meal, he’d simply toss the wrappers and bags over his shoulder with his greasy, latent-print-producing fingers, and then go back to whatever he was doing.  The inside of his house looked a lot like the inside of his car.

After assisting the detectives in a search of the suspect’s residence, I quickly drove back to the dump-site … and discovered, to no great surprise, that the wind (or possibly some more-civic-minded resident) had removed all of the bags and wrappers from the fence line.

In retrospect, I’ve decided that CSI vans ought to be equipped with nice thick pieces of wrestling mat glued to the rear panel doors.  They would give frustrated crime scene investigators a handy (and relatively soft) spot to pound their foreheads against.

On Explosives --- and Delivery to the Crime Lab:

It’s a perfectly clear and understandable directive; or at least I think so.

Eleven simple words:  Do not bring explosives or explosive devices to the crime lab.

One would assume nothing more needed to be said on the subject, other than perhaps:

Don’t … ever … even … think … about … doing … that … period.

But, sure enough, I was in the lab one day when the Watch Commander called.  He wanted to let me know that a CSI officer had called the Station to advise everyone he was transporting a liquid suspected of being nitroglycerin to the lab for confirming analysis.

”Tell him to stop right where he is,” I replied emphatically, “and do not drive to the station.”

”Already did.  Told him I shoot him myself if he drove in here with that shit,” The Watch Commander responded. “He’s parked, waiting for your instructions.”

It’s always reassuring to know that Watch Commander’s are selected as much for their common sense as for their patrol and investigative cop skills.

So, I walked down to Command & Control, and asked the dispatcher to connect me with the parked CSI Officer.  She did so.

”Hi, this is Goddard,” I said (I never was much for radio protocol).  “Where are you, right now?

”I’m heading eastbound on …”

”What?  You’re driving?!

”I’m just going over to an open field where we can meet …”

At this point, I heard a distinct clattering sound coming over the radio.

”What’s that noise?” I demanded.

”The railroad tracks.  Like I said, I’m heading eastbound on …

I remember being stunned and disbelieving for a moment.  ”Forget the open field,” I finally said.  “Whatever you’ve got isn’t nitroglycerin.  Come on in.”

As a forensic scientist, you try to be as helpful as you can; but some days are definitely more unnerving than others.

On taste-testing illicit drugs at a crime scene … and other dumb things:

I still see it on TV, every now and then, and cringe accordingly; but I hope everyone out there understands that only a truly idiotic investigator would go to the effort of putting on protective clothing to isolate himself from hazardous exposures at a crime scene … and then actually stick his finger into a sample of illicit drugs and conduct a taste test.

These drugs are synthesized (‘cooked’ is a far better description) in rarely or poorly washed glassware, by people with a bare minimum of chemistry training, in crude facilities where the idea of an OSHA inspection would cause blank stares, and using chemicals of questionable origin and purity.  And then they’re ‘cut’ (diluted) by even less technically competent people whose primary interest is in making a lot of money quickly, and who probably figure that any white-colored powder (the cheaper the better) ought to work just fine as a cutting agent.

The crime scene investigators who work illicit drug labs do so wearing protective equipment that wouldn’t look out of place in a lab dealing with ebola and other seriously deadly diseases.  And the chemicals they take out of these labs are all packed in hazardous waste containers, which ought to be another useful clue.

If you ever get the chance, ask one of these investigators if he would ever take off his gloves, stick a bare finger in a sample of illicit drugs, and then put that finger in his mouths.  As you do so, carefully observe the expression on his face.  It ought to be memorable.

Oh, and as to what I assume would be the obvious follow-up question: isn’t it equally foolish for people to be intentionally snorting, ingesting or injecting illicit drugs made in these horror-house underground labs?  Yes, of course it is, but I thought that was well understood.

Let’s move on to a more cheerful topic ...

On CSI Mistakes – the ones you’ll never forget or repeat:
 
This one started out with a thoughtless mistake made by the victim, a woman we might charitably describe as being extremely tough and just a tad domineering.  She was married to a fellow who was exactly the opposite.  Accordingly, the household chores were performed mostly by the husband, but never in a manner satisfactory to the wife --- who tended to be a little overbearing in correcting said husband’s errors.

All of the above was relayed to me by the husband who, as he explained, had only one emotional outlet for his frustrations in life: target shooting with a .22-caliber pistol.

And yes, this is definitely an example of what us authors call ‘fore-shadowing’.

Anyway, on this fateful day, the husband was endeavoring to vacuum the living room carpet when his wife yanked the vacuum out of his hand and proceeded to berate him while demonstrating how the work should be done.  This was, apparently, the final straw.  He walked into their bedroom, came back out and showed her his pistol … whereupon she laughed and made some derogatory remark on his ability to shoot being on par with his ability to vacuum and --- I gather --- a few other things.  This was her fatal mistake.

According to the husband’s reenactment, the first round went through the vacuum handle and caught the wife square in the stomach.  The next six rounds struck left elbow, right elbow, left knee, right knee, center of forehead, and center of chest.  The neat hole punched through the vacuum cleaner handle, the dead-on wounds, and the stunned look frozen on the wife’s face, bore witness to this reenactment.

The husband then called the police, reported the shooting, walked out on the side porch, placed the pistol next to him on the cement steps, and waited for the police to arrive.

When they did, the two officers ran up to him and asked him if he knew where the shooting occurred.  He pointed inside, they ran inside, apparently ran around for a couple of minutes looking for the suspect, came back outside, and saw the pistol.

Keeping in mind that the husband was, without question, a better shot than the vast majority of the police officers on our department, one can only imagine what ran though these responding officer’s minds at this point.

By the time we (the CSI team) arrived, the husband had made tea and coffee for everyone at the scene, and was busy re-enacting exactly what he had done, step by step, in between apologizing to everyone for the inconvenience he’d caused.

And yes, we all knew better than to get emotionally involved with the suspects or victims; but he really was a nice guy (apart from a certain self-control issue), and the wife still looked tough enough to get back up on her feet and go after him at any moment, so you can see how remaining rigorously neutral can be a tough thing to do at times.

And besides, the guy was confessing to the entire thing over and over again, in between the reenactments.  Slam-dunk.  We knew this case wasn’t going to trial, but still we had to collect the evidence.

I was in the final stages of casually documenting and collecting the ejected cartridge casings (which is to say, one at a time, rather than going to all the extra effort of laying all the evidence location tags out first, as I should have done), and had just finished recording the presence of a casing lying in a partially-open shoebox when the coroner’s investigator announced that the autopsy would be performed right away … which meant one of us had to go to the morgue.  I volunteered, handed my evidence list and collected evidence items over to my partner, and then headed out to my car, not realizing I hadn’t noted the shoebox cartridge casing on my evidence list.

After photographing the autopsy, and collecting all the recovered bullets, I returned to the lab and helped my partner package and tag all of the collected items which we immediately put into storage without bothering to do a case review.  Like I said, this case wasn’t going to court; on to more pressing things.

Approximately six months later, I received a subpoena to appear at the trial of said husband; who, in the meantime, had acquired himself a lawyer, and now was of the opinion that he’d forgotten to tell us something during the re-enactment: namely that after suffering all of the abuse over all those years, he’d finally snapped and started shooting wildly --- the sad result being that he’d accidentally hit his wife several times.

Okay, everybody’s entitled to a defense; and this was a pretty innovative one, all things considered.

But I still didn’t take the case seriously, so I didn’t do what I should have done (which was review all of my evidence and notes carefully) before arriving in court, getting up on the stand, raising my right hand, promising to tell the truth, and then proceeding to answer the prosecutor’s and defense attorney’s questions.

During this entire time, I never realized that the number of bullets I collected from the autopsy (7) and the number of expended cartridge cases in my notes (7) didn’t quite match the number of cartridge cases on my evidence list (6) or the number of cartridge-containing evidence packages on the witness box ledge in front of me (also 6).  Not, that is, until the defense attorney ask me to describe to the jury where I’d found each of the cartridge cases.

I got to the ‘shoebox’ casing listed in my notes, looked around for it on the ledge and then --- with some understandable confusion --- at my evidence list, blinked in shock, and then looked up to see the defense attorney holding what appeared to be an expended .22 casing in a small plastic bag … and, of course, smiling sympathetically.

I probably closed my eyes for a brief moment at this point, and maybe even sighed, in anticipation of the mental pain that was about to follow; but I don’t really remember doing so.

So I started to explain how I’d found the cartridge casing in the shoebox, and recorded the discovery in my notes, but then got called away to the autopsy before … when the defense attorney politely interrupted.

”Oh,” he said, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out another bagged cartridge case, “you mean this one?”

As a good attorney should, he’d gone back to the scene with his client and made his own search.  And, in doing so, not only found the casing I’d left behind but (apparently) another one we’d missed.

For the next few painful minutes, about every third question from the defense attorney was some variation of “Tell me, Mr. Goddard, do you ever make mistakes?” until the judge either got tired of it, or decided I’d suffered enough –-- which was certainly true as far as I was concerned.

Ironically, I got the impression the husband, bless his dear soul, felt that way too.