forensic toxicology

Learn more about Toxicology at the CSI Experience: http://forensics.rice.edu/index.html

1. Enter "Case 1: Rookie Training" (you can play as a guest)
2. Start your training by going to the toxicology lab. Make sure that you choose "Learn About the Lab."
3. Work your way through identifying which 3 fluids do toxicologists typically test, were do they get them from, what they use when a body is too decomposed, why they do more than one test, what machines they use, and most importantly which drug was the victim on when he crashed his car
4. Detail your experiences in a new post in your journal

Forensic Toxicologists usually take 2 mL of vitreous humor, the clear fluid found behind the eyeball that gives the eye its shape. 30 mL of blood for testing and comparative purposes, 30mL of urine to compare to the other two fluids to check for  drugs of any sort, because if one fluid has a positive result then the other two should have the same positive. 

When a body is too badly decomposed, they collect the maggots that eat lunch on the dead body. They collect them because if you open them up, you can get the persons dna in the maggots stomach and they will tell you how long the person has been dead for. 

they use a GC i think it was to detect if there was any blood alcohol in the body, an ELISA test for certain drugs-amphetamine, barbiturates, opiates, and others. The drug was C10H13NO- Methcathinone, also known as 'cat'. 

I like this, it gave me a 'real hands on feel' of what the different machines do and how to collect the evidence to use to get the desired result, in this case the who's and what's, that made this person wreck his car. It was quite interesting!

directionality and angle of impact

Here is some of my blood :) The spot on the paper is at a 90 degree angle, the spot under the paper is at a walking/running angle

The measurement of the 90 degree angle is 7mm long and 7mm wide
the measurement of the other droplet is 5mm long and 6 mm wide

Post smash drop is 9mm wide and 10 mm long

The sin A of 90 degree is
7mm /7mm =1

sin of pre smashed blood is 6mm/5mm=1.2

sin of post smashed is 9mm/10mm=.9

Impact spatter- bloodstain pattern produced when an object makes forceful contact with a source of blood, projecting droplets of blood outward from the source

when you are standing directly up and down, the force of gravity will bring the droplet directly straight down, when you run or walk, the droplets follow the path of gravity. Its like one of the laws of gravity, an object in motion will stay in motion (object in this case being blood), an object at rest will stay at rest (standing perpendicular blood drops)

footprint casting

Footprint near the entry point of the house's crime scene.

Here is the cast drying in my little cast pen :)

The finished evidence of the shoe print. You can see texture and ridges, looks like this person has excessive pressure on the right side of the print which would most likely make this a right shoe print.


This was actually harder than I thought. 1 bag and 3 casts later, I have a decent impression. The first two casts I made dried and I went to get them up, one broke in half and the other broke and crumbled into 100 little pieces. It was pretty interesting making the cast, I find that cotton swabs/q-tips work really well for taking the dirt off, as you can see.

firearms

Some firearms considerations that need to be thought of in firearms investigations are

1)      If the gun is still loaded

2)      Distance from which the weapon was fired

3)      Type of gun used/caliber

4)      Powder patterns

5)      Primer residue on hands/clothes

6)      Check to see if the serial number if ground off

In a firearms investigation, a criminalist will be looking for casings, a gun (if one is there to find), stippling and/or tattooing on the person’s body, to determine range, this one might sound odd, but burnt skin; if the shooter was a novice with a gun and didn’t know how to properly hold the gun, trajectory height (tells the height of the person).

The significance of structural variations and irregularities is important to a case. It is like an individual tool or whatever used, it is like their fingerprints, unique to each tool because some may have more wear on them than others.  For instance, if a crime scene has a tool mark to pry open a door, and the person who owns the tool uses it every day for their job. It is going to have seriously more damage to it than it would if someone had bought one brand new for this “job”. These would be individual characteristics. If tit was brand new, it would be qualified as class characteristics.

Bullet examination, a criminalist will be looking for such things as striations on the bullet, rifling, number of lands and grooves, presence of grit and rust, weight to determine caliber.

Here is a shotgun shell with distinct markings of rust

crime scene fingerprinting

Printed Prints from the Lamp in the Office

if I had put the printing powder on the walls, the next murder to solve would probably been mine! LOLPrinted hand from the bathroom

Homeowner face cream that will be printed

Print lifted from the office lamp

Homeowner hand prints, Left thumb matches print found on the face cream

retrieved from the bathroom wall of the home 

this one is light and hard to see, it is a match to the left thumb of female homeowner, found in bathroom

I compared all the prints that I collected. There were two matches. One set belonged to the female homeowner, the other set, belonged to an unknown contributor, most likely whoever it was that broke into the house and stole a high priced item, and a few smaller items.

The two prints, from the wall and office, were clearly not the homeowner's as she had very small tiny prints. The prints recovered from those two places were relatively much bigger in comparison to hers. 

In comparing the two unknowns, I noticed they were comparatively the same size, and the same pattern, two tented arches. 

In the homeowner's, I noticed they were also comparatively the same size and they had a different pattern they were both loops. 

I could not find more than that, there were clear prints and the other was partial/smudged and or distorted from the object that it was on.

who done it? mystery game!

Your score  is: 12, Champion detective, like a pro!

Champion detective like a Pro!




I have been doing things like this since I was really young, I used to make crime scenes with evidence and actually used my mom's eye shadow and brushes to dust fingerprints on doorknobs (surprisingly orange worked really well for me!)

My impressions of what actually occurs at a crime scene were exactly as this stimulation game had inferred. The dead body, the clues, the witnesses, the detectives, the Forensic technicians..etc. Because all of this is what actually happens at a scene, sometimes you get two, three, four or more dead bodies, which makes for extra work but, basically the same.

I thought this game was pretty easy, if you know where to look for evidence and you know what to do with the evidence that is collected, If I was taking this class as an elective for say, psychology, yes I would find it more difficult because the proper training is not there, and I would not specifically know what to do with it in different scenarios. 

I would be able to solve the crime personally, because like I said earlier in the post and class, this is what I want to do as a career. I also used to read books on ballistics of guns, pathology, fingerprints, examining a crime scene..these are the kinds of books i would buy with gift cards and take out of the library at school and in my town library.

There is always something new to learn at an active crime scene, I learned that there are always many possible explanations when it comes down to which detective was right about the suspect, my first thought was this was a two person job, almost like the female hired the male, but as I was reading the two different scenarios, I realized that only the male mentions the crowbar, a detail that only the murder would be privy to, because they would have had that knowledge, not an angry girlfriend...

I enjoyed this game alot! It gave me a break from doing the other homework that I am supposed to be doing right now, and it was very constructive!!!

http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/sgc-cms/expositions-exhibitions/detective-investigator/en/index.html

test your knowledge!

Left Hand

Right Hand

Just checking out my fingerprints for this weeks class, and I just noticed I have 2 of the three different types of fingerprints....this is interesting enough!!! Check out your fingers! Are they LOOP, WHORL, or ARCH? I have ARCH and LOOP :)