Quotes About Forensics

Her conception of the role of the medical examiner was to speak for the dead to help the living.

pole. Denise followed, her eyes rapidly exploring the interior which was completely tiled; walls, ceiling and floor. The tiles had once been white; now they were an indeterminate gray. The room was thirty feet long and twenty feet wide. Parked in rows on each side were old wooden carts with wheels the size of those on a bicycle. Down the center of the room was an open lane. Each cart supported a shrouded corpse.

I have a lab filled with millions of dollars' worth of equipment, and I can tell you none of it works as well as a good dog's nose. I've witnessed canines hitting on hundred-year-old remains. What they even smell, none of us can tell you. At that point, there's no organic matter left; the bone is little more than a dried sponge. But the dogs always know.

A flaky skin was particularly bad if you were a criminal, she had read, as it meant that you left a great deal of DNA at the scene of the crime. That had amused her. That would teach any flaky-skinned housebreakers to burgle people's houses. "You really need to do something about your skin," the police might say to such people when they arrested them.

The thing is that quite a few of my books have ended up as they are because of conversations I've had over the years with forensic scientists.

'Forensic Files' is big in our house.

I constantly remind people that crime isn't solved by technology; it's solved by people.

In the forensics novels the contents of a victim's pockets on the night of her death Say Something about her character. My Ford's Theatre ticket stub and Jimmy Carter key chain say that I am the corniest, goody-goody person in town. Luckily, I survived the evening unscathed so no one will ever find out about that losery Jimmy Carter key chain.

People believe that forensics these days is the answer to everything and because we believe so ardently that forensics can lead us to the criminal we're also a bit nonplussed when someone gets in there and manipulates forensics to their advantage.

If I see one more forensics show, I'm gonna throw up.

I don't know if I'd call myself a prodigy, but I was a big forensics competitor in high school, and then during college I spent some time working at speech and debate camps as a coach.

A secretor is somebody whose blood type appears in his or her body fluids as well as in the blood itself—handy if all you've got is a sweaty shirt or, as in this case, semen. A nonsecretor's blood type can only be ascertained through the blood.

Lying across his chest was a curious weapon, a shotgun with the barrel sawed off a foot in front of the triggers. It was clear that this had been fired at close range and that he had received the whole charge in the face, blowing his head almost to pieces. The triggers had been wired together, so as to make the simultaneous discharge more destructive.

Jazz shook his head. "No. The fingers. Your average murderer doesn't mutilate a body like that. And he especially doesn't take trophies. But it's more than that. It's that he left one behind. He left the middle one behind." "Are you serious?" "Yeah. He literally gave the cops the finger. He's saying, 'Come and get me. Catch me if you can.' That's a serial killer." For

Maigret worked like any other policeman. Like everyone else, he used the amazing tools that men like Bertillon, Reiss and Locard have given the police – anthropometry, the principle of the trace, and so forth – and that have turned detection into forensic science. But what he sought, what he waited and watched out for, was the crack in the wall. In other words, the instant when the human being comes out from behind the opponent.

At first I was queasy I'll never forget the sound of the scalpel cutting a body open. But it was so cool trying to work out how these people died.

It's a truism in policing that witnesses and statements are fine, but nothing beats empirical physical evidence. Actually it isn't a truism because most policemen think the word 'empirical' is something to do with Darth Vader, but it damn well should be.

we collected a representative sample of phones, cameras, and laptops from the SOCOs. Or, more precisely, we pried them out of their reluctant fingers by promising that everything that needed logging or signing would be logged and signed, and that the chain of custody would be maintained yea, even unto the end of days, or the first court appearance—whichever came first.

We should tell forensics that the murder weapon may be archaeological," I said. "Archaeological?" asked Seawoll. "Could be," I said. "Is that your professional opinion?" "Yes.

Larvae can consume an entire human body in a week.

Sheila Lowe is the Kathy Reichs of forensic handwriting—a rip-roaring read.

You don't have to step on a body to carry the smells of death with you on your shoes. For reasons we have just seen, the soil around a corpse is sodden with the liquids of human decay. By analyzing the chemicals in this soil, people like Arpad can tell if a body has been moved from where it decayed. If the unique volatile fatty acids and compounds of human decay aren't there, the body didn't decompose there.

With DNA, the ability to find out a lot more with a lot less has increased our ability for identification.

You can't change your fingerprints. You have only ten of them. And you leave them on everything you touch; they are definitely not a secret.