LIsa Black
Cape Coral, FL
Female, 49
I spent the five happiest years of my life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office I analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now I'm a certified latent print examiner and CSI for a police department in Florida. I also write a series of forensic suspense novels, turning the day job into fiction. My books have been translated into six languages.
We have worksheets or notebooks that we use to make notes at the scene, and we have worksheets that we sometimes use in the lab if we want to. Then the 'official' report, which is usually fairly simple, is typed into our computer system so that everyone in the department can view results or print it out for the attorneys. It will outline everything we did and any results obtained.
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I've had two jobs in forensics and didn't have connections to get either. I didn't get a number of jobs because they were already planning to hire someone's brother-in-law, but I eventually got a position. The procedure is whatever the agency requires and they will all be different, so you need to check out the websites of any agency you would like to apply to. They will usually have a clearly defined process for application.
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I'm sorry, I haven't had any experience with that.
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No, because simply from a news article you have no idea of everything that is going on. The officers might not be (should not be) telling reporters everything they know, in order to weed out truthful and untruthful witnesses. They're also not going to tell reporters (and if they did the reporters wouldn't write it) every last little boring tedious detail of everything they do. And information often gets garbled in translation, from crime scene to cops, from cops to the information officer, from the info officer to the press release, from the press release to the news article, from the neighbor looking over their fence and then talking to the reporter. That's just human.
Lots of time the story I get from Dispatch when they first call me turns out to be a totally different thing when I get there.
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Every agency--police departments, M.E. offices, state police--has their own rules and requirements. The best thing to do is check the websites or contact the agencies where you'd like to work and ask them.
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I don't see why not. I'm sure a coroner's or medical examiner's would love to have a pathologist trained in excavating buried bodies and crime scenes. However if you want to work as a pathologist but also do archaology work for other agencies or take leaves to work on archaeological digs, you'd have to work for an agency that would be okay with you working as a pathologist part time.
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I couldn't tell you the exact chemistry, but it reacts with the iron present in hemoglobin to indicate blood. However it also reacts with other oxidizing agents such as copper and horseradish. Unlike what you see on TV, we don't spray luminol and then use a UV light or some such thing. We make the room as dark as possible, spending a lot of time taping material over windows and door cracks and 'ready' lights, then spray the luminol.or Bluestar. It will glow on its own without any additional equipment, and won't last long. It can be photographed but that's a bit of work. It won't stain or harm anything.
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