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.
I’ve never had someone ask for transcripts at an interview, and I think it would be a little unreasonable for them to expect you to have them with you without warning.It will be generally like any other interview. When they ask what experience you have in forensics be sure to mention specific tests and techniques you’ve done, like superglue, crime scene reconstruction, the AFIS system, etc.
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Biology would help with the natural fibers (like cotton or fibers from plants, or hairs from animals like wool) and chemistry helped with analyzing synthetic fibers with polarized light or fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Those last two don't work on natural fibers because they're not consistent all the way through like a synthetic fiber, that comes out of a machine.
Fiber analysis was usually only examined in cases of stabbing, strangling or bludgeoning, where there had to be close physical contact between victim and suspect. (A gunshot didn't mean there had to be contact.) It was only a small part of my days. Very little is done any more because you can only say the fibers are consistent with having come from a particular sample, you can't say they did, as in DNA or fingerprints. You can't even give a statistic for how likely it would be to find a particular fiber unless it came from the suspect, etc., because we can't know how many items with that fiber are in the environment.
Only collection would be done in the field, to do anything more you would need the microscopes and the equipment at the lab.
Hope that helps!
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Sure, email me at lisa-black@live.com.
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The 'forensics industry' encompasses at least twenty different areas, from pathology to accounting, so any certifications would be administered by that disciplines organizing body. Fingerprints, for example, are regulated through the International Association for Identification. Death Investigators have their own organization. Whether or not these certifications are required for your job is up to the agency (such as your city police department or a county medical examiner's office) hiring you for that job.
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It depends on what you're talking about--was what contaminated with what? Lots of things can be contaminated with things without results being affected. Take blood, you can mix blood with paint or dirt or maybe oil or types of soap and that won't affect the DNA profile. If you mix it with bleach or other blood, it will. So if you had, say, heroin, and it gets mixed with fingerprint powder or cotton fibers, it's still going to test as heroin. If you mix it with cocaine, maybe it won't. (Controlled substances are not my field.) So 'contamination' is not a one-size fits-all word.
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If you want to be a pathologist you will have to be a doctor, and will need to go to med school. So you are looking for a pre-med program. Best of luck!
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Yes. I don’t know if it’s actually from the poop or from the skin cells sloughed off on it, but you can.
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