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 used to analyze dried paint with an FTIR, which I believe would detect lead, but as to what would be better I really don’t know. Sorry I can’t be more help.
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No, you would really need a pathologist for that. Generally, exits tend to be larger than entrances, but it depends on what someone is shot with and where. If the muzzle is very close or in contact with the body, then the entrance will likely be larger than the exit. if the bullet fragments inside, then there might be a small exit. So different factors can affect it. Best of luck to you.
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As far as I know it’s certainly possible to cut the entire ear off, but I would guess it would be difficult to do accidentally or in the heat of battle without causing other injuries to the face. But that’s entirely a guess on my part. I don’t know more than the basics about either Van Gogh or Gaughan or the incident. Sorry I can’t be more help!
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Sure, you can email me at lisa-black@live.com.
What we use the most is a camera, and after that a tape measure (to make crime scene diagrams...99.9% these tell us nothing significant, but there could be that rare exception in terms of court testimony).
What is the most helpful to me is our fingerprint database to identify the unknown prints collected from crime scenes and evidence.
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Server / Bartender
How much more do female servers get tipped?
Certified Nurse Aide
What's it like going into a room in the morning to find someone dead?
School Bus Driver
Why don't school buses have seat belts?
I think that's what I'm doing most of the time when I answer questions on this site. If you look over the previous Q&As you'll probably see a lot of homework questions.
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Being on call and having to leave dinner or get up in the middle of the night to go to a crime scene. And having to schedule vacations and events around whether I can get someone else to cover my call for me.
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The perpetrator could be imitating a scene from the movie “Wedding Crashers” in which they put Visine in a man’s drink to give him diarrhea and vomiting. However Google tells me that’s not what it actually does, it can cause drowsiness and can be dangerous. So the motivation depends on whether the perpetrator knew what the actual effects would be or not.
As far as detecting it, it’s apparently in the imidazole family which includes histidines, so perhaps a chemical lab could detect it or some compenents of it. That would utilize thin layer chromatography and I don’t know how many labs actually do that any more—but I truly have no idea where or how or if a lab could test for it since I don’t have much of a background in chemistry, sorry!
Hope that helps.
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