Forensics Expert Examines 25 More Crime Scene Investigations From Film & TV | WIRED

[Music] down into the victim hello my name is Matthew Steiner Matt Steiner is a senior crime scene analyst and veteran investigator of over 22 years today I'm breaking down crime scene clips from movies and TV again decomposing body solids in the lamps what else do sue story well she's not local her ears are pierced three times in nurse' Oh glitter nail polish oh I did like is yeah she starts describing the injuries and she does a really good job of describing a contact gunshot wound she then describes a star shape or stellite pattern shape contact entrance wound which is indicative of a contact wound they also say they're gonna flip the body over to make it easier to fingerprint should be easier to print if we turn it over that's true also it is easier to fingerprint the body if you turn the body over if you look at the way they showed the arms they show what's called marbling and then that's like part of the decomposition process where the hemoglobin will break down inside the blood vessels but if we have arms like she had where it was in that stage of marbling we would also see more advanced decomposition in her face in this scene we see that Clarice notices something that was in the photograph that they didn't see normally she's got something in her throat you're taking a close to photograph of something you'll notice more detail on that photograph than you did with your naked eye so this does happen through you city smells you would never see them with anything underneath their nose like that right it's better just to get used to the smell like you'll get used to it and you just won't forget about the smell but if you try to mask it occasionally you'll get a whiff that's gonna break through that vapor rub and it's gonna be worse transient evidence Sherlock in this scene he notices very important details about the transient nature of evidence things that aren't permanent Aries are wet Aries are dry so you get to the crime scene there's a glass on the counter and it's got ice in it it's not gonna stay you know in that form it's gonna melt eventually there's no other way to capture that then to note that and these are all types of transient evidence that we could encounter at a crime scene and that's what Sherlock Holmes is all about it was all about the devil being in the details Arthur Conan Doyle the author of Sherlock was himself a doctor and a scientist and was a great influence on the field of forensic science most notably he influenced Edmond Locard famous French scientist who's been considered the father of forensic science he came up with this exchange principle that there is a contact between two things two objects a person and a scene seeing in a person as something is transferred there and this is the basic founding principle of forensic science we're looking for what's left behind and this is all inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle bite mark analysis NCIS here's tuckies muscle tissue scan a little 3d magic for clarity and I give you the killer's incisors yeah this is just pure television not reality you wouldn't realize what you're looking at unless you're trained in that sort of software it's not gonna come up with these fun little green boxes like this back at 2090 and National Academy of Sciences came out with a report about the validity of certain fields in forensic science and one of the fields that they questioned was bite mark analysis these matching are like a hundred thousand to one your skin it's not like the molding stuff that you would see at a dentist you know it's not gonna believe a perfect impression it's uneven as many reasons why you you wouldn't be able to leave a perfect impression where you'd match them to someone's teeth like we see in this clip there have been many cases where you would have two different experts two different odontologists that don't agree on the same case so that's why this evidence has been questioned as of late well that's great chipper robot cop Robocop so yeah this is like really cool technology no longer in the not-too-distant future obviously it's not gonna be like this this is a movie but we do use some of those types of technologies that we see there so he's doing some sort of scanning at crime scenes we use a 3d laser scanner and that's a great way to document the scene the geometry of the scene as well as taking imaging of the scene too later on have a first-person perspective of what that scene look like and it's invaluable for reconstructions you could bring in a jury into that scene to show what it looked like first person virtually and just think about for training you know you have all these scenes that now are captured and you can bring other people that weren't there to show them you know how we investigated the scene he then uses the camera imaging of surveillance cameras to do photogrammetry so the positions of the cameras are solved and then we could figure out the position where that car was originally so he then takes those two types of evidence pieces them together and has his reconstruction haunted house crime-scene Criminal Minds the unsub might have sustained injuries we should check local hospitals just in case is the unsub headed disarmed Kim before he could attack her that would have been a lot more work for him yeah the only obstacle this time would have been her husband Brad but the ends I've got the jump on him out in the hallway the unsub's ability say unsub a lot in this clip on something on something else ever did the unsub's evolving unsub I think is unknown subject or unidentified subject in the 22 years of working crime scenes I've never heard another detective use that term the unsub's guys the perfect unsub so you know eventually they take a break from saying unsub and they notice these piles of salt inside of a crime scene so sometimes we do see evidence of people supernatural beliefs and superstitions at a crime scene I've seen piles of salt had a case where they had a cauldron with a human skull with liquid mercury on it whether a crime scene is haunted I've never seen that investigated over 2,000 crime scenes most scenes where someone died of a violent nature and it yet to see a ghost or an apparition crime scene contamination No Country for Old Men I know this name all's I don't understand whether riding a horse to the crime scene it's the same tire tread coming back it's going made about the same time being at the distance from the height of a horse to look down you could be missing things it could be destroying serology it could be destroying footwear impressions could be stepping on bullets and casings and who knows what else Mexican Browns Oh Tommy Lee should be wearing gloves we don't want to touch evidence with bare hands especially not narcotic but you don't believe it no stab wound analysis bluebloods an attacker who's 5 foot 10 would angle more down into the victims sternum the angle on Miss Robbins is more level indicating an attacker who's no more than five foot six it's just complete horseshit by the way so the job of the forensic pathologist is the document wound paths but they would never postulate the height of the attacker five foot six you could be crouched she could be standing tall you could be on the ground you know which would all affect the way that your wounded whether it's going straight in or at an angle even her like her demonstration on Donnie Wahlberg she shows her even herself stabbing downward and stabbing straight it you know the person could jump up and attack them there's so many variables here that they would never estimate a killers height at the depth of penetration is markedly less than typically associated with the upper-body strength of a male so a shorter woman this is completely wrong skin is what offers the greatest resistance not the tissue itself once you breach the skin it's relatively easy to go to a further depth of pathologists would never say that it was a woman over a man they mostly are concerned with the cause and manner of death fingerprinting the return of the pink panther I mean obviously this is a comedy but this is obviously not the right way to do it either besides the excessive amount of fingerprint powder and then his magnifying glass failing and falling onto the events and then following onto the evidence introducing DNA to the evidence these are all wrong things he pulled himself across the floor of course he would need a very slippery floor to do that therefore the wax duex I have to admit I have fallen down at a crime scene on several occasions my co-workers have fallen down at crime scenes even though he's not wearing personal protective equipment we do and the bottoms of the feet on those personal protective equipment those Tyvek suits can be very slick and you can't fall down are you all right all right examining the wigs smelling of evidence the closer guy drinks passes out in the hot tub his body temperature rises his liver explodes his robe soaking wet she's smelling evidence which is a good way to document the transient type of evidence we'll be there chlorine so that smell may be gone hours later days later what I don't like is that you smashed her face into the towel that's a contamination issue and it's gross I mean you don't know what's on that towel to begin with it you know it could have been feces that could have been urine and now that's all over your face lieutenant Flynn could you do the honors the mower please wait someone and you just took DNA from the towel well that could have been on a towel and then put that onto the toupee so - no nose right there I need this hair II threw aside beef in about two shakes of a lamb's tail shaking of that you pay is a no-no there could be DNA on there and by you shaking it you could be losing that and plus you're contaminating somebody else by I'm getting hit in the face but whatever it was on that toupee thank you thank you death investigation Sherlock suicide is pretty common among city boys we don't know that it was suicide come on the door was locked from the inside you had to climb down the balcony so anything we actually have a homicide that's being posed as a suicide you've got a solution that you like but you're choosing to ignore anything you see that doesn't comply with it I like what Sherlock says here that you're just taking some of the evidence and basing your theories on that and ignoring all the other evidence so in this case he uses deductive reasoning to come up with the handedness of our victim like the rooms on the right side of his head and thank who was left-handed was quite a bit of contortion left-handed normally the easiest way to figure out the handedness of somebody is just asking you know the family friends co-workers to somebody they would know whether he was left-handed or not coffee table on the left-hand side coffee mug handle pointing to the left we do I then want to look at other evidence that could be supporting that it's a homicide not a suicide some people are ambidextrous some people have crossed dominance well they prefer to do certain actions with certain hands there are plenty people that are left-handed that shoot guns with their right hand he's also ignoring that fact you're finally asking the right questions tasting evidence bones bones bones get it what are you doing yeah yuck you would never want to put evidence in your mouth so you don't lick bones who licks bones it's been in Russia human forensic anthropologist just by looking at it we know that it was human by its shape and by knowing what that looks like versus a dog bone versus a chicken bone burned body CSI Miami traces of hydrocarbon we use the mini ready to detect the hydrocarbons he left behind and find his point of order it's great idea we see them using a mini Ray which is a version of the multi ray which is a BOC detector to detect hydrocarbons she's kind of waving it around like a divining rod and that's not the proper way to use it first off you want to be closer to the surface that you suspect the accelerant to be on so she have to be lower to the ground to really detect anything significant this is definitely our point of origin I think it was an excuse for them to use some cool tech like the mini ray but I mean a real-life crime scene you would do a search and in that search you would have found a large burn pool in the parking lot illegal DNA collection Luther so that's a really interesting yet very illegal way to get DNA from somebody the fruits of the poisonous tree refers to evidence that's obtained illegally the metaphor is that the tree being the source of the evidence if that is tainted anything that comes from the way that you collect that evidence is also tainted to the fruit most commonly we'll get DNA from somebody through consent or a court order another way to get DNA from somebody is through what's called an abandonment sample this is where investigators will collect things that are discarded by a suspect that could be a can of soda a cigarette butt that was willingly left behind sometimes this takes a lot of work sometimes investigators have to follow somebody around for weeks at a time waiting for them to spin on the sidewalk or to drop some trash even though it may be tempting to get evidence in this way you don't want to lose that case by doing something stupid like collecting evidence in a legal way know exactly what that feels like returning to the crime scene red dragon [Music] where's the dog no one heard barking there's nothing about in the case file [Music] so what I really like about this is that yeah they show a crime scene that's properly safeguarded even on the door they have a door seal that door has a broken window that they have put a piece of cardboard and secured that cardboard with evidence tape this is what you would want to see when you went to a crime scene especially we went back we want to make sure you're the one that's breaking the seal that door to you know make sure that there's continuity inside the crime scene it that if you collect evidence now that it wasn't placed by somebody else coming into the scene afterwards the one little misstep I see is that nothing is processed for fingerprints that whole path of him going up the stairs those walls would be covered with fingerprint powder [Music] we see here is you know the set designers attempt at creating arterial spatter on the wall those are those arcing patterns that we see they don't look very realistic but the mechanism that's used to create them is very difficult to replicate so I understand you know why it doesn't look perfect other patterns that they got right though was those drag marks and that's definitely important types of blessing patterns that we want to look at we want to look at the direction in which those drag patterns are going and we could tell that by the feathering of the blood as it's moving in a certain direction drag the bodies into the master bedroom we see another pattern that's interesting to me on the mirror didn't look like they sampled those bloodstains once it's dried you know we're gonna take a swab of some sort we're gonna hydrate that swab with distilled water and then we're gonna swab as much as that stain as possible or at least a section of it you would see lines through it where the person was sampling I didn't see that here it's possible that it did it but I don't think the children were still in their beds when they were shot which might indicate that he used a silencer that's a possibility but but one of many possibilities we see a lot of times in TVs and movies people using silencers but in real life we rarely see them this is crime scene theory Fargo you shouldn't drink coffee at a crime scene or any sort of beverage really geez here's the second one the biggest contaminant to a crime scene is the people that go into it the investigators themselves get that's a defensive wound at a scene we may act things out the biomechanics of the way things could happen like that or bad or like this we got a shooting these folks drive by there's a high-speed pursuit ends here and then this execution type deal she definitely came to conclusions way too quickly yeah has a lot to take in and she didn't go look at the other victim that was down the road that the trooper let's go take a look at that trooper to figure out sequencing you'd have to look at everything but a more detailed look at it before you just come to a snap decision see something down there chief no I just think I'm gonna Verve suspect line up rook 99 I heard him he was singing along to the music at the bar do you remember what he was singing I think it was that song I want it that way Backstreet Boys I'm familiar number one could you please sing the opening - I want it that way ok you are my father forensic phonetic analysis usually is involved with recorded audio evidence not so much this you know in person audio lineup tell me why most experts will say that you can't uniquely identify someone by their boys this is obviously for comedy purposes number five killed my brother oh my god I forgot about that part fingerprint database person of interest wow what the computer is looking at is different points of identification Wow so if you look at your fingerprints anywhere that your lines your fingerprint come apart they come together create Islands they start they stop these are all points of identification your guys prints were found in half a dozen crime scenes over the years and when they do have a match you know it could be a match to several different possibilities you go down that coda and then the investigator themself has to go through each one and include or exclude who it actually is and then finally any results any sort of identification that's made has to be verified by someone else is independent and objective in the case crime-scene cleanup The Simpsons I've never seen an angel dust for gun-swap goes so wrong normally it would be more than one person that it would be tasked to clean up the scene all right get some paper towels and to clean up and dispose of that biohazard waste you need multiple people as well let me start with this filthy crime scene tape eating at a crime scene and CIS are you eating the crime scene okay first off mom I'm wearing gloves takes people guide you there just in the beginning of this crime scene investigation he may be sitting at a desk that the suspect was at maybe there was important evidence that's there no I'm wearing gloves but even if he's wearing gloves and that's weird to be eating food with wearing gloves like that I guess you could do it no but you still have that you know whatever that grease is from this petition and they're delicious and you're transferring it to that area that you're working in give me some and again that could be an important area that they find out later on that the suspect was that don't leave the whole vibe um we found something too many people in a crime scene hot buzz there are way too many people inside this crime scene I know you wouldn't answer your phone inside the scene you don't want things from your phone to get into the scene and you don't want things from the scene to get into your phone necklace what do you want well I have something important to tell you and I didn't want to do it over the phone this clip shows some good things and some bad things that are wearing not only just the type of suit and gloves that masks on they have eye protection on then simon pegg goes to see and he's not wearing anything they probably would not have allowed simon pegg to enter that scene without wearing personal protective equipment you need I've been transferred I'm moving away for a while well not Jeanine taking money from a crime scene training day that's a quarter million dollars you're holding right there in your hands buy your wife a minivan with that put the kids through college give me that back you know we only checks our cash so yeah LAPD on them right Matt you don't want a piece of this huh all right right I'm with Ethan Hawke on this one it's not worth it yeah it's not worth throwing your life away no one wants to go to jail no large sums of money found at a crime scene it has to be documented and usually it's in the presence of some sort of supervision first time you're not comfortable I'll hold it for you in police departments they're usually some sort of entity that does internal investigations and part of that is doing integrity testing as well don't touch a thing he's testing a theory Ace Ventura pet detective may I tell you what I think happened all righty then roger podacter went out after work he had a few drinks and he came home but he wasn't alone so there's way too many people here when you establish a crime scene you maintain what's called a crime scene log and it tracks everyone that comes into that scene everyone that leaves that scene and unfortunately that includes pet detectives this woman is roger podacter 'he's neighbors she lives across the hall she said she heard a scream is that right man right and even if it was a witness that was inside the scene it's time we want to remove them from the scene you said you had to open the balcony door when you keyed into the room he wouldn't brought to a police facility for an interview what's the point Ventura in this case the neighbor hear something and then East comes up with a theory as to the position of the door during the time of the events no way that neighbor could have heard the doctor scream on the way down with that door shut and then relating that to someone coming afterwards and saying that the door was shut disapproving that it was a suicide the scream she heard came from inside this apartment before he was thrown over the balcony and the murderer closed the door before he left but we will record that and it would probably be a little more professional than singing and screaming and hoping at door opening yes for instance no-win River why would a teenage girl be out here only know what the tracks say okay well that's all we got ya know so you see this one she other toast or no Footwear is probably one of the most overlooked types of evidence at a crime scene the interpretation that jeremy renner does here is he's looking at first off the orientation of the shoe where impressions and he's interpreting first off the direction that's very simple by looking at the way that the heel and toe are oriented and then he's interpreting which sometimes could be a little more harder to discern is that she was running the foot is much deeper than the back she's running this is kind of questionable you know to say that exactly she was running if you're carrying something that also would change the depth of your shoe our impressions and I also could do with the density of the snow she ran until she dropped here to the pool blood but you'd have to look at multiple shoe impressions first off it's got to be photographed we'd coat it with several layers of snow print wax this is an aerosolized wax that will spray on snow that has impressions on it and normally that even gives us some more contrast so we may photograph it again and then the last step is to cast it by using some sort of impression casting material dead body in a freezer good fella's [Music] yeah I've had cases where you know it was mafia hits it's funny how sometimes it's like cliche you know the victim was wearing a tracksuit and you know looks just exactly like he would on TV he was frozen so stiff it took them two days to thaw and melt for the autopsy Frankie Carbone would take two days to thaw out before autopsy is it unusual it may even take up to a week depending on how they thaw out the body we've also seen criminals that use this to hide the time of death so one that I could think of offhand is richard kuklinski who is nicknamed The Iceman killer he would store his dead bodies the people that he killed that he murdered that he assassinated in an industrial freezer and then dumped them at later periods of time in different areas to confuse the police at a time of death so having bodies frozen solid isn't rare actually it happens quite a bit in the colder States here in America another hair analysis seen Castle long blonde hair this could have come from one of the women at the bachelorette party that's what I thought until I had it tested came back positive for testosterone and anabolic steroids your blondie is a man couldn't it be that it's a woman that's taking testosterone and anabolic steroids and that would show up in her hair at one time they would analyze hair and it would say gender they would say race they would even match a hair from a crime scene to a suspect today they no longer do those things they'll take a hair and they'll analyze it for suitability for DNA other things they could tell about a hair is whether it's chemically treated whether it was burned how it was removed a stage of development that hair is in the somatic origin of the hair whether it came from your head from your eyelash from your pubic hair those are things that can tell but not whether it's a man or a woman so the public's perception on what forensics is and what crime-scene investigators do is often built on these types of shows this attention that the public now has is fascination that they have with true crime and with crime scene type of shows is good because when people go in to testify to cases they have a touchstone they have to know something about this sort of evidence because they like these shows I don't expect how I would to always get it right but it's interesting to see it when they get it wrong if you're enjoying technique critiques subscribe to Wired

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Rating: 4.9557204 out of 5

Keywords: forensics expert, csi, crime scene investigation, crime scenes, forensics expert examines, forensics expert breaks down, forensics expert csi, forensics expert silence of the lambs, forensics technique critique, forensics, matthew steiner, matthew steiner technique critique, matthew steiner csi, matthew steiner crime scenes, crime scene reaction, forensics expert reacts, forensics expert reaction, ncis reaction, forensics ncis, forensics break down, wired

Id: xJcNa2-jprs

Length: 26min 21sec (1581 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019