Another Forensics Case

It's been a while since I have written about some of my past forensics cases, so I thought I'd share one today.

I recall being called out on a homicide case in which a body had been found dumped in an area under an overpass of one of the highways in San Diego. The man had most likely been murdered at some other location and the body was transported to this site and left there.

Now this is not an unusual occurance, but what I found strange was how many people had gathered on the overpass to watch the police do their work. While we were down below processing the crime scene for evidence, I could not believe that mothers were bringing their young children to watch us work! I recall commenting to the detectives there that this was not an appropriate thing for young children to see and they agreed. But I suppose the curiousity of it all got the better judgement of the parents.

It is necessary to take photos of the crime scene and we did that like we normally would. But to get a good photo of the face of the victim, I had to straddle the body (stepping over him) to get a close up shot. Now this might not be the type of portrait I do today, but it was a necessary one in order to help identify the victim.

Later in the day as we were scouting the area for additional evidence that might have been left there, we found a dead chicken on the side of the road. Most likely, this had nothing to do with the crime scene as it was quite a distance from the scene. I was informed by one of the other evidence technicians that this was a probably a chicken that lost from a cock fight. Cock fighting is illegal and cruel, but it happens. I had never seen anything like this before.

So do I miss taking photos like this crime scene? Actually I do. It is very exciting to work a crime scene. It's "dirty work," but somebody's got to do it. But the satisfaction you feel from having done a good job can't be beat.