CSI:Case Study

CSI:Miami
Golden Parachute

A company plane crashes into a swampy area in the everglades. From the flight info they knew that there were two pilots and six passengers on the plane. They found one pilot dead. What they started doing was bagging evidence and putting markers where they found things. They had to work quickly as the water moved at four feet per hour. Initially they thought that the pilot had been shot because of a wound in the upper torso. They found a empty briefcase with the initials CMC on it.

They found a survivor with no seat belt friction burns (which meant he was out of his seat at the time of the crash). One person was also found a long way from where the plane was. She was the only female onboard and also had no seat belt marks.
When examining her body they used camera zoom to look at the wounds on her hands. They found out that the suitcase was hers by interviewing her mam who confirmed her name was Christina.

The company using the plane was in financial trouble and where flying to Washington to explain why. When they examined the plane door that had opened mid flight they realised that the door pins had been tampered with. They interviewed the engineer who admitted usind old parts and filing them to make them fit. The plane had only reached four thousand feet which meant the plane was too low and there was not enough pressure to make the door open itself. That means the door must have been opened from the inside.

Mr Sommer the owner of their company and only survivor regained conciousness and was interviewed and asked for a fingerprint and DNA sample. He claimed that Christina had jumped out of the plane but he said he didn't hear a gun shot.

They found black boxes that had been stolen from the crash site by alligator poachers. When examining the voice recorder it showed there were seventeen seconds between the door opening and Christina falling. They searched her flat but found no evidence of her trying to commit suicide.

When they examined the wound opening on the pilot they found that he hadn't been shot but a rivet had popped out of the aeroplane and hit him in the chest. They also found that one of Christina's red shoes had hit the engine and blown it up. They then re-enacted the scenario and found that the fire extinguisher was not in place. They found the marks on her hand were from the fire extinguisher. They found Mr Sommer fingerprints on the fire extinguisher. He had used the fire extinguisher to bash Christina's hand so she lost grip and fell out of the plane.

They had tracked down Mr Sommer but he had hung himself. Christina had posted a report that morning telling the truth about the false financial reporting of the company.

CSI:Microscopes

CSI Forensics team use microscopes to look at small objects that have been left behind at a crime scene for example a ring or coin. They take these things back to their work place and examine them under the microscopes for traces of blood or hair.

There are many different types of microscopes for different uses. For example the ones we use at school only have a small magnifaction rate but other electronic ones have a much higher magnifiction rate going up to about 10000.

CSI:Chromatography

CSI use chromatography to find out what type of pen a letter or note as written with. For example if you were given a letter with three possible pens it could of been written with nowadays it would just be tested in a machine. But before machines they had to do it the long way.

What you would do is take ink from the letter and put it on a strip of paper. Then put a tiny bit of water in a beaker and wait to see what pattern it left. After this you would draw a line 2 cm from the bottom of a strip of paper. Put three equally spaced crosses on the line then put a small dot from each pen on the crosses. You would get another beaker and fill it bellow the ink line with water and then wait to the pattern the each pen left. You would then match the ink from the letter and the ink from the pen up to find which pen it was wrote with.

CSI:DNA Fingerprinting

The letters DNA stand for Deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA Fingerprinting was discovered by Proffesor Sir I Geoffries. If you have a cell inside that cell is a neacleus and inside the neacleus is the genetic material. This is an enourmous long ,thin shape and that varies a little between each person.



It is a like a book written with four different letters of the alphabet and each human body is made up of six thousand million of them. If we were reading through this book and we could translate it. For example if it said Mary had a little lamb and one of these regions says Mary had a lllllllittle lamb there is a different pattern. These stutters vary in person to person and this is accidentally how he found out about DNA fingerprinting.

CSI:Blood Types

Blood is made of a liquid (plasma) this makes up 55% of blood in your body.

Today blood types do not help forensic scientists. It used to but when DNA anaylas came along in the 1980's it wasn't needed. Karl Landsteiner won the nobel prize for his discovery of blood type in 1901.

These are the different blood types.

Blood stains are needed in CSI to get the DNA composition of the blood. Another reason is blood stains leave a pattern and this can be very important in a crime scene as to what happened. For example how many blows someone had and in what direction. What movement the victim had during the crime.

CSI:How they do fingerprints

Our fingers have friction ridges these are what help us grab hold of objects without them slipping away. They also have another purpose, for CSI, that is to get fingerprints(Info :no two fingerprints are the same). If we touched some ink and then put our finger on a peice of paper we would see theses friction Ridges.

There are alot of fingerprint patterns these are some of them:

The Arch ,The Loop ,The Whrorl

The history of fingerprinting started in 1880 by an english man named Henry Fauld. His system replaced body-measurement system called anthropometry. A couple of years years later another englishman named Francis published a very well known text book called 'fingerprints' were he talked about the different fingerprint patterns and hoe they were used to trace peoples identity.

The use of fingerprinting has helped CSI to catch crimals for example a young boy had left his fibgerprint on a gun that was fired from the top of a school building thre is also James Earl Ray who left his finderprint on the weopan that he used to kill Martin Luther King.

Fingerprinting is the most important tool in CSI.

CSI:Crime Scene Investigation

This is my blog about the Forensic Science Service.
These are people who help the police to capture criminals.