Table of Contents
.PRAISE FOR Bodies Weve Buried
This wonderful book will take you on a fascinating and sure-footed journey through the real world of crime scene investigation and the real people in it. Bodies Weve Buried is original, informative, and delightfully readable.Patricia Cornwell
A fascinating inside look...The Academys rigorous, hands-on curriculum is not for the faint of heart or the queasy. The same could be said for the books vivid you-are-there descriptions... People looking for an interesting read will enjoy sharing the challenges of the CSI training course and the behind-the-scenes stories that Hallcox and Welch recount. Their enthusiastic and comfortable style welcomes all readers, viewers and nonviewers of CSI alike, into their world.Dr. Fred Bortz, Chicago Sun-Times
Hallcox and Welch take readers inside the worlds top CSI training school for a spooky, but fascinating, look at what they do and how they do it.The Knoxville News-Sentinel
More gruesome than anything on CSI.Giant
It isnt pretty, but exposure to such disturbing sights and smells helps detectives track down the bad guys.Nashville Scene
Shares with readers the gritty reality of forensic work. The authors caution that the actual work is a lot less glamorous than it looks on TV and often involves crawling through the mud or examining putrid corpses. And nothing is as simple as it seems, from photographing crime sceneswhere the details, from film speed to lighting, are crucialto processing evidence, which is selectively sent off to a state lab to be dealt with. Students in the course also pay a visit to the infamous Body Farm, where they examine and analyze decomposing corpses. Given the popularity of CSI and its many imitators, many will find reading about the real science enlightening and engrossing. Booklist
Berkley titles by
Jarrett Hallcox and Amy Welch
BODIES WEVE BURIED
BEHIND THE YELLOW TAPE
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To all who have dedicated their lives
to forensic science and work tirelessly to stay
one step ahead of the criminal.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. ELIOT
FOREWORD
BY PATRICIA CORNWELL
Theres always evidence, if you know where to look. So we realize in Behind the Yellow Tape, a collection of real cases worked by real people who arent likely to end up on talk shows, and probably wont like all the fuss when the public gets its hands on this tremendously entertaining, provocative book.
Behind the Yellow Tape isnt at all what you see on TV. Its better. It isnt done with magic boxes, as I refer to the television tools of CSIs, with their unlimited funding, limitless boundaries, and the ability to divine what happened and why. Jarrett Hallcox and Amy Welch trekked across America, spending countless hours with police and investigators as diverse as the sheriffs department of Sevier County, Tennessee, and the NYPD. As forensic experts themselves, who have each earned a ticket to the inside, the authors were given access to cases that they have re-created in such colorful, extraordinary detail, I got nervous and felt compelled to call Jarrett Hallcox after Id read the first ten pages.
Hey, I said uneasily, because hed asked if Id write a foreword to the book, and I was beginning to think I should have said no. Im confused. Is this fiction or nonfiction?
What do you mean? he replied, baffled.
I mean is it factual? Every word of it.
Yes. Every word of it, I swear.
Because I cant put my name on it and then find out later you made it up. What they call nonfiction-fiction or whatever, I said. Thats what it reads like. How the hell did you get all this detail, right down to what was said at the scene or what was going on inside someones psyche?
Painstaking research is the simple answer. Spending inordinate amounts of time talking to the cops who worked the cases, and going over every word of every record and interview. What comes to mind is an old saying I hear all the time from people who work in the world of crime: You really cant make stuff like this up.
Of course, the big bonus is that Hallcox and Welch go to great lengths accurately describing the minutiae of forensics that no one can seem to get enough of these days. What youll see is the very necessary demythologizing of crime scene investigationwhat was and wasnt done in cases that shed blood and took lives.
INTRODUCTION
On the Road
What exactly is a crime scene investigator? Not the high-heeled, leather-clad version that Hollywood crams down our throats on a nightly basis, but the real crime scene investigator: the real CSI. Though there are no strict definitions, a crime scene investigator is simply a member of the police force who works a crime scene. Contrary to their name, they dont actually investigate crimethough some do have the dual responsibility of crime scene work and investigation. And they are not scientists either, unlike the character on CSI, Gil Grissom, who is shown toiling hours and hours in a laboratory. Simply put, CSIs are the people who collect evidence, do minimal analysis of that evidence, and prepare the rest to be sent to the lab. Thats it. They dont use scanning electron microscopes, and they dont chase down murderers in long, dark alleyways. Hollywood purposefully gets it wrong, because sometimes being a CSI is boring. Crawling on your hands and knees, decked out in blaring white Tyvek suits, looking for one spent shell casing in the grass, or better still, sorting through a Dumpster behind an old Chinese restaurant, looking for a hair in day-old moo goo gai pan just doesnt make for a good prime-time broadcast.
Yet Hollywoods version has created a forensic fervor of epidemic proportions. The CSI craze has taken off, run amok, and left an indelible mark on pop culture. Hollywoods contribution to making crime scene investigation fashionable and hot cannot be denied. Just go to any college campus with a forensic science program and you will see it packed to the gills. The study of forensics is at its zenith, and Hollywood can be thanked for that. But unfortunately it has also had a negative impact as well. Shows such as CSI and Cold Case have caused some of the general public to have unreasonable expectations regarding crime scene investigation, due in large part to the sensational portrayal of crime scene investigators and their crime scene practices. And all of this has caused a new illness to develop, afflicting many, many Americans. It is called the CSI Effect.
The CSI Effect is a clear indicator of just how pervasive the forensic craze is. Smart, intelligent people are watching these forensic shows on television and thinking that they are true representations of crime and crime scene investigation. Some of these same people, armed with this silicone-enhanced knowledge of forensic science, end up as jurors who make their decisions based on what they have seen on TV and render verdicts based on what they think they know. I saw it on television has become an all-too-familiar response in courtrooms across America. It doesnt matter the size of the city or the type of crime; the CSI Effect does not discriminate. If you dont think the CSI Effect is a problem, just ask any forensic investigator who has testified at a hearing. We guarantee he or she will have a story to tell.
