miracles in cold cases, with the tools of today.

many cases have to wait too long for an answer, become cold and they sometimes looked to be solved by miracles.
but are they really?

the answer to that must be a no. most cases could not be solved for a good reason, the best is because the perps forgot to be honest in what they done to others. and a confession in itself does not even always solves a case, there are many known who maybe just liked the attention of it, but never had a hand in it.

besides honesty there is of course a lot of science that can be of help too. and as most of that is fitted under the forensic sciences, it not always was.
forensics is still a very young science, that can be a bit jumpy even. it is easily talked in the next miracle and as most can be quite hard to understand without some background, we can easily get a bit disappointed in it too.

and it can help to understand what the tools of the profession can do and what not. and as with all sciences it is just bound to today.

take the art of fingerprinting, maybe the art is more in the prints of our fingers itself, they like to be different. it took humans quite a long time to recognize that. and it was not even the result of a use in criminal cases, but more in a time that people started to look in bodily signatures that would tell more about them. there had been some others before that worked a bit with the different prints, and it was earlier even used to seal document by making a print of tumbs on official documents.

the first criminal case that made use of fingerprints was a murder case in argentina. one year later the first book was produced by what is usually known as the god father of finger printing in 1892, by sir francis galton. a lot of others helped after that in working it out into a system that is commonly used until today.

who had to work out today who a print could belong too, has it much easier, more and more countries have databases available.
there still is a bit of hand and head work in its uses, but it is done much quicker.

the only problem with a found fingerprint is the big question if they are already known in the databases, because they do tell still very little about the person who left them.

finding the fingerprints is an discipline in itself. and as the print is only the result from the forms the ridges have and mixed with the grease of all days and some of our own body deposits, it is not so easy to find a really good usable one. it asks quite a lot of training in human behaviour in all kind of places and circumstances to know where the best chances are to find nice prints.

you cannot do very much that change the fingerprints to the result of identification of its owner, but you can actually very easily destroy your chances to lift a nice quality print. when it still is about only the finger prints itself, you hardly have to take much precautions to grab one. so you do not have much need for special personal protection as for other usable matter that can identify who left it behind.

the underground decides much in how easy you could spot them, most are of course not of that kind, so you need other stuff to make them visible. was it in the old days often a powdered form of pencil dust, graphite powder, or even powdered charcoal. later on there came better suited powders, the most well known is maybe the red staining dragon blood. there is quite a variety that also has their own brandnames too, for all kinds of different undergrounds and situations.
it is quite a joke we call looking for fingerprints dusting for prints, as it actually more make the surroundings quite messy.

there are 3 problems with fingerprints, the first is, they are quite delicate, so it is very easy to disturb them in a way they become no longer usable. so it still has to be done with much care. the second is that they do not tell when they are left behind, or directly why. that beautiful bloody fingerprint can be the result of someone who in a bored out moment put one on there because they could. so it is always nice to not get overly buoyed when you find one.
the third is that thanks to all the detective stories almost every one knows that you fingerprints can do you no good. luckily gloves leave their traces too, and even when cloth or plastic is used that still can be visible. most objects are not as pristine and clean as they like at first glance.

it is more and more possible to even lift fingerprints from things we would not have found much likely before. nowadays even from a body can prints be lifted.

in cold cases it has become a marvel when the body is found without other ways to identify it. even when there is already a lot of decomposition, it is often possible to get a print of enough quality to be used to find out who the body belongs to in name.

fingerprints are not always giving a clear answer that the do belong to the crime that is under investigation, fingerprints of people who live or frequently visit the same place, can also leave prints by innocent touches of course.

besides the fingerprints itself, from the use it resulted also in looking for other prints with it, like those of hand palms, and even the soles of feet. the form of a finger that left the print can often help to tell some extras about the age of that person and even if it is more likely male or female. so even a finger prints of lesser quality still can be tell a bit more.

the next tool is dna.

dna has a bit of a false reputation to be the best to get. usually it is just one of many tools that is part of a much larger heap of tools that all can tell bits of a possible story in criminal cases.

first we have it all, but only in our true cells, so to rule out a major misconception, if you see a lot of blood, that does not mean you also can find lots of dna. blood gets it red colour from the red blood cells, only they are not true cells, the do not have a nucleus and that is where we store our dna. for blood you must hope to find lots of the white cells too. there are large differences in how many whites people have, so it can not be a fact that lots of blood is equal to lots of dna to find.

dna is in itself quite fragile, and that does sound strange, because we all must have read the stories about the dna from prehistoric finds, the difference is that what is left in such finds are usually bones, or bone fragments or teeth. for a sample to work from to get dna, that are quite large samples, you simply can look at and see they are from just one source.
so you can just get multiple samples and if a bit here and there is missing, you can go back to the basic material and take another and build a full profile from multiple samples.

also the material used is protecting the dna that is kept inside against all kinds of influences from the outside, most also are found in places that are protection in itself, like caves, or thick layers of soil.

so things dna does not like at all like sunlight, air and moisture or large differences in temperatures and access to microorganisms is much less.

in much more recent criminal cases, or at least cases where a crime is expected, the samples are usually a lot smaller, they are open in a much more used area, where other living things including humans do all kinds of things and also can leave all kinds of traces behind.
there also can be extra exposure from using chemicals and cleaning products.

the dna itself is not visible with the naked eye, and it can be hard to be sure if a trace is indeed containing any dna. you cannot be sure all traces are also from the same person, or multiple people, and if it truly is part of the crime scene.

in criminal investigations, there are two kinds of dna in use. because besides our very own, and even in identical twins unique genome, as we call all our dna together, this unique dna is called our nuclear dna, nuclear from nucleus.
there is a separate kind of dna, that we get mostly unchanged and also over time hardly suffers from many mutations, and we all get directly from our biological mothers. this is called mitochondrial dna or mt-dna, because it is kept in the mitochondrial bits on the cell itself.
all offspring of a mother gets the same mt-dna, only males can not give it to offspring, so it connects people through their maternal lineages. it is most times simply not to say who left it behind as a person, because the same type, often also called haplo type of mt-dna is the same in all people who are from the same family by their mothers.
and there is world wide not even very much variation in it. the amount is still growing, and not all humans are tested for it, mutations can happen and are usually the reason new haplo types will surface, but that happens not very often. haplo types can also disappear because the last generations ended up with only male offspring, or the mother line kept barren.
around the year 2000 there had been around 20 to 26 different haplo types known, but for all people on earth, so you simply cannot use it to tell who exactly left it behind, if there are multiple people from the same maternal line around in a criminal investigation.

it is more sturdy and easier to test for, and quicker, and it best use is to exclude people out of a possible group, including is a bit less secure, but for excluding it works great.
it is often used when a remains of unknown identity is found, there are always lists with names of missing people and it is easy to get at least the haplo group of their mt-dna, because every sibling through their mother and each person in a family of that same maternal line can deliver that as an answer. so it makes it possible to tell if a body can be, or cannot belong to a name.

overall finding dna is no problem at all, humans shed quite a lot of it through skin particles and hairs, in many bodily fluids can be dna kept around, urine and saliva itself do not have dna available, but it can be kept in it. hairs have often dna in the part of the roots, and there is a chance that hairs accidentally have stored dna even in the shaft of the hair, it does not really belong there, but it got sometimes caught in the growing process.
there can be massive differences in how well people do shed their expelled stuff that can harbor dna to the world.

there are many different ways to test for dna. but all start with a sample. and you cannot see dna it is a kind of a blind search. and there is a complete thinking and looking process before you get the sample sticks out.
when we talk crime, we do not want all dna, we like to get dna that has a relation to a crime.
so it works best if we first start to look for what part of an area is truly the crime scene, the area where things did happen, or most likely did happen.
it also does count that dna testing is still not cheap and time consuming, so you cannot sample everything.

so if the trained person has decided what are the best chance places to find dna that indeed can have a relation to what happened, the sample sticks come out. well before that there is a need of suiting up too, something not needed for classic fingerprinting, because that are traces you can easily ruin but you can not change the outcome in other ways.
a moving body has a larger chance that dna is shed around, and that means for the body of the trained person too.

but what in reality is start to happening, is that a trained person takes a very small sample stick point to a often not under the best conserving circumstances left behind, and very often not even is large in itself. to swap something that cannot be seen, and you do not can know who left it there. even with the best training and work ethics in that person is still is a process that ask for a lot of luck.

so the next step is testing for dna, there are multiple tests possible. if you have larger spots, like a nice still wet puddle of blood, the chance is sound enough to get enough material on the swab to use the most used test. these ask still a lot of dna present to work from. usually around 200 cells with dna. there are systems that can work with much smaller sample sizes, one is known as low copy number dna testing, or lcn-dna test.

step one is getting the dna from all other stuff in the sample, this can only be done once, the sample you use will no longer exists, the same with the dna itself when found, if used for analyzing it, it is gone. so knowing that usually only a smaller part of the swab is used. so if anything goes wrong you still have some of the original sample left to try again.

most testing methods will have a need of pcr, what is a technique that is used to copy what is fed into it. you simple need more to analyse it after that step. only pcr is quite a stupid copying method, it will just copy all that you feed it, so if the extraction of dna was not well done, the rest of the crab will get duplicated as well.

and pcr works like these old times copy machines, most of us will remember that when you copied from a copy and did that multiple times, the letters, numbers and lines got more prominent each time you did that.

the extraction of the dna can not see what dna you are extracting from the sample, it just grabs what it can get. more cells means usually simply better chances to get enough dna of one single donor to work from.

with the low copy number methods there are more cycles of pcr needed, so that makes the chance to get a result that has flaws in it. and if a small sample also have some other old dna in it, that will be copied too, and pcr also is known to make a lot more of something what was actually always junk you did not need. so that can result in a false read out in analyzing it.

low copy number methods are because of their less sound results in many countries not seen as sound science and that does mean you cannot use it in a trial later on.

and because you simply cannot know if you indeed have dna on your sample taken, or only dna from one single person, you have to realize it could be a mixed result. with a lot of dna of the same donor in a sample that can usually be seen in the results. the low copy number methods have even more often mixed results, as well from mixed samples of different donors , as from copied artifacts material, or just copied junk.

the use of dna is even more complex. it is quite stupid stuff in itself. it cannot tell what cells it once lived on with a human body. how it got out and about it cannot tell. it also cannot tell when or why it was left where the sample stick picked it up.

that is all information that has to come from other sources. and many of that information has also to look at in different ways depending on the role the possible suspect has to the victim.
so like the place on a body or the clothing of a victim, when the victim is still a very young child, finding dna of a parent would hardly be able to prove it is part of a crime, because very young children need a lot of help, so it can be simply just transfer of dna by doing innocent and needed care.

in rape cases it works easier, because the dna would be found around place that have no easy access to others who are just around you.

dna on all kinds of things used as a weapon is also not as easy as it looks. it can be remarkable to take a look at some studies over transfer of dna, through earlier use, or even handshakes.

but all in all, finding dna as part of the case is nice to have, but it would not tell the full story on its own.
in cold cases it can be just that missing piece of the full puzzle. not available at the time, and it owns the compliments to the staff that kept the material that had dna in a still usable manner available.

so it is always hard to state that the dna solved it, i have myself always a problem with the use of the word ‘it’ in criminal cases, because the full it is in real time at least multiple office binders full of bits and pieces. and dna simply tells in itself very little, it is much more all around the dna itself that have to tell the story behind the ‘it’.
and the biggest problem is just like the fingerprints, you can have beautiful dna results, from a telling situation, but as long as you do not have the same results somewhere in a database, or from a test on possible suspects, you have just a bit of humanity and no answers at all.

there is more to tell about the use of mt-dna but that is for another post.

a less known tool; isotopes.

this tool is a bit newer and less well known, but has certainly a role in old cases.
explaining what they are will end in a complicated story.
easy to look up if you want; google isotopes+brittanica, they have a nice explanation.


i want to explain more how it can be used in cases of crime and missing people.

human bodies are simply made from the first start in the womb from all kind of materials that get first to mummy’s mouth, and after birth you have to do it on your very own.
all we eat and drink contains nutrients or things that help get nutrients somewhere. some we have first to do some job or two to get them where they have a need for it.

most of that work is breaking the stuff as it came down to the raw usable material to build and keep a body functional around.

when was found out that a number of substances had a little bit of differences in how they once build up in the environment, so for the ended up through our mouth into our bodies, and that this resulted in being able to map out where the substances came together or have been build up, and that they kept their small differences after we had taken them in and they had been used to build bits of our bodies, and did that in bits that store for many years very well, the forensic isotope analysis was born.

usually with the term, you are what you eat and drink, is not really correct, it is more show your bones and we can tell where you eat and drink most of your stuff. it is not restricted to bones, but also teeth and hairs.

the technique is much longer in use, the kind of elements that has pretty stable isotopes, what means they just stay the same for very long periods of time, also are uses to trace explosives, and drugs. most used are the isotopes of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and even oxygen. the usually start somewhere on earth, and are just part of the earth, they are common nutrients for plants, and plants can be the source for many things, not only living things, but also old things, like crude oil.
it is already more in use in following how humans have travelled the world.

the isotopes work in a way like fingerprints do for us, where fingerprints can lead to us, all things build with these elements can be traced to a place of origin on earth. the basic work means mapping the origins of the specific pattern of isotopes in each element to places on earth.

hydrogen is also one of the mean parts of water, and that gives through the water we drink and use during cooking that same pattern stored in bone, hair and teeth.
it still are quite large areas of land and sea and water with the same pattern in the isotopes, but it resulted in telling a bit of our tale of where we lived before.

bones and teeth build up in time and would tell most about our early years, hairs usually are on our heads for about 2 years, but they can tell the tail during that time too.
in adulthood we can get in a very different way consume drink and food, but still often it can show a pattern of more or less traveling when multiple different areas with each a different pattern in the isotopes.
also there can be seen patterns of more or less dense nutrients during periods in a life.

it is not a perfect approach. modern people can make use of food and drink sources from all over the world. We still do that less often in younger years. if you are an avid supporter of true local food and drinking water from the tap at home, the isotopes from the elements in your bone, teeth and hair will show that better than when you favor more of the imported stuff and mix that with water from the bottle and whine from abroad. but you have to start very early on before you become the typical man of the world, with no isotopes to give ties to your area of origin.

it asks very little material to test for it. but it can give very sound information, when a found body does not tell where it comes from.

isotopes can work well in combination with what mt-dna sometimes also can tell. again it does not deliver factual information about origin, but it is nice to have. because mt-dna is given through generations in the maternal line, and the information of where these people come from is still growing, not only on modern cases, but maybe even more for true historic cases from longer times ago. centuries and era’s even. it can help to tell more about an unknown body. it is more of a bet than isotopes can tell, but still, often there can be stories around in families about emigrations or there could be historical facts about groups from certain places to other places.

still as a lesser use heritage through nuclear dna can be of help, as each person per the standard gets half of its dna from the biological dad and half of the biological mum, this can be used to trace other family more removed too.

and with the popularity of the dna heritage databases that can be of use too. there has not always be a known relationship, but it can tell about possible origins and often even possible surnames. it can make it much easier to put names or more information through databases in other countries.

a special dna search can be done in some jurisdiction by asking a specific group of people to come in for a dna testing, even if the person itself who donates its sample is not a fit to the dna itself, often there can still be seen if there can be a familial relation in the background.
it is more used for looking for a possible suspect, and in a less number of cases to give it a try to find out who the body belonged to.

it are all making use of existing science and the experience in other fields, and often a steep learning curve to find out if it can be of use in criminal cases, or cases with missing people or unidentified found bodies.

none of them will tell the full story, and most only are used when more conventional work has failed. also it can take some time to get the needed permissions of courts and law to make use of it.

the use of dna and isotopes makes it also possible to look again at very old cases. there is often lots of information from long before, and the nice thing if you get results from these kinds of tests is mostly that you get a new light on everything there still is. it is not so much the information is really not there, most times you miss out something that place it in the right order , or can connect bits you had no way to get connected before.

Forensics - a subject often widely discussed but seldom understood. This readable explanation from a professional angle is very helpful, thank you.

thanks, forensics are easily misunderstood, and that is not surprising, that single word forensics stands for an enormous amount of different fields of knowledge, very different even.
it is also a young field of science, many parts are taken from other fields and are being adapted to be of use in the investigation of crimes and possible crimes.
and not only from existing sciences, a lot has started by just doing it in the field, and that only later on becomes science.

what earlier on was called by more direct names is more and more coming together under the umbrella of forensic sciences.

a lot still have backgrounds in biology, chemistry, but also psychology,math, physics, medical.
lots of techniques are adapted from archaeology. but also geology. and many are mixed of multiple fields. some are more specialized, others become more easy to use in the field because of modern techniques that can take over a lot of things like measurements and calculations.video and photo’s are used also in a more modern way. like 3 dimension video of a crime scene before there is other work done.

a large part of looking for traces of all kinds are also becoming easier, because of the use of forensic light sources. quick snap tests for direct use in the field.
but computing in general is of great help, and artificial intelligence will gets a place too. both make it much easier to search through large data sets.

ethics always played a large role, that is changing too, the body farms are getting more common, and also from more different places, because all and everything can have a slightly different outcome.

and there maybe always be a place for people who simply have very specific fields of knowledge, not related to crime in general, but that can bring still knowledge obtained outside the forensic world in their own professions. examples of that can be someone working with fabrics, or people who simply have well founded experience in a specific terrain. some times people who just know a lot of one kind of soil, animals of plants.
but it could be simply a garbage man who can shows exactly how their work is done.
or a local historian who has that inside knowledge of a area you need.

humans as a kind are often a bit short sighted, have their own way of looking to all around them. so if you pick 10 random people and you lead them through the same room, all can pick up different details. forensics is mostly trying to get them all, and what is escaping humans noticing it, and looking for ways to store them for later use.
the saying a picture can tell more than 100 words is true, but it is not only pictures, it is all manners you can store the information, so the others can use exactly the same situation to look at.

so the goal is mostly to making it possible to show each and all steps that are part of a crime , or possible crime as if you have been there to observe it with all your senses.

not all possible techniques will be needed in every crime, it often is depending on the type of crime and the budget you can use. time is also a factor, testing is still improving but it still takes its time.

and very important part will also be communication, and extra because of how wide the fields of knowledge can be apart. and the sciences of the labs must also be translated to the investigators in the field, and later on often in court. and knowing where your knowledge stops is a need too.

forensics is also always working from the questions that follows from the investigation.
so good communication skills are a must. both sides of the questions must have to understand the meaning of these questions and why they are asked, and if it is possible to even get an answer.

my own experience started with very specific expertises, and because of them i became also an officer of the law. that was quite a steep learning curve. and i ended up with a much bigger passion for forensics. i am not so much a true scientist, but more a user of parts of the field. was able to take a lot of specific courses in it, and most still had to come from doing the job in the field. i do know of most of them, but certainly not all in the same manner, and some i even know very little. just basics.
i never had much emotion in that line of work, for me people and all that comes with people in a investigation become my work material. so it can be sounding a bit flat at times. but that is my way of coping with it.

the work itself looks in reality not as it is presented in books, or movies or tv series. most hours are for the onlooker of the ultimate boring exercise kind. that would be sheer punishment if you had to watch them. and the bits that you normally are not allowed to see, are of the kind you can only wish you could whip them from your memory. it is okay to be curious, but it asks a certain state of mind before you want to have a look at what is kept out of view. if people have the need to see, well the internet will say; the floor is yours. just search for it.

forensics is not a science of mystery or miracles, it is still growing.how the same knowledge will be used will keep on changing, things do come and go. replacing old ways to better working new ones. old ways will get proven or dis-proven in research.
still most of it still needs human minds to knit all the pieces to just one story of what happened and if it was indeed a crime. and i like that process of growth very much, it keeps your focus out, rethinking on what you know, what you can have missed, how it all can come together. and i have a lot of admiration for the minds that by thinking out of the box still find other ways to look at things, and make them usable to bring justice.

but there are many more tools to look at.

the human mind as a tool.

this is still the most important tool in the box, not the most consistent one, but still this is where it all comes together from. we can hardly say it is just one mind, because it never is, besides a team of trained minds, there can also be lots of untrained minds that take part in an investigation.

human behaviour in itself has not even that much variety, the same with capabilities. even with that in mind, they come to many different outcomes by using both in different circumstances. our minds likes to work from known patterns, and we like to make groups of all kinds of things and from humans too, not always handy because it can lead to bias.
one person can have their own pattern, the elements that makes that pattern are usually not very special, but the combination can result in a difference from most others' habits.
the largest differences are to find in the minds of people. differences that are hard to get too.

it is rare to see cases that are filled with information that we can call hard, meaning they would not change in itself, whoever looks at them, listen to them, touches them. a large part of the information comes usually from words from people. the last kind of information you can put a lot of trust in. behind the words are minds too, and they can have their own reasons to put out the words they do. that i will reserve for a later post.

it can help if the minds in the teams who work cases are from a diversity of backgrounds and life experiences. most of their bias in looking for connections, possibilities can be hindering, but be helpful too.

cases easily become cold cases as there simply is anything that can lead to different leads from the minds around in a case. what does often result in asking the public for help. what is mostly just getting more brains that can be picked.
besides the public it is also common to make use of minds that have not worked on the case before, fresh eyes with a fresh mind behind it.

the trained mind is usually more imprinted with protocol and guidelines, mostly to escape too much bias. their starting point must be at all times the facts and circumstances of this specific case. you can look around and think through all possible lines, but you always have to return back in the end to the facts and circumstances. they can in itself not be changed, the meaning can change a bit, but they are static in their own rights.

it also is still the mind that decides what questions asks, what has to become formerly worked out in paperwork of a case. also in what is shared to the public eye.

it is also the only tool that is always used in all cases. cases about things can easily be forgotten, but cases around people hardly ever do. most of those will be kept in their own box in the minds that worked on the cases. cases where there is a true victim, there is always an urge these have to be solved, or at least getting an answer. the answer will always be more important than getting a suspect tried in court and convicted, that is usually seen as the ideal, but in reality it feels more as a bonus.

the minds who work the investigation have also hardly direct influence during a court case, their work is done before a case can go to court. and the court is more like an examination of the work done. still it does not say that the investigation is over, but it will be more working in the shadow of the court itself. new information can come to light during the time in court, from inside the court, but the outside too.

usually the investigation is completed as much as is possible before it end up in court, often this is weeks or months later. in serious cases the teams are broken up again to do other cases, but there always will be a small group that can step in when new information comes in.

it is getting harder to say case closed, that must always be read with the line; with the knowledge we have at the moment, there is a final answer. new techniques that bring results before could not be used to tell something on their own, or that could connect other existing information can sometimes change the outcome.

what is horrible is when mistakes are made, often when minds forget the protocols and guidelines or even abuse them, and it become only a product of a mind, not from facts and
circumstances can also mean the case never truly was closed.
how little different humans are in behaviour and capabilities, so divers are they in their minds. behaviour and capabilities have of course a direct influence from all kinds of boundaries, some physical, some social, but it could be all kinds of things that come from outside yourself.
in a mind it are only your own boundaries, some are simply there, others depend on the moment and situation.
and mind reading is still not a usable tool at all. and it will still be mostly whishfull thinking to see it in a usable form to solve cases.
it also does not stop with knowing what happened in the minds of a possible suspect or how that ended up to become a case, the case is not only about the suspect, there is much more ground to cover.

artificial intelligence will maybe can play a role, but it still asks for human minds to think out what it can work with. modern data bases are already the first steps in that way. the human mind is not the best instrument to seek through large amounts of data.
and data will still be there as the results of minds.

and it is strange that the basic training always hammers down in minds that it must be the case, the facts and circumstances there off have to dictate your thinking and the choices you have to make. and many think that officers of the law have to use the 5 w’s principle for that, it are actually six questions, that are around for many ages, at the moment we think we have to love or hate aristotle for them. but it was promoted by the usa government for journalists during wo2, a kind of people that still did exist in that time of history.
the 5 w’s stand for who?, what?, when?, where?, why? and how?

well the minds of officers of the law wants the same questions answered, but knows by training, and training is usually the result of past experiences that lead to good or bad outcomes of things done, that starting with the who has a great risk to end up in a miscarriage of justice. so it usually starts differently, their mind has to ask first what happened, and from that one, can it be a crime? there is no need to use all six questions after a positive answer to can it be a crime, in a strict order, and they usually simply don’t.
they will come back many times over, from often very different viewpoints, but always to start from the case itself and facts and circumstances you already have gathered.
and doing that will be a task still for the human minds of the officers working the case.

the standard order of the 5 w’s and 1 h, are more of use for the onlooker in the public.
if our minds start to make a story from a theory we look into ourselves, they are helpful to control if we have all these questions given an answer.
and please do not think saying ‘it’ is a sound way to explain, or answer any of them.

searching for people and material as a tool.

searching is also a tool, and it is usually getting attention, because it is also easy to see it happen. and it is in our human nature, when something is lost we search for it.

sadly it is not the best tool in the box. not when done by members of the public, but not even when it is done by trained searchers. organizing searches and searching itself are pretty intensive activities. the results are often poor, but still it is not a good reason to not search at all. but the success is usually not what people expect from it.

and maybe the disappointment for not finding anything is not always a bad thing. finding missing people that are still alive and not hurt is easy to handle. only often do we start searching with only that as a goal in our minds. finding people that are badly hurt, or even lost their lives is very hard on the mind. that is why children never can be part of any search at all.
and it is always better if there at least is some organisation present during a search.
you cannot really prepare your mind for finding badly wounded people , or dead people. and it is hard to know upfront what it will do to your mind. that is equal to trained searchers with even a professional level and experience from before.

but searching is always hard to do. you can be around for days, or just hours, but you simply cannot see all and everything or keep the effort at the same level. the terrain is often not well known to searchers, but even when you are used to it, or even well known to it from often been around in an area, it is very hard to keep all your senses up to a high standard.

not searching is never delivering a result, and even when the chances are slim it is still something that at least can give results. and there are always a lot of complications that can results from doing a search. it could harm traces of a crime, you later wished you had.
there is little you can base on really knowing that what you are looking for is simply not there.

the description you send the searchers underway, is very important, and always to be done with instructions, that clothing could no longer be on that person. so that fixating on colours that you think stand out to the environment can be very misleading. that a body, even still alive does not have to fit the position from a sitting or standing, or laying down as if it sleeps. that it can be hidden and only a very small part can still be visible. so keeping too much focus on the human form is not an ideal approach.

and usually it is very hard to step back, or keep your ground if you think you see something, our habit is just to walk up and take a better look.

working in larger and even smaller groups all humans are imprinted to put attention to the others. We are social by nature, so talking and replacing attention from the searchfield to each other happens almost automatically. the same with the distance to each other, that is very unnatural when in company. It is called the groups effect. even with lots of training it is hard to withstand.

and because others wear an uniform it does not mean they have more experience in searches at all. They have maybe more training in groups, but not so much in searches.
and knowing the environment can have also very different forms and qualities. areas that ask more physical approach or activity can easily relay the attention on doing just that, instead of searching the area. It does ask clear communication upfront at the start, but also is part of how you prepare your outfit for the day.
simple tasks as eating, drinking and smoking can also mean your attention is gone from the terrain itself. the same with a full bladder.

even professional well trained and experienced searchers do not know all kinds of terrain and environments equality well. The quality of their searching is usually much better, because they have learned to cope with staying out of our common habits. still it is not a given they will find when they are sent out to look for and when it is indeed there.

it is very common that bodies are much later on found, when there have even been multiple searches, even with well trained people. you can not say , if it is there we find it.

you talk usually about very large areas and what you look for, if it is indeed there, you can never be sure about that upfront, is still very small in measurements, even an adult body is nothing in a large area. because of that you can already expect to know that if a body is out there, it will be only on a small area of a much larger terrain.

it can happen that someone starts out still living, but could not see their way out of it, and tried to escape from exposure in the environment, like the cold, rain, being out of sight for supposed danger, and seeking places or spaces to hide. Or try to hide from a human predator. so it is very hard to focus on all possible signs of a human being there or have being there.

no one likes it when later on remains are found, where is searched before. It seems a mystery how you have been able to miss it. It is not always so, that it always was there and could be found. animals, the wetter and moving of grounds often can have a say in that too.
also there are cases when there ends up a criminal intent, that a body was only placed around that place after the searches were done. and because when remains are long in the outdoors, there are so many factors to take in mind , it also takes up a lot of time to look for possible answers, and because of it, they are not always are there to find anymore.

it is by the way as hard to search in very urban areas as in more natural terrains. and bodies are found many times over where you would expect they would be found within hours or at least a day after they got there. even in cities, or near a busy parking and rest area near a highway. we as humans are often not well imprinted to look at everything, we all se only bits when we are up and about. free living animals are always looking for food, save places to rest, predators or other danger. we are mostly not, we look more for the beauty of a tree, not as a possible hiding spot. we are used that there are many people around, so much rubble is accidentally or with purpose thrown about. so we do not look at all bits of cloth or paper, or wood laying about. our danger to spot is mostly other humans and traffic. we are used to shelter in homes and other places, our food we buy mostly, that has not to get from nature.

accidental finds are quite common. wild mushroom pickers are well known for finding remains, dog owners are second best, and it is usually through the actions of their dog, who is the true finder, successful. still untrained dogs do not be taken on searches. There is often not much fun for the dogs itself, searching has a different walking pattern and speed than they are used to, and the dog takes attention away from the surroundings.

trained dogs are often joining searches, preferred is to give them the way ahead of others. many of the dogs are trained to a very specific type of smells. so it always depends on the training the dog had, what they can be expected to do. they usually are not that all round and can do all. and as far as is known, for dogs a living body has a very different smell from a dead one. so it would be the same as asking a carpenter to fix your car. They come to do very specific tasks. and not an easy one too.

so searches are not the best tool to find people or bodies back, but it can be making a difference and taking a chance to simply find a missing person timely and hopefully even still alive, but even when it results in only a body, it means there are answers for their loved ones and a chance if crime plays a role to get the culprit.

searching is also a task that can be handled from police officers without a clear indication that crime is involved. it can already be done from the task of helping those who need it.
and because there is often enough willingness in the public to assist, it can also be organised. and it is always better to have many different eyes and ears out, even when they can not do perfect, if it is successful it is also the most wanted kind of result of course.

there are also very different types of searches, usually done by experts in the specific way of searching, they can work alone, or with some assistants. They usually are brought in to answer more specific questions, or to do things as looking for most likely places a body can be hidden or buried. there are also teams who do specific water searches.

new is that there is more and more also private companies of very willing amateurs, many of then are only amateur because they do not get paid for what they do, their status is often decided by their own success, and many have to be seen as very professional.

sometimes a search is needed because of an very specific question, and then it can happen that people of all walks of life and just with appropriate knowledge can be asked to assist.

also new is using the public as searchers for material that otherwise can very hard to get to find. like what interpol did with the identify me campaign, and europol with their campaign stop child abuse-trace an object, what are different searches because they can simply done online, more and more police forces makes uses of the online world to search for very specific information. So searches are not restricted to setting your feet on the ground.

and even the public that is active in true crime forums or webclubs can help in that way. Mostly not by sheer speculation, but already successful in finding identities to bodies, and recognition of items that helped to make a connection.

so yes in searching for information, what already has a history, also for searches in area’s, or searches for materials there is a role for the public too.

it is simply making use of resources that are easy to get, and often even a last chance to find answers.

the use of animals as a tool.

most of us would first name dogs as most likely, but it are much smaller critters than are even more often used. the group most used are insects.
with a good insight about local circumstances and factor like temperature, time of year, many sorts can be very helpful to determine when a body has been in a certain place, if it was transferred at times, it is not even restricted to living insects and their life stages, but also the remains they can leave behind from their own earlier stages. there are species that can even tell about wounds the body had, and if substances were in the body at the time of death.

because all species have their own preferences for stages the body is in after death,it makes it possible to use them as an indication for the amount of time that is past. most are also easy to keep in a lab to study them well.

because species are also bound to specific environments that can tell if the body always was there or not.
most species have a specific time they are around, so even absence of certain species that seek an earlier stage of body decomposition, that can be of help too to make an estimate of how long a body is around. they can even be of help to find earlier places a body was kept.

it is its own specialized field and is known by the name of forensic entomology.

dogs are well known as a tool, still there can be very large differences in how dogs are trained, and also their quality in what they are asked to do. they are often classified in a group of work, still it works better to look what that specific dog is trained for, and ask for the abilities a case needs. there is still no international standard for training and use of dogs in criminal investigations.
so there are usually dogs that work mostly in finding living humans. this can be done so specific it would not signal for a dead human. there are dogs that use individual scents, and others who go for just human.
there are also more specialist dogs that can search for blood that remains behind and can be part of a crime scene. most are trained on dried blood. fresh blood would be difficult because that is far more time bound, and these dogs are rare and often have to travel over distances before being able to work a site.

dogs on scent of a living human being, or to work from a individual scent of a specific person, and also the blood dog that works from dried blood deposits, it is easier to train them, because you can very easily build a controlled setting during training. scent has no backlash from most rules and regulation and even blood is often easy to get with consent of its donor.

other dogs are of the often used group name of cadaverdog. they work on scents of body decomposition. this can be very hard, because not all countries allow the use of human bodies for this type of training. artificial scent works hardly, decomposition can have multiple stages and many factors can be of influence in building up the scent of death as it is called.
the older term that these dogs are trained and search for cadaverine, is incorrect and very old fashioned. cadaverine is one of many of the organic compounds that are known that can be part of the scents of death. in reality that scent is a combination of many different compounds. cadaverine was one of the first we know of, and can be recognized by a human nose too, if enough is around. the dogs do a far more complicated nosing for scent of death , than we are able to.
from even quite recent studies we know that it is important to train these dogs also only on specific human remains.
it still is hard to investigate what exactly is in that scent of death. body farms are of great help in this, and are more and more also used to get material for training these dogs.

before it was often just looking for opportunities by the trainers and handlers to get material to work with, these dogs are mostly trained on all bits and pieces of human decomposition, and the donors do not even have to be dead too. blood is the easy one, because you can very easily take blood from a living donor, and let that go stale just how and where you want it, you can work even with extract timings. other material that is used before was bandages with blood and serum deposit, extracted teeth, material that is kept after an operation. all usually in a void of the legal possibilities. other things could be material that was in contact with a dead human, like matrasses, clothing. except blood from a living donor it has its boundaries, it is often very hard to put date and time on the samples, so that means you can not always really know on what stages of decomposition you are training a dog. also contamination can be a problem.

that time and date is also a bit of a problem when making use of bodies of humans who gave permission for using their bodies to make samples on other material, because it usually can take hours, before that can be done. so then the body itself will never reach the training grounds, but a ‘print’ of the scent can be used.

it would not hinder the training itself, but it is always nice if you use a tool, and you can do more than only find it. now the exact composition of different decomposition bound scents is starting of, it could be great to being able to use dogs that are even have more specialist training.

still it is never the dog that serve us with a result that will always be up to other forensic tools and the human minds that work with that. dogs do not talk human, and you cannot put a usb cable to them and get a print or read out of what they have accomplished. and they are far more use than only show us a human body or remains.
their role can also be different, the investigation stage has not directly a need of the same strict rules of evidence that is used during a trial in court. so even when there is no body to find, these dogs can make it possible to find possible scenes that can be part of the crime under investigation too.

and it is not the dog that produces evidence usable in a court, but it can on its own produce leads for the investigation to look into. scent of death can be very persistent, and the spot where a dog signals too, can be also a spot where the victim or perp left something behind.
these findings can be used in court. still it are not masses of material, otherwise you would not have the need for a dog to assist. so the traces are usually quite small, and a lot of luck is needed that you can save them, and that the lab can work from it. most of that will be dna, mt-dna, or for a blood dog that can be, an estimate of the original amount of blood loss in a specific area, but also information about a weapon used, traffic on a crime scene. it can answer if a situation is cleaned up.
and the indications or lead from the working dogs can be used during the investigation, even without leading first to evidence that can hold up in court.
many information is to work on, before it is known if it ends up to be part of a crime.

the dogs do not work on their own usually, they are to be seen as one team with their handler. so not only the dog need its training the handler too. both need also be tested on their abilities of their own and as a team.

for the dogs it is often pretty simple, they are just to ask to alert by a known signal that they found what they are trained on. the do not even understand they are really at work, but more as a specific came, that is played to use mostly a pattern that is restricted to what we hope they can fill in for us. most trainers are well aware that dogs can understand what they want from them, to lay out a pattern known to the dog.

there can be a cause of making mistakes, mostly at the side of a handle, wrong intro to what is asked from the dog. some dogs have multiple task fields to sniff out. lack of continuity in training, or simply not being consequent enough. so the dog start to guess what is asked.

the handler also has to care the dog can safely do its job, look out for signs of becoming too tired, too hot, or too cold, or too bored to be effective working ahead.
also too much steering of what the dog is doing or has to do, can lead to a false result.

and there have been cases too, that the handler falsified the results of the dog with intent.
what is very stupid to try, it is hard enough to understand what the dogs are doing and can do, and actually do. the result can be that the trust in the use of such dogs, or even a complete type of testing is no longer allowed to make use of. what happened in a case where scent samples of a possible suspect been mixed with innocent samples and dogs by giving an item with possible the scent left of a possible suspect could still be one.

it is not that this is al ready and clear science, there is still a lot of work going one and foreseen. only the nose of a dog is so much better, that always the dog wins from all devices tried until today. most is invested in artificial noses. so there is a way to get a read out to use in court, when there are only traces around but not in a way that could be shown in court.

the scents itself are problematic enough, and also ongoing science. it is very unlikely that devices will soon or ever replace the dogs, they simply have qualities to move in all kind of environments, so most would be of the extra kind.

and science do not stop with dogs on a scent, there is looked into other animals too, from insects, that maybe can do the same, but more specific when it is for looking if human remains been in a specific place and in what state.

dogs are also used for scent recognition in many other fields of crime, from fire accelerans, to explosives, drugs, money, electronics. there are also dogs that can guard, and who can catch a criminal. but those are usually much easier to understand.

but even all of them simply look as dog and are dogs of course, still it depends on what they have learned to alert to in their training, that they can deliver.

in may places working dogs are not only restricted to law enforcement agencies, there are many teams known from the public. all kinds of level in quality and abilities even. there is no simple world standard, these teams work often more in the shadow of an official investigation, like after a case becomes cold or paused for all kind of reasons. we usually only hear when their work is successful. and it is mostly up to these teams that we know of results that tell how good the use of dogs as a tool can be.

and because both parts of each team, are living beings, we cannot expect them to be an exact tool. you can not check them in the same way as a set of scales, or calibrate them as you can with a microscoop, or sharpen them as a knife, reload them as a gun.
and because of that it is maybe better to celebrate their great results, when they happen, and just think next time better chances.
we cannot expect perfect always from living creatures. and to also see them als the tool to get to information, you cannot have access too in any other way possible. and the greatest restrictions are still in us human, because we simply still cannot figure out how to bring a dog alert to the next step of use.

plants as a tool.

besides animals other living things can be used too. the higher plants are most well known.
they do not move much on their own, at least they are fixed to a growth medium at the roots.

plants can keep a walk through route for some time, that is not at all easy to wipe out again. so yes, plants can tell parts of a story, they can tell about the start from the beginning even, also called the uptake or first entry of a case, the area the case took place, and how that scene was left.

nowadays officially at least most of the lower platforms are put in their own line of evolution, but they still are used if they still be part of the larger groups of plants, like the mushrooms, algae and lichen. they all have in common they can be found everywhere, and are easy to disturb. lichen are actually a mould and algae living happily together. and even the algae itself has a tendency to grow on many different mediums, they are not very fond of full sunlight. and they can be around most things outside that can escape direct light and it can be hard to see them. like on the frames of doors and windows and window sills.
as the outside of most structures are less often cleared, they can be a great help in telling if an area was touched or used as a port of entry. they even can help to leave fingerprints because they do stick to fingers too. they will also show signs of touching when gloves are used.

there are also signs that we see much later after a crime has taken place, plants have often a liking for a good amount of minerals, so when ground was disturbed, it would not only tell that directly from disturbance in the plants above it, like when the roots are lost their connection to the soil, what can be seen as signs of no longer enough water that can get into the plant.
others are fond of growing in enriched soil what can be the result of a grave put out there.
also most soils have a so-called seed bank, disturbing the soil can result in seeing more of the first stages of plants after that. many of them are known as pioneers of that first stage of regrowing the earth. so they work well to tell about disturbances of soils. others can guide for larger different deposits that come from a decomposing body for many years to come.

plants can also be used because bits and pieces can easily contaminate cloth and clothing.
their pollen are even better in that. they can land everywhere and the specific species can tell by being there, or even not being there, in telling when a grave was made and used.
if the investigation is lucky, there are even rarer kinds of plants around the possible area in a crime, and pollen on clothing and other material can help tell if it was most likely in that same area.

pollen can also be helpful when soil is build up, just like the rings of wood in a tree trunk, pollen can form deposits in very fine lines in the up building of a soil too. so sometimes it can assist in telling at what time of year it was left behind.

leafs and even more seeds can also stick to people who been there before. they have been of help when a body was removed and buried in a next place.

also lots of materials are made from plants. so traces could sometimes can be found from the same original source.plants have dna too, and that is sometimes been used too.
growth rings and growing patterns of wood are maybe the best known example. and it is much easier to fit two pieces from that same wood together, even very small ones.

plant dna is harder, because cloning is something plants can do on their own, and many species also can pollinate their own flowers. so its uses are often restricted when a rarer plant species is found. on the other hand from so called endemic populations it can be used well.

plants have even an influence when looking for species of insects that are around a body left behind.

the can be a temporary nuisance too, because they can keep a body or other materials used during a crime kept hidden, but as most are only there for their growth season they are only temporarily hindering. fallen leaves can hinder searches too, but even in massive amounts of leaves disturbance can be noticed, only it usually asks a lot more training to the eye.

when the plants walk in an investigation it is called forensic botany. still it often has bits that overlap with other fields of forensic expertise.

plants as a source seems a bit less popular, maybe that comes from the much larger variety and being less part of most minds. it also is one of the lesser fields in the true forensic fields, so it happens often that experts from other fields of study had to get in.
maybe it also does not help that we call many plants just weeds, and many trees together just a wood. they are often seen as difficult and just overlooked as a source.

animals on a crime scene.

i never can agree fully if they are of help of just a disturbance and an extra difficulty on crime scenes. it is also the hardest of all to find usable information about, because most searches for it, will make you end up in the crimes against and around wild life itself.

but even when you often need the same forensic experts to deal with it, it is a different tool because it is not about the animals itself usually. it can be even quite hard to distinguish if the animal is the perp it self, or just made use of what was left behind after a human perp left the scene to them.

this is about the last option.

human perpetrators look to be fond when they hide a body to do that in more robust, or wild area’s, the hide in in nature solution. for most people all outside a building or other human made structure is see as the wild outdoors, including fields with crops on them. so it is easier to start from an open air solution.

we already touched before on insects that have a fine nose for all things decomposing, for them it is only their feed.
but there can be many more animals that find a way to a body or a crime scene.

household pets are the ones that also can change a lot of the original scenes in a closed of area like a building. still usually the animal itself will be still around, and more often is also by their behaviour why the scene becomes known.

if a weapon was used it is often still easy to find traces of its use, other violence that resulted in a death can stay more hidden.

many bodies left in the wild outdoors are found because of animals. the dogwalkers dog tops even most lists in that. only finding remains is one thing, to do the find that often gives a lot of disturbance, such a dog can change the scene a lot. an average well trained animal can do it even on multiple days in a row, before they start a nightmare to their owners.

but their are also animals that are wildlife, beside a source of food, curiosity and playing can help to tell us there is a body out there, but also change the scene very well.

still all these animals have a lot of known behaviour, and a lot of the traces they do leave behind are already known. even if a specific animal is around the scene it often is known. more reliable for the large species, the smaller critters are far less popular to spot and register. even easy to find the experts on specific species, but they are experts about the animal, less the expert about the use of the traces on a crime scene.

the problem arises when we want to give meaning to a finding of traces in a case. it usually starts with are the traces from before of after death, and was it the animal that was the perpetrator, or just the finder of human remains. also how long after death are they left behind. what did the traces are specifically from, like bite markings, or scratch markings, signs of digging, or taken from the original scene.
at the moment forensic sciences are starting to have names and definitions, it still is a very young science and it has very diverse fields. so traces of animals on a crime scene are at the moment part of the umbrella term forensic ecology, it has many fields grouped under it, all related to ‘the natural world’,others are the before handled forensic botany, and forensic entomology. it is not really already common ground, what exactly belongs under this in all countries. most put the forensic soil and other geological and geographical forensic science under it too, some do not.

many experts can become instant forensic experts from it, because forensic only tells it is part of a crime. there is not always enough work to become a specific forensic expert in a specific part of the sciences, so some take on more than one, or experts are taken in from the original field of study. that results in that they are simply still experts in their own field of knowledge, but use it to explain parts of a crime.

it often results in that their knowledge becomes part of forensic sciences, but they are not worked by what you could call a forensic superspecialist. the solutions asked are forensics, but the expert is not directly a forensic expert. the more specialized a part of a science becomes, the harder it would be to make it into a job. it would be hard to work it as a job, because there is not enough need for it and when there is, it can be too much to handle by one person.

interference by animals is a great example of that, it asks for a lot of expertises from different fields. not only on land animals can leave traces behind, underwater too, but also nature can be a very diverse environment, that each has their own wildlife available.
and it is not only about the human remains, there often is other material too, like clothing, material used to transport a body in, all kinds of things that humans used during life, can be staying with the body too.

it is often very hard to dig a grave that can keep animals out, it is hard work, it is for most still an very unpleasant task, it must have to be done when not leaving easy to spot traces, or being noticed during doing it too. as it is manual work, it can be hard to not put your own signature in it, by leaving your own taxes by dna, fingerprints, lost things that can be retraceable to you.
soil can be hard to handle and bodies are a lot bigger than expected when you have to dig a grave. plant roots, surly from trees, makes it hard to get deep enough. the water table and weather can give extra handicaps. the tools often leave traces too.
and graves, by the soil and moisture, can hinder decomposition.

but even if you are quite successful in hiding a body, wild life can become your enemy. many have simply better quality senses than humans, we are quite poorly in these parts.
for many you just served an easy meal.

it is often very hard to put the result of animals that got access or tried that into hard facts.
but animals can be only present in specific seasons, the succession of multiple presence of animals can tell often a bit about when a body was left there. animals with specific preferences for an environment can tell if the body has been in multiple places. some animals have also a preference for living prey and would only dine on dead ones when that becomes scarce.

bodies left in the open air will usually get more attention, but it also can mean, clothing and material get easier damaged and can end up in birds nests ot that of small rodents.
even larger pieces can be transported to other places. not all animals stay around for their dinner. they only see it as feed, and it can be transported to places they have young ones staying behind.

so from the first eyes on the scene it asks a lot to take in, is it just one crime scene, or had it grown to many, is what you see really the primary scene, or a second, or more away from that. the remains will have to be registered, they will mostly be handled by a forensic pathology team. forensic entomology have usually step in too. but the area can dictate also extra knowledge is needed, what kinds of species are there around, what are their statistics.
do they transport material or not. and where can these related sites be found.
and all this will step many times into each other's fields of knowledge to bring it into one answer.

in many cases there are people with specific knowledge needed to help understand local situations. there can be voids in such knowledge, and it can take up a lot of time if you have to look into very specific details around an animal.
there could beside true wild animals, also be influences of animals that are newly introduced, the pets and farm animals, or animals 'kept’ for hunting.

the forensic pathology can usually tell if traces on remains are from before of after death. other influences from small organisms or plants can tell a bit, and also chemical processes that happen outdoors on bone, or other remains can tell the next part.

animals also have dna, so fur left behind can often tell also if animals and what species was around. some have very specific preferences for parts of the remains. not only as feed, but also to make use for other things.
so it can be very variable how to see the presence of animals as nice to make use of, or being just a very large interference that makes other things you have a need of as a tool to get to information.

it is , in my opinion a good thing to bring the full picture around a body under the umbrella of forensic ecology, it can be very hard to split up all that happens around a body to very specific fields, and certainly in the outdoors it all can hang very much together, and the traces of all these effects often follow on into a larger pattern, often with pauses in it.

it is not always ending up in facts or hard information. still it plays a much larger role in more older cases. together it still can work well if it gives enough indications to answer questions that are important in looking for who had a hand in it all at the start. being able to tell it must have been there first in the spring, is already much better as in some unknown time in a year.
it also helps when you have to ask for witnesses of all that happened around a time period.
it can help who to include or exclude in a list of possible suspects.
not to forget the more you can find of the remains of a body, that helped often also better to find out the identity.

from the earth into a tool.

geoforensics, or forensic geoscience may sounds as a modern frivolity but it is one of the oldest forensic tools in the box, at least from the more modern times. still what can be done, is usually based on old principles, but it still cannot much agree on what name it has to have.
and this too is an umbrella that covers many fields that all have a relation with the stuff that usually is under everything on earth.
there are many branches in science who look into that, but it only is called forensic if it is done with a relation to a crime.

it can be a very good source of information, certainly in old or cold cases. they are usable in a broad area of crime, but i will restrict this to cases where a body is lost or found.

the first is forensic pedology, not to mix up with other words that start with pedo or paedo, this is about earth, and all things that have a say about ‘bodies’ or masses of earth around, hand how that itself came to be there, their changes and evolution over time. mostly by natural ways to transport it. many of this is also used in soil mapping.
and the layers it is build up from.
and it is more often used from the results of this field of science for another section under geoforensics. transport is not only happening by natural forces and events, but humans are known for transporting dirt from one place to others.

so if traces of dirt show up in a crime scene, it is always nice to know where it can come from, it can not easily be done by just looking at it with the human eye only, so they make use of electron-microscopes and that is where a simple hand that just looks to be ordinary dirt becomes a picture, often very beautiful, that can tell by shape and forms many details about their origins, more and more even in full colours, but also if sample 1 is equal to sample 2, or not. and even can answer where it is to be found. It can also be tested for mineral contents, but also carbon, and small remains of biological sources.

and in the biological stuff it often gets an overlap to other expertises, like those of algae, pollen, diatoms, what are a kind of algae living in a very tiny house of glass like structures, seds or parts of them, spores.

so quite a variety between large landmasses and the extremely small particles.
it can also have interchanges with how land is used.

and that reaching into many different fields of science is very common, and it is also better so see the results of all forensic tools together, than on their own. so it is more the result of all that is possible, than just one lucky choice. the goal of all is the same, but the basic knowledge is often very different, and can be part of many other useful fields, but have made a line into forensics too. often the basic field of knowledge is already out there, but all it needs can be a silly question, sometimes just from outloud wishful thinking, that can get some minds at work to see how it can be used to get an answer or explanation in a criminal case.

and forensics is not only from the academic trained minds, many forensic tools are still the result of non academic minds that just found out a way of doing things. Even most of it is not so special, because all humans are taking bits and pieces from others and mix it to get a result they can make use of themselves. and forensics are very good in nicking such a mix, it usually never stays for long in that state of non academic at all. the academic world is very good in finding a way to shave it a bit so it can be used by others too, to fit it into a protocol to keep it doing in the same way. give it names, well it is often harder to let enough agree on the same name than study what it actually takes to make it into a usable tool.
keeping the word of forensic in it shows it is there to answer questions in criminal cases.

and the science that is building up behind it, can be massive and quite intimidating, but can result at the user side in only to have to make a switch of a button to get a result.
less easier is to put it into the package the instructions on the protocol tell you, and send it to the lab or expert, because you need to bring in a lot of patience too. tests themselves can take their time well, but back logs in research time or just that one chemical needed for the test, they all can be eating time. still it saves a lot more time if you on the user side does not have to have the same knowledge as the experts and have to do all the work yourself. and it is nice so many of these are often very willing in explaining their bit into some understandable wordings. very important because that can tell what the information can or cannot tell.

forensic pedology is often very helpful in connection materials step by step in a case. Like a sample found on a victim, that also is in a car used, or on clothing of other people, or on a weapon. It can also often tell if there was one crime scene, or more.
dirt left in footprints can found also in the shoes that left them.

all in all often mostly a tool that can show connections, than tell what exactly happened.

but we are way off in being ready with the geoforensic tools.

there also is a field called forensic geology, the difference is mostly that the forensic pedology starts with the dirt at hand, and the forensic geology starts from a finding in a criminal case, so around a body , or other material, or for where you can look with a high chance of finding a body or material you need to get answers in a case.

besides the earth itself, also a lot of human habits and behaviour walks in. most of the information they use in a case comes from aerial photography, and newer live use of drones, search dogs, often cadaver dogs, officially called victim recovery dogs, but also archaeology dogs, and all kind of equipment that does not harm a possible crime scene, and often a lot of footwork from their experienced eyes too.

and it is not only by looking at the earth or knowing what type of soil is out there, it is grown in a more complex combination. of that earth, human interventions that does leave traces of what is done and the reaction from the natural world or other influences on that all.
overlapping is very common, because most parts of a field of knowledge are also pretty small and have still use the same way of accessing an area, and many go with the not one without the other principle. also a lot of it is still driven by experiences in doing the job.
that also means you have sometimes to look for one that has more experience in specific terrains. Some have more experience with land, or specific landscapes like peat bogs, or woods, others are great when there is sea or ocean included, or rivers and others more in smaller bodies of water.

they are often send in a case by a very specific question arisen from a case, like if a body was hidden in an area of a certain square metres, where can we best look, what are the opportunities to hide a body of this and that sizes.

their line of work is certainly not restricted to cases where a body or material of serious crime against a person is possibly kept hidden. they often can be looking in cases of living people that are missing, after natural or other disasters. structures underground, smuggling of goods.

a lot of the basic knowledge of this field is also the result of looking for war graves, often mass graves, and still is.

there is often quite a range of knowledge about what humans can do in a outdoors area. like digging, if that is possible, or likely, and how that looks after that was done.
human behaviour too, because we are creatures of habits, what does lead to statistics than can be of use, and both are often even mixed.
their answers must always be taken with margins. there is most times still a lot more work to take on, before the result can be seen. and that means that it is usually up to others to set the next step. the first load of work is mostly done by interpretation, tools can be used after that to refine these insights, still it all are only tools, not giving a straight answer, that is up to more investigation, usually by other specialists in other fields.

it can be hard to get all possible kinds of terrain and areas into the same person on the job.
they can be very different, and culture is not overall the same, also animal and plant life, or land uses can be very different. the exception can be when a person is missing that has most of his life been around in a certain country, to ask a expert from that same country to look in a area that in itself is not in its own experiences, just to look with the same kind of views and behaviour.
and it does not usually stop by looking from only one perspective, besides the use a possible perpetrator can make of a specific area, if a body of a victim is left behind, that itself will have influence in that area itself.

more to come in a later post.