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Forensics For Dummies

2. Aufl.

von: Douglas P. Lyle
16,99 €
Verlag:	Wiley
Format:	EPUB
Veröffentl.:	09.05.2019
ISBN/EAN:	9781119609001
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	400

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Titelbeschreibung

Understand the real-life science behind crime scene investigation Forensics For Dummies takes you inside the world of crime scene investigation to give you the low down on this exciting field. Written by a doctor and former Law & Order consultant, this guide will have you solving crimes along with your favorite TV shows in no time. From fingerprints and fibers to blood and ballistics, you'll walk through the processes that yield significant information from the smallest clues. You'll learn how Hollywood gets it wrong, and how real-world forensics experts work every day in fields as diverse as biology, psychology, anthropology, medicine, information technology, and more. If you're interested in a forensics career, you'll find out how to break in�and the education you'll need to do the type of forensics work that interests you the most. Written for the true forensics fan, this book doesn't shy away from the details; you'll learn what goes on at the morgue as you determine cause of death, and you'll climb into the mind of a killer as you learn how forensic psychologists narrow down the suspect list. Crime shows are entertaining, but the reality is that most forensics cases aren't wrapped up in an hour. This book shows you how it's really done, and the amazing technology and brilliant people that do it every day. <ul> <li>Learn who does what, when they do it, and how it's done</li> <li>Discover the many fields involved in crime scene investigation</li> <li>Understand what really happens inside a forensics lab</li> <li>Examine famous forensics cases more intriguing than any TV show</li> </ul> Forensic scientists work in a variety of environments and in many different capacities. If you think television makes it look interesting, just wait until you learn what it's really like! Forensics For Dummies takes you on a tour of the real-world science behind solving the case. P.S. If you think this book seems familiar, you�re probably right. The Dummies team updated the cover and design to give the book a fresh feel, but the content is the same as the previous release of Forensics For Dummies (9781119181651). The book you see here shouldn�t be considered a new or updated product. But if you�re in the mood to learn something new, check out some of our other books. We�re always writing about new topics!

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1 About This Book 1 Foolish Assumptions 2 Icons Used in This Book 2 Beyond the Book 3 Where to Go from Here 3 Part 1: Cracking Open the Case 5 Chapter 1: Understanding the World of Forensic Science 7 Defining Forensics: The Science of Catching Criminals 8 Integrating science into the practice of law 8 Drawing from other sciences 9 Getting the Big Picture: Forensic Science in Action 9 Starting out small: Basic forensic services 10 Looking at physical forensic science 11 Delving into biological forensic science 11 Investigating the Crime Lab 12 Creating the first crime lab 12 Identifying common procedures 13 Peeking Inside the Criminalist’s Toolbox 15 The Cornerstone of Forensic Science: Locard’s Exchange Principle 15 Looking at Locard’s principle in action 16 Reading the trace evidence 17 Determining who did what where 17 Chapter 2: Getting to Know the Forensics Team 19 Gathering the Evidence: The Criminalist at Work 20 From Analyzing Blood to Identifying Bugs: Forensic Science Specialists 22 Forensic Investigation’s Head Honcho: The Medical Examiner 24 Looking at two forensic systems 24 Checking out the duties of a coroner or medical examiner 25 Following the medical examiner in action 26 Dealing with the Dead: The Coroner’s Technician 27 Testifying as an Expert 28 Understanding the court system 28 Getting to the heart of the “truth” 30 Understanding the role of expert testimony 30 Chapter 3: Collecting and Protecting the Evidence 33 Assessing the Scene of the Crime 33 Distinguishing between primary and secondary crime scenes 34 Arriving at a crime scene 34 Preserving and processing the scene 35 Documenting the procedure 36 Reconstructing the crime scene 37 Recognizing a staged crime scene 39 Classifying the Evidence 39 Determining whether evidence is direct or circumstantial 40 Discerning physical from biological evidence 40 Understanding reconstructive evidence 41 Identifying associative evidence 41 Differentiating class and individual evidence 41 Analyzing the evidence 43 Locating the Evidence 43 Obtaining a search warrant 44 Searching without a warrant 45 Collecting and Preserving the Evidence 46 Searching the area 46 Gathering the evidence 47 Packaging the evidence 48 Collecting control samples 48 Protecting the chain of custody 49 Locating a Missing Corpse 50 Chapter 4: Delving into the Criminal Mind 53 Defining the Role of the Forensic Psychiatric Professional 53 Differentiating forensic from clinical psychiatry 54 How the mind matters in forensics 55 Assessing the Brain 55 Getting started with a medical history and physical exam 56 Digging into the psyche 57 Asking the right questions 58 Employing dubious techniques 58 Dealing with Deception 59 Recognizing lying perps 59 Debunking the eyewitness 60 Dealing with false confessions 61 Assessing Competence and Sanity 62 Determining a defendant’s competence 63 Defining insanity, loosely 63 Tracking Serial Offenders 64 Classifying the multiple murderer 65 Making the monsters 65 Profiling the Perpetrator 68 Assessing the perpetrator’s psyche 70 Taking trophies and souvenirs 72 Distinguishing MO from signature 72 Profiling the victim: Victimology 74 Drawing boundaries: The killer’s domain 75 Linking Criminals and Crime Scenes 76 Part 2: Analyzing the Evidence 77 Chapter 5: Fingerprints: Your Personal Signature 79 Getting a Grip on Fingerprints 79 Measuring bodies: A precursor to fingerprinting 80 Using ridge patterns 83 Making Matching Easier: Classifying Prints 84 Grouping by arches, loops, and whorls 84 Developing the Henry System 86 Speeding up identification: AFIS 86 Locating Those Sneaky Prints 88 Seeking latent prints 89 Powdering the print 89 Using chemistry to expose prints 90 Cleaning up the print: Digital techniques 91 Chapter 6: Painting A Gruesome Picture: Bloodstain Analysis 93 Understanding Blood’s Character 94 Thicker than water 94 Looking into blood clotting 95 Oozing, gushing, and dripping 95 Analyzing Bloodstain Patterns 96 Finding clues in passive bloodstains 96 Analyzing projected blood spatters 98 Classifying projected spatters 100 Latching on to transfer patterns 103 Reconstructing the crime scene from bloodstains 105 Putting It All Together: A Hypothetical Case 106 Chapter 7: Leaving Impressive Impressions: Shoes, Tires, and Tools 109 Stepping Out: Shoeprints as Evidence 110 Characterizing and using shoeprints 111 Matching sole to soul — so to speak 111 Collecting shoe impressions 113 Making the match 115 Tracking Down Tires 116 Analyzing tire-track evidence 117 Obtaining tire impressions 119 Prying Clues from Tool Marks 120 Characterizing and using tool marks 120 Capturing tool impressions 121 Finding Facts in Fabrics 123 Chapter 8: Burning Down the House: Is It Arson? 125 Striking the Match: Looking into Fire-Starters 126 Determining Where and How the Fire Started 127 Using other people’s eyes and ears 128 Locating the point of origin 128 Figuring out how it happened 129 Igniting the blaze 130 Heating Things Up: Accelerants 131 Collecting samples at the scene 131 Taking it to the lab 132 Digging deeper into iffy samples 133 Drawing conclusions from testing 135 Investigating Homicidal Fires 135 Location, location, location 135 Poisoned by air 136 Evaluating Explosive Situations 137 Defining explosives 137 Investigating a bombing scene 138 Part 3: Examining the Body 139 Chapter 9: Determining the Cause and Manner of Death: Forensic Autopsies 141 Defining Death and Declaring It as Such 141 Searching for a definitive method 142 Determining the causes and mechanisms of death 143 Uncovering the four manners of death 144 Shadowing the Forensic Pathologist 145 Discovering what makes an autopsy forensic 146 Deciding who gets autopsied 146 Performing an Autopsy 148 Identifying the body 148 Conducting an external examination 148 Dissecting the body 152 Sniffing out clues in chemicals: Toxicology 155 Filing the Official Autopsy Report 155 Chapter 10: Identifying Unknown Victims 157 Identifying the Body 158 Sifting through the artifacts 159 Examining scars, birthmarks, and tattoos 160 Finding evidence of wounds or disease 160 Fingerprinting the dead 162 Checking out the choppers 162 Using DNA To Make the ID 164 Dem Bones, Dem Bones: Working with Skeletons 164 Determining whether bones are human 165 Determining age 165 Estimating stature 166 Determining sex 167 Determining race 168 Seeking individual characteristics 169 Estimating time since death 170 Handling burned bones 171 Determining cause and manner of death 171 Reconstructing Faces 173 Comparing Photographs 174 Chapter 11: Estimating the Time of Death 177 Defining Time of Death 178 Examining the Body to Estimate Time of Death 178 Measuring body temperature 178 Stiffening up: Rigor mortis 179 Getting the blues: Lividity 181 Determining the rate of decay 182 Dealing with other possibilities 186 Breaking the surface: When sinkers become floaters 186 Gazing into the eyes 187 Gathering Other Clues 187 Discovering what was on the menu 187 Getting buggy 188 Checking other scene markers 189 Chapter 12: Ouch! That Hurts: Traumatic Injuries and Deaths 191 Unleashing the Power of Guns and Gun Evidence 192 Tracking those tricky bullets 192 Studying entry and exit wounds 192 Analyzing shotgun patterns 194 Slicing, Dicing, and Stabbing 195 Taking the Hit: Blunt-Force Trauma 197 Scraping and abrading 197 Bruising and battering 198 Breaking bones 200 Getting toothy: Bite marks 202 Moaning and groaning: My aching head 204 A Shocking Situation: Electrocution 207 Wreaking havoc: Electricity’s path through your body 207 Assessing the damage 208 The R Word: Dealing with Rape 209 Conducting a rape exam 210 Dealing with fatal assaults 212 Chapter 13: Gasping for Air: Asphyxia 213 Understanding Asphyxia 213 Gasping for Oxygen: Suffocation 214 Suffocating environments 214 Smothering 215 Choking sensations 215 Applying pressure: Mechanical asphyxia 216 Suffocating gases 216 Grasping Strangulation 217 Finding common threads in strangulations 218 Hands on: Manual strangulation 218 Applying a ligature 220 Hangings 221 Inhaling Deadly Air: Toxic Gases 223 That sneaky carbon monoxide 223 Deadly cyanide 224 Getting down with sewer gas 226 Drowning: Water, Water Everywhere 226 Finding the manner of death 226 Diving deeper to identify drownings 227 Part 4: Utilizing the Crime Lab 229 Chapter 14: Analyzing Blood and Other Bodily Fluids: Serology 231 Blood: Life’s Most Precious Fluid 231 Understanding blood 232 Blood typing: The ABO system 232 Identifying a Bloodstain’s Source 233 Answering the first question: Is it blood? 234 Knowing when blood’s really human 235 Narrowing the focus: Whose blood is it? 237 Testing for Paternity 239 Inheriting your blood type 239 Determining fatherhood 240 Looking at Other Bodily Fluids 241 Checking for semen 241 Checking for saliva 243 Detecting vaginal fluid 244 Chapter 15: Looking Deep Inside: DNA Analysis 245 Opening an Instruction Manual for Your Cells 245 Understanding the nuts and bolts of DNA 246 Mine, mine, all mine: Uniqueness and DNA 247 Fingering Criminals Using DNA Fingerprints 248 Tracking down and preserving DNA 249 Looking into the genome 249 Repeating yourself: How duplication identifies you 251 Understanding the DNA Fingerprinting Process 252 Getting even smaller with SNPs 253 Making the match 254 Shedding cells: Touch DNA 256 Keeping it in the family: Familial DNA 256 Using DNA to Determine Lineage 256 Who’s yer daddy? Paternity testing 257 Who’s yer granny and granddaddy? Mitochondrial and Y-STR DNA 258 Indexing DNA: The CODIS system 261 Chapter 16: Testing for Drugs and Poisons: The Toxicology Lab 263 Understanding Poisons 263 Defining Toxicology 264 Seeking Toxins 265 Collecting samples 266 Determining the cause and manner of death 268 Examining the Testing Procedures 269 Presuming the results 270 Confirming the results 271 Interpreting the results 272 Looking at Common Drugs 274 Understanding alcohol 275 Getting down with depressants 277 Hopping up: Stimulants 278 Taking a trip with hallucinogens 279 Dirty deeds: Date rape drugs 281 Sniffing and huffing 282 Bulking up 282 Checking Out Familiar Poisons 283 Chapter 17: Picking Apart Trace Evidence 287 Defining Trace Evidence 287 Understanding Analytical Instruments 288 Peering through the microscope 289 Testing the chemical makeup of trace materials 290 Splitting Hairs: Linking Crime to Coiffure 291 Dissecting hair’s anatomy 291 Matching criminal to curly lock 292 Fiddling with Fibers 296 Classifying fibers 296 Collecting fibers 297 Comparing fibers 297 Breaking down the fiber 298 Cracking the Mysteries of Glass 298 Looking into how glass becomes evidence 299 Analyzing and matching glass 299 Breaking glass 300 Puttering with Paints 302 Dissecting paint 303 Solving the puzzle 304 Getting Down and Dirty: Soils and Plants 304 Identifying soils 304 Looking at plants and seeds 305 Chapter 18: Bang! Bang!: Analyzing Firearms Evidence 307 Figuring Out Firearms 308 Extracting Info from Ammo 309 Handling bullets 310 Breaking down bullets 310 Determining caliber and gauge 311 Shuffling through shell casings 312 Getting Groovy: Comparing Rifling Patterns 312 Understanding rifling 313 Reading the ridges 314 Searching for answers in databases 315 The Proof’s in the Powder: Gunshot Residues 316 Tracing gasses and particles 316 Testing for GSR 317 Determining distance 318 Chapter 19: Questioning the Validity of Documents 321 Analyzing Handwriting 322 Obtaining standards 323 Comparing handwriting 324 Fingering forgers 326 Exposing Alterations 327 Wiping away writing 327 Eradicating the original 327 Adding words 328 Looking for Indentions 329 Examining Papers and Inks 329 Distinguishing papers 330 Identifying inks 330 Dissecting Typewriters and Photocopiers 332 Hunting and pecking for clues 332 Finding distinctive traits in copies 333 Part 5: The Part of Tens 335 Chapter 20: Ten Famous Forensic Cases 337 Using a Homemade Ladder: The Lindbergh Kidnapping 337 Sacco and Vanzetti and Sacco’s Gun 339 Ted Bundy’s Bite Marks 340 Stella Nickell’s Trail of Fingerprints 341 Finding Fibers on Jeffrey MacDonald 342 Georgi Markov and the Lethal Umbrella 344 The Hendricks Family’s Last Meal 345 Picturing John List 346 Being Anastasia Romanov 347 Faking Hitler’s Diaries 348 Chapter 21: Ten Ways Hollywood Gets It Wrong 351 The Quick Death 351 The Pretty Death 352 The Bleeding Corpse 352 The Exact Time of Death 353 The One-Punch Knockout 353 The Disappearing Black Eye 354 The Fast-Acting Poison 354 The Untraceable Poison 355 The Instant Athlete 355 The High-Tech Lab 356 Chapter 22: Ten Great Forensic Careers 357 Criminalist 358 Crime Scene Investigator 359 Forensic Investigator 359 Forensic Pathologist 360 Forensic Pathology Technician 360 Forensic Anthropologist 361 Forensic Toxicologist 361 Fingerprint Examiner 362 Forensic Document Examiner 362 Forensic DNA Analyst 363 Index 365

Autorenportrait

D.P. Lyle, MD, is the award-winning author of many nonfiction books and works of fiction. He is the co-host of Crime and Science Radio, and has worked as a forensics consultant with the writers of popular television shows such as> Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Monk, Judging Amy, House, and Pretty Little Liars. Find him online at www.dplylemd.com.

Back cover copy

<ul> <li>Evaluate crime scene evidence</li> <li>Grasp forensics basics, from ballistics to fingerprinting</li> <li>Identify careers in forensics</li> </ul> The science behind criminal investigation Fascinated by forensics? From fingerprints and fibers to blood and ballistics, this book will have you solving crimes alongside your favorite TV shows, books, and podcasts in no time. Get a look behind the scenes to understand how evidence is collected and protected. Find out how forensics is used to identify unknown victims, estimate a time of death, and analyze traumatic injuries. From the crime scene tape to the lab, this book reveals the technology and people who work in forensics — and shows you how it's really done. inside... <ul> <li>Discover why forensics is necessary</li> <li>Get the deal on DNA analysis</li> <li>Look inside the toxicology lab</li> <li>Analyze firearms evidence</li> <li>Delve into the criminal mind</li> <li>Uncover how Hollywood gets it wrong</li> </ul>