Supermarket tampering: cocaine detected in syringes and in fruit

Product tampering, as detailed by the Federal Anti-Tampering Act of 1983 (1), is a felony punishable by both fine and imprisonment. The rationale for product tampering ranges from pranks and attention seeking acts to extortion, terrorism, and homicide. One such case submitted for analysis involved four medical syringes found in a supermarket and suspected of being used to tamper with various products. One of the syringes was found piercing a pear while the other three syringes were found with needles exposed in other parts of the supermarket. Microscopic analysis was used to collect residue from the syringe barrels and the pear. A multidiscipline approach involving SLM, PLM, including microchemical analysis, FTIR, and GC/MS analyses, performed on the residual liquid found in the syringe barrels and in the suspect pear, confirmed the presence of cocaine. This multidisciplinary approach is often necessary when there is a possible health risk to the public and rapid response is important. With this approach, it was quickly determined which drugs or poisons were used in this tampering.     

Fatal cranial injuries caused by an electric angle grinder

A case of fatal cranial injuries caused by an angle grinder is reported. The scalp lesions were typical of those produced by a cutting disk in a side-slipping movement. On the cranial vault were two bony losses of substance, one of which was deep enough for intracranial penetration of the disk. Signs of deflection of the disk, identical to those found on the scalp, were observed on the external bony table. Because of the circumstances in which the victim was discovered, in particular the damage to the machine which had a broken handle, and the lack of any indication of homicide or suicide, an accident is the most likely hypothesis.     

Building faces from dry skulls: are they recognized above chance rates?

Methods of facial approximation have successfully aided the identification of deceased individuals. Successes may be due to either accurate facial approximation techniques or chance. This study aims to determine if any of 16 facial approximations, built using standard techniques, are sufficiently accurate to produce correct identifications of target individuals above chance. Four skulls were approximated using four commonly used methods of facial approximation. The resulting 16 facial approximations were judged by 37 assessors of varying ages. Assessors attempted to identify the target individual of each facial approximation from a face pool of ten photographed faces. Only one facial approximation resulted in true positive identification rates above chance at statistically significant levels. It is concluded that it is rare for facial approximations to be sufficiently accurate to allow identification of a target individual above chance. Since 403 incorrect identifications were made out of 592 identification scenarios, facial approximation should be considered to be a highly inaccurate and unreliable forensic technique. These results suggest that facial approximations are not very useful in excluding individuals to whom skeletal remains may not belong. Evidence from this experiment supports suggestions by others that facial approximation should be used in forensic science when all other methods of identification have failed and only to provide tentative identification.     

Mobile autopsy teams in the investigation of war crimes in Kosovo 1999.

On request of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Danish-Swedish forensic teams worked in Kosovo during the summer and the fall of 1999. The teams worked mainly as "mobile teams" at sites with few graves. Only two larger sites were examined. Most of the bodies were buried separately. A few "multiple burial" graves were examined, but no mass graves were encountered. The main purpose of the autopsies was to establish the cause and manner of death. Identification was of less importance, but a majority of the bodies had been identified prior to the autopsy. A total of 308 bodies, mainly males, were examined. The age varied greatly with a mean age of 47 years. The most common cause of death was gun shot wounds and the most common manner of death was homicide.