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Intro [00:00:01] RTI International's Justice Practice Area presents Justice Science.

Intro [00:00:13] Welcome to Just Science, a podcast for justice professionals and anyone interested in learning more about forensic science, innovative technology, current research, and actionable strategies to improve the criminal justice system. In episode one of our Sexual Assault Awareness Month season, Just Science sat down with Jody West, the forensic science manager for the forensic biology section at the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, and Dr. Patricia Melton, a senior research Forensic Social Scientist at RTI International. Discuss resources aimed to help Forensic Science Service Providers increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of sexual assault kit testing. Among Forensics Science Service providers, there's a variability in how they approach testing sexual assault kits. Some conduct serology testing of samples before moving to DNA testing, while others forego initial serology for direct-to-DNA approach. Because each processing workflow has distinct costs and benefits, The National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence has developed a no-cost tool that helps forensic science service providers decide on and advocate for an approach that is efficient and feasible considering their available resources and needs. Listen along as Jody and Dr. Melton describe the varied approaches to processing workflows in the field, the challenges that forensic science service providers face when transitioning from one workflow to another, and how the FTCOE's cost-benefit analysis tool for labor expenditure associated with sexual assault kit processing workflows can foster important conversations about improving sexual assault kit testing workflows. This episode is funded by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence. Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Here's your host, Mikalaa Martin.

Mikalaa Martin [00:01:58] Hello, and welcome to Just Science. I'm your host, Mikalaa Martin, with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, a program of the National Institute of Justice. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and we'll be covering emerging topics in the realm of sexual assault response reform. On today's episode, we will discuss a cost-benefit analysis tool for improving sexual assault kit testing workflows. To guide us in today's conversation, I'm joined by our guest, Jody West, the Forensic Science Manager for the Forensic Biology section at the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, and Dr. Patricia Melton, a Senior Research Forensics Social Scientist at RTI International. Welcome to Just Science, Jodi and Patti. We appreciate you taking out the time to be with us today.

Dr. Patricia Melton [00:02:45] Thank you for having me.

Jody West [00:02:46] Thank you for having me.

Mikalaa Martin [00:02:47] So to kick off today's episode, I'd love for you both to share a bit about yourselves and your professional journey to where you are today. Jodi, would you mind getting us started?

Jody West [00:02:56] My first exposure to forensics was an internship that I had there my college years at the crime mob here in North Carolina. That was in 2002. So there my internship, I got some general exposure to the field of forensics. It wasn't something that was really on my career radar. But once I got exposed to it and saw some of the ins and outs of what happens in the crime laboratory, it definitely piqued my interest. So toward the end of my internship program, I was offered a contract position as a technician within the forensic biology section, essentially. So I began that portion of my career in 2003. Fast forward a few years. I then transitioned into a supervisor within the forensic biology section where I supervise a team of analysts who also perform casework. 2014 I then took another transition. I transitioned into the section manager and my primary role and responsibilities for as the section manager were to oversee the day-to-day operations of the forensic biologist section. I spent that role for about 10 and a half years and just recently as of a couple weeks ago transitioned into a new role within the laboratory system as a laboratory grants manager.

Mikalaa Martin [00:03:52] Thank you for sharing, Jodi, and congratulations on your new tour and decision. And Patti, can you share a little bit about your journey as well to where you are today?

Dr. Patricia Melton [00:04:01] So, my PhD is in genetics. And at that time, back in the dark ages, when I started my career in forensic science, we didn't have the feedback accredited processes. It was interesting trying to get my foot in the door into the crime laboratory sector because I don't think people really knew what to do with it. So I actually landed first at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, where I had just started and then September 11 happened. And so AFDIL was one of the primary laboratories to work the Pentagon and the Somerset cases from that incident. So I spent several years at AFDL in human identification work and then transitioned over to the crime laboratory sector up in Maryland as a Baltimore County PD in lab there for several years performing sexual assault cases, homicides, property crimes, you know, those types of things and testifying to those results. But I left the crime laboratory sector, believe it or not, about a decade ago now and landed here at RTI International. And here in this particular role, I spend my time primarily trying to bridge the gap between what happens in research and to practitioners. So the bulk of my work is associated with creating best practices and helping to implement those best practices. So that could involve training, technical assistance, workshop construction, educational platforms. But basically, having come from the crime laboratory sector, I know what it's like. The folks are inundated with casework. It is the font that never turns off. In fact, if anything, it only increases. As the technology gets better, so do the demands. And so what I find rewarding about the work that I do here at RTI International is really bringing in together, recognizing that we know, as practitioners, You don't have the time to figure out some of these things, but we can. And so we can really help bridge that gap and help you take the most advantage of technology that's out there, creates sustainable processes, and hopefully more efficient processes as Mikalaa Martin [00:05:53] Thank you, Patty, and we're lucky to have you and your experiences here at RTI. So to provide some context for our listeners, Jodi, can you provide an overview of the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, including the services that you provide and then the general structure of the laboratory as well?

Jody West [00:06:10] North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, we are a multi laboratory state system. So we have three laboratories throughout our state. We have our central laboratory here in Raleigh, which is the state capital of North Carolina. Then we have two satellite laboratories, one of which is that we call it our Triad Laboratory, which in the Greensboro area, which about an hour and a half west of Raleigh. Then, we have our Western Laboratory, in a small town called Edneville, which is about three and a four hours west of our mountains. The three labs together are of our system. The Raleigh Laboratory is considered a full-service laboratory, so we have all the forensic disciplines to include firearms, digital evidence, latent evidence, forensic biology, trace evidence, drug chemistry, and toxicology. And then our Tri Laboratory, which is one of our satellite labs, has latent evidence drug, chemistry, toxicology, and then our Western Laboratory has latent-evidence, forensic-biology, drug-chemistry, and-toxicology. So in total, the three laboratory system, we serve hundreds of all course agencies throughout our state across all 100 counties in our state. So we have, as Dr. Melton mentioned, we have plenty of work that comes into our laboratory on an annual basis.

Mikalaa Martin [00:07:12] Thank you, Jodi. And one other kind of follow-up question that I have is do you know off the top of your head how many staff members are employed for the forensic biology sections?

Jody West [00:07:22] In our western laboratory there are nine forensic biology positions and then in the Raleigh laboratory there about 25 total forensic biology positions.

Mikalaa Martin [00:07:31] Perfect, thank you. And I'd like to frame our discussion around the varied workflow approaches that laboratories may employ when processing evidence from sexual assault kits. Patti, can you provide some background on these varied processing workflows? So.

Dr. Patricia Melton [00:07:46] And in a nutshell, I would say that I would divide the workflows between those that conduct serology screening and those that don't. So let's start there. Let's kind of make two buckets. Those that are using serology, screening and those that are using what we call a direct to DNA approach. Laboratories might call it something a little bit different, but in the serology screening side of the house, this is where serology is done first as a first triage on samples. Now serology is not DNA testing. Many other people listening to this podcast probably know that, but for those who don't, serology is actually looking at biological fluids, presence or absence of biological fluids and using that information to then make a judgment or an assessment on what samples could go forward for DNA testing. So you're looking at something a little bit differently there. Often serology screening or the serology step is what we kind of call red light, green light, or could potentially be a hard stop. After the serology testing is done, when that evaluation is completed, some samples or samples in the sexual assault kit, for example, may not move forward for DNA testing at all. But if they do move forward, for DNA, testing, that's when the DNA extraction process takes place in this normal DNA analysis process takes. Now, within this bucket of doing serology first, before moving on to DNA testing, you can have a process where a certain number of samples that meet the serology screening criteria are moved forward for the DNA testing. Like perhaps is three. We're going to take the top three or we take the top five. A laboratory can use their discretion and their validation studies to determine how many they want to move forward. The other side of the coin to that is something called continuous sampling. And what we mean by that is that although you might take your first top three serology samples and move them forward for DNA, perhaps in that DNA testing process, the results aren't as great as you expected. Maybe there's some complications there, things like degradation and inhibition terms that make us DNA analysis cringe just a little bit, because we know that implies additional work and additional analysis. Not that we don't mind the work, but it's just more complicated. But in continuous sampling, if those initial DNA testing samples do not yield an informative DNA profile or a CODIS eligible profile, then we go back. We go back to that sexual assault kit. We say, okay, I have those serology samples, took our top three, what else was there?

What else could we try? So this continuous sampling process means you keep going back until you either one, get a CODIS eligible profile, or two, exhaust the samples and evidence that's available to you. So that's kind of the first bucket. Second bucket is no serology is conducted. So we're going right to DNA. So we are taking those samples,

we're gonna go ahead and just extract the DNA based on what we see in the sexual assault kit, move it forward, see what we get. And again, the prime laboratory may decide that the best thing to do is I'm gonna look through the sexual salt kit, I'm evaluating the evidence that's in here, and I'm gonna take the top three. This is my top three, and we move it forward for DNA. If they get a CODIS eligible profile, great. If they don't, again, they can either stop, depending on their policy, or go to something that we call continuous sampling. So yet again, we go back to the sexual assault, can we say, okay, my top 3 didn't yield anything probative, I didn't get a CoDIS-eligible profile, I don't have enough information to move this case forward. Let me see, what other samples did I have? Could there be something more I could do? This continuous sampling process is, in my opinion, ideal, but also time consuming and complicated for the laboratory to implement. Now, just to throw a little monkey wrench into everything there, because it sounded so nice and neat, right? Two buckets, serology, then DNA, or no serology right to DNA. Some laboratories who are moving right to DNA who skip that serology step, do keep serology testing online in the event that a prosecutor's office comes back and says, well, this is great. You got me a DNA profile. That's wonderful. But what biological fluid did it come from? I need that for my case. They can always go back and do the serology at that point. And it's very effective to do that and helps kind of keep everybody in your multidisciplinary team happy with what you can provide to them to best support their case.

Mikalaa Martin [00:11:48] And Jodi, so to tie this back to North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, you guys have been using direct to DNA approach for processing sexual assault kits since 2018. Can you tell us a little bit about the former processing workflow that was utilized, what prompted the transition to direct to dna, and then the general experience of transitioning that processing approach?
Jody West [00:12:11] Yes. So like Dr. Melton mentioned, we had a previous workflow prior to direct to DNA, which was, I guess, your more traditional workflow in the laboratory where we would do the serology screen upfront. That would guide us what samples would move forward to DNA. So like Dr Melton said, we'd do it on the front end. So we would typically do your typical serology testing first, whether it be the AP tests or acid phosphatase test is this main screen tool for semen testing. And then we'd follow it up with microscopic examination for confirmation needed in those samples that would confirm and say the presence semen on would then move forward most of the time to DNA testing. So that was our traditional workflow. We were very much segmented where we had a group of analysts who were just serology tests, did the serology testing, then we would pass it on to the group of analysts who would do the DNA testing, so that was our historical workflow.

Then we decided to move forward with some different testing or direct to DNA approach. I would liken it back to our DNA testing at that point in time. Historically, a lot of our DNA extractions were done manually without the use of robotics, which was definitely a time-consuming process, but we did, in 2014, implement some robotics into our extraction process, which definitely made our process more efficient. Well, at the same time, our differential extractions, even after the robotics introduction, our differential extractions where that separation was still by manual process. So, we introduced some technology and made it more efficient, but, we still had a manual differential process in place. So in 2018, we did implement a direct-to-DNA approach and testing sexual assaults in our laboratory. We had heard about the concepts of directed DNA in professional conferences and in literature and presentations we've seen over the years prior. So we wanted to begin to explore that as an option in our laboratory. And many times along the lines with directed DNA approach, you have laboratories that have some sort of Y screening process or YSTR screening process in place. And we looked at different vendor options and we didn't really like the options that were available to us at the time. We're looking for something that we can help streamline our workflow where we could essentially go one way, a direct one way flow of the evidence in our laboratory versus having to circle back to the original evidence multiple times. So we ultimately decided not to implement a Y screening process initially in our directed DNA approach. So we did ultimately decide to implement the directed DNA approach and eliminate the serology testing or serology screening on the front end. When we were processing our sexual assault kits, we felt like this was a much more effective and efficient process and literally leveraging the DNA technology, which is far more sensitive than the serology technology as the main screening tool versus the serological testing. So when we did implement the direct-to-denial process, we at the same time brought online additional automation that helped with the differential process.

So we essentially automated that manual differential process at the time, which definitely added some increased efficiencies in our processing. So that was the technology we implemented. So we also looked at and reached out to other laboratories who already had a direct-denier process in place. We kind of get their ideas of how they designed their workflow in the laboratory, how they categorized certain case types over the others. So we ultimately found some models that we liked and we implemented our categorized sexual assault cases into two different categories depending upon the number of contributors that were potentially involved in the case. So that helped us kind of triage how to treat certain cases over the other. It kind of helped us make some more informed decisions about how many samples we would take forward after the quantitation step. We implemented a model and we put it in place and we just went with it. It was definitely transition period for us. It definitely had its challenges at times. Some of the challenges are coming from internally.

We have analysts in the laboratory with many years of experience, including myself being one of them. Their career was started in the serology field and just they did serology for years and taking the serolgy away from them kind of felt like they're losing part of themselves along with it. That definitely had some internal challenges we faced, but it's kind of helping everybody see the bigger picture where we could process more sexual assaults and doing it in a much more efficient manner by using the DNA technology versus the traditional methods. At the same time, we also have some challenges communicating to our external stakeholders because we do work in the laboratory, implement technologies in the laboratories, but then we also had to worry about the end product or end users. So that's going to be our law enforcement agencies as well as our district attorneys. We're the ones ultimately in charge with prosecuting and taking these cases forward to court. We did provide some training opportunities to our district attorney's ahead of time to kind of let them know, hey, this is coming. We're implementing these changes.

These are the reasons why. And for us, we had the NIJ had published a publication that kind of laid this out as a preferred method or the best method to move forward testing sexual assaults. And we also had in the DNA community, we have our SWGNAM guidelines that were implemented or put out there as well that had a similar theme where direct DNA is a preferred and much more effective in processing and processing sexual assault kits. So we use this information and put it out there to our stakeholders to try and get some buy-in to it. And overall, I think it was a very effective change and very great benefits for our laboratory as well as our criminal justice system to have this process in place so that we can get these kids tested in a much more efficient manner. So also kind of piggyback on what Dr. Melton said, while we took the serology portion testing out of our workflow, we do still have the ability to do serology testing in our laboratory. So if I say a handful of cases a year, we'll get a request from the district attorney's office to go back and do some additional serology, testing as needed on some cases as they're preparing for trial, where we have a profile that may have been uploaded to CODIS or may have had a profile, that matched a person of interest in a case, but they wanted some additional information to kind of tie things together for the jury. Where did that DNA come from? So what source or what body fluid did it come from? We do have the ability in our lab and do it on occasion to go back and do the serology testing as needed after the DNA testing

Mikalaa Martin [00:17:39] Thank you, Jodi. I appreciate all that information, and I really like your theme of really relying on the community of practice and leaning on early adopters, other laboratory systems. I know that you mentioned you looked around at the models and essentially you landed on a model that was implemented in 2018. I am curious, were there any modifications that have been made since the initial implementation of that model in 2018?

Jody West [00:18:02] And yes, we have made some modifications to our process. Well, we implemented a direct DNA process in 2018. We all realize it wasn't the end product. It wasn't where exactly we wanted it to be. And we knew that there were some efficiencies and different changes we can make down the road with the hopes of a wide screening process becoming available that we like to fit our workflow. So in 2022, we did indeed establish a wide screening process that allowed us to essentially direct AMP from the actual lysate from the original samples and to help us skip the DNA extraction process in a large number of our sexual assault kit samples. So that is something that we've implemented, like I said, in 2022. And over time, we've also made some tweaks here and there to our process. So we're always looking for areas of improvement, areas in which we can improve our process and make things more efficient. As new technologies come about or as in practice, we learn more about our cases and learn more how they function in our laboratory, we make more informed decisions as we go along the way in the process. So yes, we have made some modifications to our

Mikalaa Martin [00:18:58] And Jodi, would you be able to talk a little bit more about some of the information and the key considerations that really drove the laboratory to consider transitioning their processing workflow?

Jody West [00:19:10] When we were planning or looking at different models of direct-to-DNA approaches, we're doing that in considering what the information we were seeing and hearing from throughout the forensic community as it relates to sexual assault kit testing and particularly backlogs that were being identified in states throughout the country, as well as legislation that was being adopted in some states mandating the testing of sexual assault kits. While at the time we did not have any kind of legislation in our state or nor did we really truly know what our backlog of untested kits were, we were trying take a proactive approach and try to get ahead of anything that could be coming our way and try to make our laboratory processes as efficient as possible in case we saw an increased submission of kits coming our in the future. In 2019, we did have legislation that was adopted in our state that mandated the testing of all sexual assault kits. And once that legislation passed, we didn't see a dramatic increase in sexual assault kit missions in our laboratory. So the fact that we were proactive and adopted a direct DNA approach prior to this passing, it did help to a point making our processes efficient and laboratory and being able to test more sexual assault kits than we had previously.

Mikalaa Martin [00:20:13] Thank you, Jody. And one other thing that had stood out to me in your former answer was the end user training when you were making that transition.
Could you talk a little bit more about the training that was provided for your end users when you're bringing that process online?

Jody West [00:20:28] Yes, as a laboratory, we try to communicate to our stakeholders as frequently as possible. Like I said in my introduction, we serve 100 counties in our state,

and that includes hundreds of different law enforcement agencies and dozens of different district attorney's offices throughout our state. So communication to stakeholders is critical. So we try anytime there's any significant changes coming along to our technologies or to maybe what the end result will look like or end results look like, we tried to communicate those changes ahead of time so that people can be aware of what's coming. There were several instances in which we were able to meet with district attorneys at their annual conferences to provide them some information and literature about here's what's coming, here's some different references that are available that we model our technologies after.

So the upfront communication is critical. Now, just because we have communicated that to our stakeholders upfront, doesn't mean that we haven't had to continue to update them along the way. Cause many times the case takes a couple of years, two, three years to actually make it to trial. So they might not remember what we necessarily said or provided them through two or three years prior as far as technology. So it's not a one-time thing. It's something that's a continual communication with our stakeholders and hey, here's our changes. And here's some challenges you may face in court or some questions that may pop up. But to keep that open lines of communication between the two entities is very important.

Mikalaa Martin [00:21:40] That's wonderful. Thank you, Jodi. So let's dive into discussing the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence's Cost-Benefit Analysis Tool for Labor Expenditure associated with Sexual Assault Kit processing workflows. Patti, as a core member of the Tools Development Team, could you provide an overview of this resource and its aims?

Dr. Patricia Melton [00:22:00] So this tool was originally developed because, you know, you can tell from listening to what Jody's been talking about from their experience in the crime lab. Whenever you're making these large changes in workflows, there's a lot of discussion to take place. Some of those discussions are based around financial restraints, quite honestly. And so how do we figure out a way to have those types of conversations? How much resources, whether that be fiscal resources or personnel in an already tightly conserved system be shifted to what's probably a front-end investment for hopefully a long-term return on investment? But when you're talking about finances in a constrained system, that's a hard conversation to have, right? So what this tool does is a freely available tool. It's on the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence website. So anyone can access it. And it does require you to put in some labor salary type inputs from your crime laboratory. It's not a huge lift. It should be information that a crime laboratory representative has relatively easy access to. So if you are a crime laboratory that is doing one of the serology workflows and you're looking to say, well, as Jodi mentioned, this is a national recommendation to move to a directed DNA approach. We see the value in it even, but what's it going to cost us to get us there? And how are we going to the cape for that type of funding. What's really involved? What are we really looking at here from that fiscal standpoint? So this tool allows you to put in some inputs depending on the type of workflow that you're already in and what workflow do you want to go to and basically number chugs for you. And it produces a report that you can use to have a conversation with other key stakeholders like state legislators, for example, to say, this is the best we can do for sexual assault victims in our community. We should move to this new workflow

approach. But it is going to have an investment on the front end. We're going to need to do some changes and these changes are roughly going to cost X amount of dollars. But then coming on the other side, we expect a return on investment that looks like X, for example. So it really helps facilitate those conversations. It doesn't break down a lot of the deeper nuances like Jodi was referring to. Those are components that are going to come out as you make your shift, but it helps start that process so that when start to think about as a crime laboratory, what are all the things I need to think about to make this transition, to make this change, if this tool helps you start that conversation and helps cue you into a more effective process for thinking about and deriving solutions to those other nuances. So it's intended to be a helpful get start, but certainly not the deeper dive, because those nuances that Joey talked about, for example, looks like a certain way in his laboratory, but those nuances could look very different in another type of laboratory. But again, it's to help assist with going to what is a national best practice of a direct to DNA approach.

Mikalaa Martin [00:24:48] And this tool has been out since 2022, but recently had a facelift that just went live last month. Patty, could you talk a little bit about the updates that have been made to the tool?

Dr. Patricia Melton [00:25:00] Primarily, the updates made to the tool, the facelift that you refer to, really enhances the user end experience, right? It makes it a little bit more intuitive to use, a little easier to use and it guides you through the inputs of the tool in a much more concise manner, which I really appreciate. I haven't been on the developing end. When you look at something a million times, it makes perfect sense to you. Then, of course, when you put it out there and someone looks at it for the first time, there's a lot of questions that come up. So those were addressed as best that they could. But this upgrade, this new facelift, really helps guide the user through and really improves the user experience. It makes the tool much easier to use. Also the report that it generates, in my opinion, is also easier to interpret.

Mikalaa Martin [00:25:37] And Jody, you and your colleagues were integral members in helping inform the development of this tool all the way back in 2022. Can you share any highlights from your involvement in building the ground up for this resource?

Jody West [00:25:51] So in 2022, we were asked to complete a questionnaire as it relates to sexual assault kit testing within our laboratory. The questionnaire contained several different metrics and inputs that we needed to provide that can kind of help guide the development of the cost benefit tool for this processing method. So our laboratory provided the metrics that were requested. Those metrics could include things about salary of different levels of analysts within our laboratories as well as the number of cases that we would typically receive in a year, as well a number of case that we typically would complete in a and then within that further dive into the metrics we were then asked to provide certain information as it relates to each step of the laboratory process and how long it takes to do certain tasks and how many samples would be moving along in different parts of the process. So we completed the questionnaire and then the questionnaire looking at the way the questionnaire was originally structured it looks very similar to where the calls tool is now that we see and that is available for use now.

Mikalaa Martin [00:26:43] Thank you, Jody. And as a follow up, do you see your laboratory using this resource in the future to assist with any additional workflow, budget, or internal cost benefit analysis considerations?
Jody West [00:26:55] I definitely do. This tool is something that's definitely can be very useful in helping budgeting and planning for the future. It's definitely when you can put numbers to things about how much things cost because there are financial constraints that you always have to be aware of. I mean, it's definitely a very useful tool and I can definitely see our laboratory benefiting from using it in the future

Mikalaa Martin [00:27:14] That's great to hear. And we are very thankful to have you involved in the development of the tool as well. And Patty, kind of same question on your end. Moving forward, how do you envision this resource impacting the field or assisting in sexual assault response reform? What do you think may be next on the horizon?

Dr. Patricia Melton [00:27:32] I think for this particular tool, what I do like about it is the original design, again, was for a crime laboratory to work their way through making that big change from a serology-based workflow to a direct-to-DNA-based workflow. But as Jodi mentioned, the tool can actually be used for other nuances as you evolve your workflow processes in the crime lab, which is important. Considering the new technologies that keep coming out, forensic DNA analysis is one of the most fastest moving technology fields out there. It can be, quite frankly, exhausting for a crime laboratory to keep up with it. And the demands are incredibly hot. So I think that this tool does help with planning for the future or looking freely available. Take it, generate your report for whatever nuance you're looking at. Saves time for the crime laboratory to make some of those assessments. And you can take that information up to your leadership or to your committee meetings so that you can more appropriately plan for what needs to happen in the future. As far as what's on the horizon, I think that I remain excited about sexual assault response reform in our nation. I think the strides that we have taken as a nation over the last couple of decades have been incredibly important. We continue to evolve, we continue to strive for best practices, national recommendations, and efficiencies that help support our communities by improving public safety, but also supporting our members of sexual violence. And the ripple effect of sexual violence is massive. We're not just talking about an individual sexual assault survivor, right? That crime against them impacts members of their family and members of the community. Again, the ripples are massive. So I do remain excited that we continue to have a national focus on addressing sexual violence. I think that it's important to public safety. And I really appreciate the emerging research that has come out with sexual violence, we understand so much more about these types of offenders and the types of other types of crimes they're committing. It's easier to say what we all knew, anecdotally, but now we have the evidence base to support the fact that if you apprehend early on sexual assault predators and offenders, you're preventing additional violent crimes. And I think that's an important message for public safety.

Mikalaa Martin [00:29:44] Thank you, Patty. And I think you brought it full circle. I know, Jody, you said your laboratory relied on looking at some of the national best practices. So it's kind of this ecosystem of the more we learn, the more can put out to help laboratories grow and evolve their processes. Jody do you have any lessons learned or insights that you'd like to share with other laboratory systems that may be interested in transitioning their sexual assault kit evidence processing workflow to one that involves a direct-to-DNA approach.

Jody West [00:30:15] Yeah, because like I said previously, be sure to communicate the needs for change or the factors that are driving the need for change with your stakeholders and listen to what the community is saying, what other people are doing in the community, because we're not in this alone. Every lab has the same challenges as far as workload and trying to keep up with the demand. But I don't think you can communicate the need change or information with your stakeholders enough. I think it's something that you constantly have to do, constantly work on communicating those needs and the reasons for the change with their stakeholders. From a laboratory's perspective, when making work changes or workflow changes, understand that the initial change or modification you made to a procedure isn't necessarily going to be the perfect end state. There's always going to be ways you can change or improve along the way and that's okay. Small changes along

the way are something that's maybe necessary and needed. Don't try to develop the perfect process initially because time can go by and you can waste time and may never find that perfect state to begin with. Just get started on something and then make changes as you go as you learn more information or learn more things, get more experience in the process, make those changes as necessary along the way, and that's okay.

Mikalaa Martin [00:31:14] Wonderful, and as we near the end of our time together, do you guys have any final thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners before we wrap up today's episode? And Patty, I'll pass it over to you for any final thought, final takeaways.

Dr. Patricia Melton [00:31:28] I really want to thank everyone in the community, you know, Jody and his team at the crime laboratory, all the crime laboratories and investigators, advocates, and district attorneys, prosecutors who worked. So diligently to address sexual violence in our communities. As Sexual Assault Awareness Month for April, I just wanna say thank you. And I appreciate all of the efforts and I appreciate the continuous process of trying to fine tune and improve and always looking onto that next horizon as to what could be our best approach, what could make us better. So thank you for all that you're doing.

Mikalaa Martin [00:32:00] And Jodi, any final thoughts or takeaways to share with our listeners today?

Jody West [00:32:05] I would like to give a thank you to our crime laboratory staff here in our laboratory that have worked diligently over the years to play a small part in the sexual assault kit process and the testing initiatives that are out there. I would just join other crime laboratories out there and say thank you too organizations like RTI who are out helping push the information out there, providing the resources to the crime laboratories like us who, Dr. Melton said previously, we're limited in our time and resources. Having tools that are developed for us to use is something that's a great benefit to our laboratories and we appreciate it.
Mikalaa Martin [00:32:33] Well, it has been a pleasure talking with you both today, Jodi and Patti. I truly appreciate your time for sharing your expertise with us. Thank you for having me.

Jody West [00:32:43] Thank you for having me as well.

Mikalaa Martin [00:32:44] If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like and follow JustScience on your platform of choice. For more information on today's topic and resources in the Forensic Science field, visit Forensicoe.org. I'm Mikayla Martin, and this has been another episode of JustScience.

Outro [00:33:03] Next week, Just Science sits down with Regina Wells and Whitney Collins of the Kentucky State Police Central Forensic Laboratory to discuss a pilot study that evaluated the use of rapid DNA for sexual assault kit testing. Opinions or points of views expressed in this podcast represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.
 

guide for the investigators, as well as for people that just want to learn about death and investigation, like Jen mentioned.

Kelly Keyes [00:36:31] Well, as we wrap up, I want to give each of you just an opportunity for any last parting thoughts.

Dr. Jennifer Snippen [00:36:36] Thanks, Kelly. It's been fun to visit with you and Chuck today, and I just keep being reminded that the quality of any death investigation and the quality of any decisions that are made during the course of a death investigation are going to be completely dependent on the quality of information that we use, the quality information that we obtain to make those decisions. And so this document is just another step towards improving the attention to detail and the types of information we might need to gather at a scene to help us make informed decisions, to give our very best data to public health and our very best informed decisions to the criminal justice system. So I'm pretty excited about how this may be helping in tiny little ways across the country. That will all add up to an improvement in death investigation. And I want to thank the NIJ and the CDC for prioritizing this, and for continuing to acknowledge the importance of death investigation and provide federal support for this important work. So thanks for having me here and be exciting to see what all what all we can do with this guide moving forward.

Kelly Keyes [00:37:39] Very well stated, Chuck. Any parting thoughts for listeners?

Chuck Heurich [00:37:43] Sure. And echoing Jen, NIJ and myself being involved with the project, we were and are very excited about this update and also excited about the future updates and what we might be able to add to this resource for death investigators. But I want to emphasize that it's just that it's a resource and we're happy to provide it. And we hope it's helpful for death scene investigation. We hope it's helpful to talk to and educate legislators and policymakers about the vast amount of resources that are needed in this community, and that death investigation needs and deserves to do proper death investigation for the public, Most importantly, I think we need to for the people listening to this podcast. We need to understand that the most important resource in death investigation are the people doing it. And we need to make sure that we take care of them. And that's what we tried to incorporate into this guide as well. We have a responsibility to make sure that the people doing this job have what they need, and this guide is just a small piece of that.

Kelly Keyes [00:38:50] Well, thank you again, Jen and Chuck, for being here and talking about this guide. We will put a link to obtaining the guide in the notes for Just Science, but I will remind the listeners that it is National Institute of Justice's Death Investigation. A Guide For The Scene Investigator. Thank you everyone for listening.

Outro [00:39:10] Next season, Just Science will release episodes covering various topics for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Opinions are points of views expressed in this podcast, represent a consensus of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.

H

Introduction [00:00:01] RTI International's Justice Practice Area Presents Just Science. Welcome to Just Science, a podcast for justice professionals and anyone interested in learning more about forensic science, innovative technology, current research and actionable strategies to improve the criminal justice system. In the final episode of our case study season Just Science sat down with Ashleigh Berg, senior forensic investigator for the Denton County Sheriff's Office, to discuss a capital murder case where a combination of a variety of forensic evidence types aided the resolution of the case. When a homicide occurs in a dynamic environment, like inside a moving vehicle that was involved in two car crashes, it can pose challenges for reconstructing the timeline of events and differentiating incident related evidence from post-incident artifacts. For a fatal shooting case that took place in Denton, Texas, forensic practitioners needed to utilize a wide range of forensic evidence such as bloodstain patterns, surveillance footage and real time tracking data to help locate the suspect and provide insight to the investigative questions in the case. Listen along as Ashleigh describes her role in collecting and analyzing evidence in this capital murder case, the importance of considering all evidence and forensic findings in the context of a case, and how a combination of physical and digital evidence was crucial in bringing this case to justice. This episode is funded by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence. Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Here's your host, Mikalaa Martin.

Mikalaa Martin [00:01:40] Hello and welcome to Just Science. I'm your host, Mikalaa Martin, with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, a program of the National Institute of Justice. On today's episode, we will discuss a capital murder case that occurred in Denton, Texas, where a variety of forensic evidence, including surveillance footage, real time tracking data and bloodstain patterns, played a crucial role in locating the suspect, reconstructing the timeline of events, and answering the major investigative question in the case. Joining us today to discuss this case study is Ashgleigh Berg, a senior forensic investigator with the Denton County Sheriff's Office. Welcome to Just Science, Ashleigh.
We appreciate you taking our time to sit down with us today.

Ashleigh Berg [00:02:25] I thank you for having me.

Mikalaa Martin [00:02:27] So, Ashleigh, to kick off today's episode, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to becoming a forensic investigator?

Ashleigh Berg [00:02:35] So I have been with the Denton County Sheriff's Office since December 4th of 2013. I came here from another agency where I spent three and a half years building a crime lab. I kind of always knew this is what I was going to do. It's what I went to school for. I have an associate's and bachelor's degree with split majors in forensic science and criminal psychology. And then I have a master's in forensic psychology before I went into the police academy to become a sworn law enforcement officer. I spent time in undergrad in the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office in human ID and AFIS. That's where I started my fingerprint training. And then also spent a year with the Grand Prairie Crime Scene Unit training in CSI before I graduated. As far as being an investigator at this, I actually my career has been very good to me. A lot of people spent years on patrol before they get the opportunity to come into the crime lab. But because of the specialized education and training that I had coming out of the academy, I was actually brought straight into CID to work in the crime lab. So I've spent the entirety of my career in investigations and forensics and began bloodstain training, reconstruction training almost from the jump.

Mikalaa Martin [00:03:48] So you've had experience on a little bit of everything. A jack of all trades almost. That's awesome to hear. So you wear many hats, including serving as an instructor for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, or TCLE, serving as a course content developer and instructor for Texas A&M Texas Engineering Extension Service, or TEEX, the Texas Forensic Science Academy, and serving as a member of the Association for Crime Scene Reconstruction, or ACSR. Can you tell us a little bit about these entities and the roles that you assume on them?

Ashleigh Berg [00:04:21] So as an investigator and instructor for TCLE, that is our state agency that licenses law enforcement here in Texas. That is a license that you go to class and you get an instructor license so that you can teach here in this state. So I teach various courses, crime scene courses and other courses here to other law enforcement, which enables me to also teach for TEEX. So TEEX runs the Forensic Science Academy, which is my certificate level program where we teach other officers various aspects of forensic science. And so I get to travel the state and I teach courses in bloodstain pattern analysis, latent prints, forensic photography, crime scene investigation, various forensic topics. I also work as a subject matter expert to develop courses in those topics as well.

So it's a great I love forensics and I have dedicated my life to it. So I spend my work hours working in forensics. And then when I'm off, I'm also working in forensics with organizations like ACSR, and IABPA the International Association for Blood Stain Pattern Analysts. When you rise to the expert level, one should expect their experts to be involved in professional and international organizations in their respective fields, or they purport to be an expert. That's where we are keeping up with our training and staying on the cusp of what is happening in our field. So with ACSR and Crime Scene Reconstruction, I was a member of the board of directors. I served my term there. I have now come off the board and I currently serve as the membership chair for that association.

Mikalaa Martin [00:05:53] Thanks so much for sharing additional information on that. And let's go ahead and dive into today's case study. So to provide some context for our listeners, can you provide an overview of this case and how law enforcement was first alerted to the incident?

Ashleigh Berg [00:06:08] Sure. So this case actually came in through dispatch as a crash report to the city of Denton. That kind of confuses people. I worked for Denton County, and then the city of Denton is the county seat in Denton county. And so that can be confusing. I work at the sheriff's office. This was a city of Denton case that I consulted on. So this came into the city as a crash report. Initially, a vehicle had crashed into another vehicle on Interstate 35. And then witnesses initially told dispatch that a female was seen hanging out of the open passenger door of the vehicle that a male had come out. She was pulled back in the vehicle and the vehicle drove away. A little further down I-35, this vehicle is involved in the second crash and a male is seen exiting the vehicle through the passenger side door, which is left open. And he crossed over the median, which was a concrete barrier, crossed several lanes of oncoming traffic and ran off into a wooded area. That's how the call comes in. When first responders arrived, they located a female in the front passenger seat. Her lower body was in the floor board and her upper body was in the passenger seat. And they began treating her and then discovered that she had gunshot wounds to the head. So that changed the dispatch for the call. So patrolman began looking for this male that had fled the scene. And then from there, he was seen in several places. He contacted a female at a nearby apartment complex. I believe he asked to come in and use her phone. By this time, he was barefoot. He had several visible scratches, small injuries to his body, and she did not want to let him into her apartment. But she gave him a pair of slide shoes and she offered to get him an Uber. I think at that time she believed that he had been in some kind of fight with someone, that he was trying to get away from someone. So she gets him an Uber. He tells her he wants to go to Dallas. She orders him an Uber and he gets into the Uber and leaves the area. A little while later Denton PD is patrolling the area and a maintenance man says they saw him and he was talking to this woman at such and such apartment. They make contact with her and she says, yes, in fact, she did see him. This is what he was wearing. She gave him an Uber ride. And because of the app, they were able to see in real time, like where that Uber actually was with him in the vehicle. Uber gave him the option in the app, I believe, to contact the driver with him in the car. They decided they were not going to do that because they didn't want to create a hostage situation. Not knowing exactly what happened or what was going on. So Denton PD contacted Dallas PD, gave them the information, and Dallas PD was waiting when the suspect reached his final destination, which was a trailer park in an area of Dallas. They would find out later that his mother lived in one trailer with his sister and his grandmother lived in the trailer next door. Dallas PD was waiting when he exited the trailer and he was taken into custody when he came outside by himself. Then Denton PD arrived a short time later and they were able to do a transfer of custody at that time. In the meantime, back at the scene, the female is transported from the scene. She is pronounced deceased at the hospital. She has what they learned were three gunshot wounds to her head. The scene is processed, the cars towed, and they do find a fired cartridge case on the ground, on the highway after they tow the vehicle and then they tow the vehicle back to Denton PD for processing. The case kind of progresses from there.

Mikalaa Martin [00:09:57] That was a great overview and there is already so much happening in this case. So let's go back to the overview of you setting the stage. So there were two car accidents, a shooting, a fleeing suspect all happening on the interstate. Can you talk us through some of the forensic evidence that was uncovered throughout the investigation? I know you alluded to the cartridge case that was found outside the vehicle. The suspect's shoes were lost during his flight from the scene. Was there any other evidence that was initially recovered from the crash scene?

Ashleigh Berg [00:10:30] So from the crash scene, they, of course, recovered the vehicle. They have the one cartridge case. They had one shoe and then he left wearing 1 shoe, 1 shoe is lost. The other shoe was lost somewhere in his flight. And then the rest of the evidence is going to come as Denton PD processes the vehicle back in their sally port, they would eventually recover three fired cartridge cases from inside the vehicle. They would recover a Glock pistol from inside the vehicle. They recovered a single fired projectile from the floorboard of the driver's side of the vehicle they proceeded to remove. There was a large amount of blood staining in the vehicle because of the impacts, the front airbags and the side curtain airbags as well had all deployed. There was blood staining on the air bags as well. So all of those were collected. They removed the seats. They removed the center console. All of this is going on for several days as processing continued. This was a massive undertaking. Also while processing the car, they found a Whataburger bag. So in the crash and it kind of had been strewn about the car. But there was food from Whataburger that was still wrapped in the paper. It hadn't been eaten and it still had the grill slip on. It still had the receipt. And so detectives from Denton PD went to that Whataburger and were able to obtain video from the drive thru with a timestamp that showed the vehicle coming through with the female in the driver's seat and male in the passenger seat. So it gave them a timeline of at least everyone was alive, everyone was okay, and this is what positions I received them at this time prior to the crash. So at that time, oddly enough, I happened to be at Denton PD. They have a very large joint training center and I was teaching a crime scene class at the Joint Training Center when all of this was going on. So they're doing their thing. And their forensic manager at the time said, hey, we have this going on. Could you come and help us document a road map, the bloodstains on the headliner of the car? I do all Denton PDs blood stain work, reconstruction work. I do that for a number of departments in the North Texas area. So that wasn't an unusual request. And I was like, Sure, no problem. Talk to our lieutenant and just let him know. I said, You know, I'm teaching this class. It's a 40 hour class. So it was all week. So the next Monday, my partner and I went over to Denton PD and everything had already been taken out of the vehicle up to and including the front seats, the console, all of that. So the first time I actually see the car, it's been dismantled. I'm just there to look at the headliner and to basically say, hey, do this, do that, take this picture, put these markers here. Because at that point in the investigation, the important thing about bloodstain documentation is you don't know which stains are going to be important. What do we need? So everything needs to be documented in a certain manner. So I was simply there to help them document those stains should they be needed later. We get that done. And in the process of doing that, we moved the seatbelt on the driver's side when the seatbelt was pulled away. That revealed two perforating defects and one ricochet defect on the driver's side b-pillar. So now we had two bullet holes. So now we're taking apart the B-pillar. Really? I'm like, look what you found. You found two bullet holes, right? Let's take this apart. So now we're taking apart the seatbelt mechanism and the b-pillar, and we ended up helping to recover two additional projectiles. And by that time, the victim has been autopsied. We do, in fact, know that she has three entry wounds on the right side of her head and three exit wounds on the left side of her head. So that corresponded with the defects we were seeing. And now we have three projectiles recovered from the car, one that they had located in the driver's floorboard, and two, that we located in the in the b-pillar. So we have three and three. That was all I had to do with it, documented that. And then I went back to my agency and mind my own business for the next year.

Mikalaa Martin [00:14:27] And so our first major takeaway for today is photo document everything. And you also spoke to the importance of thorough searching as well. So photo document everything thoroughly search. Let's go back to the fleeing suspect from the vehicle. I'm very curious to know how the connection was made between the witness accounts of seeing the suspect flee and then tracking down the woman who purchased an Uber ride for him. Can you speak a little bit to how that association was made?

Ashleigh Berg [00:14:56] So looking through Denton PD reports, they had initially set up a perimeter when they knew they were looking for this person. Several people had seen him on the highway. There were some conflicting descriptions about what he's wearing, a t shirt and shorts, and there were conflicting descriptions about what color those were. So basically, they knew they were looking for a male in t shirt and shorts, but they set up a perimeter. And so everyone that is out on patrol is looking for this man who fled. And so different officers who are in different areas are like they're out looking for anyone that they see. They were asking, have you seen anyone? Have you seen anyone? And an officer who was in that area at the apartment complex had come through like the maintenance man was outside. And so he just he asks them, Have you seen anyone? And this person was like, Well, yes, someone came through. I saw so and so talking to him, she lives over here. I know that he had come through a yard, my back yard. Someone had said, Hey, I saw him on my camera. This man came through my backyard. Here's my surveillance camera. They went and looked in his yard and there was a piece of red fabric from his shorts where it tore off when he came over the fence. They did a very good job of really

flooding that area with officers canvasing, talking to people and tracking down like what his movements were all the way through that neighborhood to find out where he had been.
Mikalaa Martin [00:16:17] And that makes the third piece of digital evidence that you've brought up belonging to this case. So we have the surveillance footage from the individuals yard who the suspect ran through the surveillance footage at the fast food chain, and then the real time tracking data from the rideshare app that was used. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this evidence. Assisted in pinning down the timeline of events and tracking down and locating the suspect.

Ashleigh Berg [00:16:44] I think as far as tracking his movements after and just really that they were able to really make a good path and then to not just have the video, but to be able to pin that with evidence collection like they have the video and then you have the physical evidence, his shorts, there's fabric on it and not knowing Did someone lay this here later, is this before? Is this important? I don't know. But we're going to collect it. Right. And then when they get him, there is going to be a tear in his shorts and it is going to be the same color. Like all of those like everything was collected. Everything was documented up to and including being able to see him in real time and talking to someone and making sure that Dallas P.D. was there when they couldn't get there in time so that they had all their bases covered and then backtracking to the Whataburger to make sure they have that video. We have a very small window of what was going on before, what was going on after. And so now we've just crunched it down to we need to know what's going on in this moment, what happened, because there was a window of time which would lead us to our investigative question, like between the time I left the Whataburger and the time they crash on the highway, was there a stop? Did we switch drivers? What happened in the vehicle? There's that time that's unaccounted for. That's when the crime happens. That's when the offense occurs, where this mass shooting happens. And so that was going to be our question. That was the question we couldn't answer.

Mikalaa Martin [00:18:01] And were you involved with providing information for that investigative question or did your work kind of end with the initial vehicle processing?

Ashleigh Berg [00:18:09] So initially I came in, I helped document the headliner, by God's grace, we find two extra bullet holes and then I'm done. I go back to my office and I go back to my normal case work. So this was in April of 21, I believe, and it is not until the next year when they're looking to trial that the D.A. is going to request a bloodstain pattern analysis of the vehicle. So then this entire case is going to find its way to my desk and then I get all of this information that I didn't have before. I didn't know any of this. I was just looking at a car. And so then for a BPA request, like all of the photographs, all of the body cam footage, all of that, then comes my way so that I can analyze the evidence and see if I can't even answer a question or not.

Mikalaa Martin [00:19:02] So let's jump into the bloodstain pattern analysis or the BPA that you performed. What was the investigative question that you were tasked with addressing and how was that question initially developed?
Ashleigh Berg [00:19:14] So I had to work with the district attorney to develop a workable investigative question when we started, of course. And what is pretty common is when I ask someone, what do you want to know? What are you hoping to learn from this? And what they want to know is or what happened. But that's a very broad question that has a lot of moving parts, and that's difficult, if not impossible to answer. What reconstruction can do for you, what bloodstain pattern analysis can do for you if we have the requisite information, is provide a snapshot in time. We cannot create a movie of everything that happened from beginning to end. But if we have enough information, sometimes we can create snapshots, little stills at this very moment, right when this shot occurred or when this action occurred, maybe this is how your victim was positioned or this is how something happened at this very moment in time. So we really had to pare that down. And especially in this environment. Right. We have a shooting, so we have three shots being fired inside a vehicle, which is going to be a blood producing event in and of itself. But after that, we have two car crash, those large force impacts which cause airbag deployment. But we already have a blood source in that vehicle so that blood sources now hit twice with impact force from the from the crashes and the airbags and all of that movement that is going to come subsequent to the crash. Right. Is now going to disperse liquid blood inside that vehicle environment. And so we're going to have a secondary staining, right, or what we would term post incident artifact that has nothing to do with the actual shooting event. So all of that had to be paired down. And after working with the DEA about like what is really important here, what we finally came up with was who was in what position in the vehicle when those shots were fired, where was our victim sitting and where was our suspect sitting and who was doing the shooting and where were they sitting when that happened?

Mikalaa Martin [00:21:11] I really loved that film analogy of dialing back what happened to something that's more workable and actionable. For an investigative question, I'd like to dive into discussing more of the BPA work that you performed in the case. Can you talk us through that process and what you were able to find from your BPA and how that assisted in addressing the investigative question.

Ashleigh Berg [00:21:36] The first part. What I think was the most overwhelming was even deciding what is post-incident artifact in this vehicle and what is relevant to the shooting itself. And so that was really pulling myself back to the basics of bloodstain pattern analysis, which is classification of each pattern. What is the size, shape, distribution and parents location of this pattern? Let's describe it, let's classify it, and then we'll talk about it in the larger scheme of how it fits into what's happening. So I get a lot of pattern classification. And then I was able to say, okay, this doesn't have anything to do with like, I see how this was created, but it's not relevant to the shooting. And so that is how I was able to weed out what I didn't need to talk about in the report because it wasn't relevant to the investigative question. So what we ended up with was really in that front passenger compartment. There were very distinct bloodstain patterns that were relevant to that shooting event, and that started in the driver's seat. And I used all of my directions as if you were seated in the vehicle when I was talking about left and right, front and back. If you were seated in the vehicle in that driver's seat on the right side of the seat, the what we call the bolster, where it wraps around from your shoulder to your hip, there were these large volume stains that had a downward directionality. They also there was enough volume in the individual states that they had flow from them. So they weren't just striking the surface, they were striking it and there were still enough volume in this thing if it was continuing down the bolster. These stains descended down the bolster and then told me that whatever that blood source was had to be at a height, at or above the deposition of that pattern. So I knew where my blood was coming from. And it had to be a blood source that was capable of producing these large volume stains. So like, you can't cut your finger or scratch your arm. This is a large volume wound that is producing these stains. So this stain was present all down that side bolster and continued on to the plastic. The seat back adjustment hinge at the bottom of the seat. That pattern continued. That pattern actually continued onto the center console on both sides, both the driver side and across the top in the passenger side. The difference that we saw in the center console was that the lid of the center console, where you would lift up to access the the interior storage area that had actually been displaced. So the lid to that center console was recovered in a child's car seat that was in the back seat of the vehicle. I'm looking for pattern continuity. What makes this pattern complete. So I didn't see pattern continuity across the console with that lid missing. There was blood there, but it was different blood. It was what we would call a swipe pattern. So it was it was a blood source moving across and in the little, I guess you would call them plastic teeth that would have held that lid in place. There was some hair caught in that, suggesting that like a blood source with dark hair had moved across that area and it was out of agreement with that large volume like drip flow pattern that I was seeing. But I saw pattern continuity when I put that laid back in place. So that let me know that whatever my blood source was that was pushing out this large volume pattern onto the seat bolster the console area like that was all happening with that lid in place. And then there's some force event that is taking off this lid, pushing it into the back seat. And then there's a blood source that's moving across it and also like depositing hair onto the top of that console. So that's a sequence event, right? When I looked at the rest of that seat, which has this large volume bloodstain on the right, there's some saturation staining, meaning that there's enough volume of blood that it has soaked into the absorbent material of the seat. There's saturation staining also on the right side of that seat. So relevant to in position to where those large volume stains are. But then the rest of the seat doesn't have blood staining. There's no standing on the left side. There's no standing on the seat bottom. There's no standing on the back of the seat. There's no blood anywhere except on the right side of that seat, which was important. A lot of times where blood isn't is just as important as where blood is within a scene. So that's what was going on on the right side of the seat or on the right side of the vehicle when I looked at the back of the console. So if you come off in a car right where the console sits normally right behind it, there's kind of a hump in the floor and it's covered in carpet. So where those large volume stains had continued to flow it had flown down to the carpet and the carpet there was so saturated and blood that it had actually oversaturated the carpet. There was still liquid blood. When this is documented, there's still liquid blood sitting on top of the carpet. But all of that is on on that center hump and on the right side, on the driver's side. So not towards the passenger side. Everything is towards the driver's side of that vehicle. So there's a large volume of blood and it's mainly concentrated towards the driver's right side moving across into the front passenger seat. I saw completely different staining. There was a small amount of that large volume pattern on the very bottom of the seat, just where it would be up against the center console. But then that. That pattern disappeared. I saw some some saturation in the bottom of the seat like where you would sit. But all of that saturation agreed with what I was seeing in the body cams where the victim's final resting position was. It was all low in the seat. It was where she was found, where the medics were moving her. There was no like, no staning that really was like spatter standing or active standing or just like her laying there and bleeding. And I didn't see we didn't have any of the staning that we saw on the driver's seat. So I'm starting to get an idea of like what is happening.
So that's what's going on in the car. And then everything else, really in the vehicle. There was a lot of blood staining, but everything else that I saw in the car was post-incident artifact. It was caused by this now very blood stained person being hit by air bags being flung around. It wasn't relevant to the gunshot wound.

Mikalaa Martin [00:27:27] And I'll jump in here for a moment, but I would love to hear a little bit about how you were able to differentiate the incident related bloodstains and patterns from the Post incident artifacts. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this is done?

Ashleigh Berg [00:27:42] So when I'm looking at the pattern continuity of all of that in that large volume pattern, which is mechanisms we classify it back to it could either be this

mechanism or this mechanism, we can break them apart. And either way we're tied into this pattern continuity. It's only achieved with that lid in place. We know that this has to happen. Then the lid is removed. Then we see that swipe across the top with her hair in it. She's the only person that has long, dark hair. The other party in the car is very short hair. So it's not him. We're going to source that to her. Right. And then she's going to come across. The other things I was seeing in the vehicle on the headliner there was cast off. So cast off is generally in a in a very linear. We see small stains in a linear appearance or curvilinear appearance. Generally, people think of that as coming off a weapon, like as someone swings a weapon, a knife or a hammer or even a hand. We think of castoff coming that way, but castoff can also come from bloody hair. So there aren't any of those weapons in this scene. Right in that car is very small to expect someone to swing an arm in. But she is the blood source and her hair is bloody after she's shot. So then when she's in an accident, then she's hit by an airbag that's going to cause her head to swing and her hair to whip back, which is going to create cast off from the swing of her bloody hair. So I knew that all my cast off patterns were going to be post shooting related to the crash because I already have a blood source. So they don't have anything to do with her being shot they're after that. So I can rule out all my cast off, all the spatter on the air bags is going to come after the airbags were deployed. The airbags were deployed after she shot the car crashes after the gunshots. Right. So I saw a lot of transfer patterns from objects that were bloody in the car coming up and hitting the headliner or coming and hitting other areas of the car while they were bloody, because my victim is now producing blood into the environment. And then these items now become projectiles themselves because of the force of the crash. So those aren't relevant to the shooting. They are post-incident artifact. So they were ruled out. Same with the spatter on the airbags. I knew where the bullet impacts were from her shot and I knew where she had been shot. So I only expect to see back spatter and forward spatter relevant to those positions. Whether she's in the passenger seat or the driver seat spatter should be there because I know the bullet path. If I have spatter and completely unrelated positions, that's relevant to the impact from the airbag, not relevant to the bullet path. So that doesn't have anything to do with what I'm seeing. So by ruling out like what the mechanisms were, I knew that they weren't relevant to the shot. They were post incident artifact. And so we could pare down what bloodstains were important to our investigative question.

Mikalaa Martin [00:30:21] I appreciate you talking us through that process and how it was completed for this case. Let's talk a little bit more about your BPA findings. It sounds like to me you segmented the car, basically said, here's my zone or here's my puzzle piece. What were you finding throughout this? How did things maybe go together between those zones? Are you figuring out what a kind of answer would look like to that investigative question by paring it down and segmenting out the car into zones throughout your analysis?

Ashleigh Berg [00:30:53] So when you undertake like a blood stain pattern analysis, there is a manner in which you should consume information so that you reduce your bias. And so the proper way is to first consume your visual information, your photographs and classify your patterns without all of the contextual information. And of course, I have some contextual information that can't always be controlled, but with as little contextual information as possible. So I do know there's gunshots, right? I know that because I helped retrieve the projectiles. I know there are gunshots relevant to this scene. I know there's a car crash because the airbags are deployed. I know some of those things. But I first looked at all of the photographs and I'm simply classifying my patterns and seeing what I see. I see this pattern. This can be caused by these four mechanisms. I know these things. Same with the suspects clothing. Okay. I see all these things. We're looking at all this and then consuming my autopsy data. Ok so does she have wounds sufficient to produce this pattern? Can we confirm this or not? Then going through lab reports, you know, investigative reports, witness statements are the last pieces of information you consume. Because I'm looking for scientific data, not what someone saw, what they think they heard. So there's a manner in which you consume that information to remain as objective as possible throughout your analysis. And that's what I was doing, was working through all of the photographs, all the body cams to see what are those officers catching, which did help eliminate a lot of the patterns because I was able to see what bloodstains were made by the movements that the medics made with the victim. Right? And I can rule that out because I see it being made doesn't anything to do with what I'm talking about. I don't need to look at those stains, right? So all of that kind of stuff was going on as well.

Mikalaa Martin [00:32:32] I think it's a great point that you brought up of saying, okay, let me take a moment. Let me step back and say, all right, well, what am I seeing? What is the larger context? And what is all of the evidence based information and data that I've collected telling me. I'd like to take a couple of moments to see if there were any kind of crucial or key pieces of evidence that stuck out to you during your analysis or while you were taking in all of the various data that belonged to the case.

Ashleigh Berg [00:33:01] So what was really important was, was how two things fit together. So with our victim's wounds. So she had three gunshot wounds to the right side of her head that autopsy tells us kind of a down two up trajectory from right to left. And so when they enter, they are so close together that they actually combine to form a single wound track. The doctor was not able to parse out three separate paths for those bullets as they come through and exit the other side. Yet they were distant enough that they made stippling pattern on her face. So it's not it's not a hard contact when the muzzle is within a few inches of her face. So we're talking about someone like actively pulling the trigger three times, which begs the question, is that something she's going to be able to do right in such short sequence they would form one bullet path, right? So when these bullets go through Cassidy's brain, they actually severed an artery. So arterial bleed produces large volume staining. It is going to produce a large amount of blood. That was very important to confirm the bloodletting that I was seeing on the right side of that seat. What I also was not seeing on the left side, when you have exit gunshot wounds, you expect to see forward spatter. And I want to see spatter with those wounds but I didn't see any of that. There was no spatter on the b-pillar and I knew that. So I asked this question was, how did I know that Cassidy was shot before the airbags deployed? When those curtain airbags deployed, they drop in front of that b-pillar. There was no gunshot defect in those curtain airbags. So I knew that the shooting had to happen before the first crash because the first crash deployed the airbags. So there's no spatter. There's no there's no evidence of forward spatter. Well, when I look at the autopsy photos, I see that Cassidy's wounds are very far back in her hairline and she has very long, thick hair. So hair will block spatter stains like that, because we're talking about sub millimeter stains and millimeter stain. So the very small droplets, they can't like, they're not going to weave themselves through hair. They just the first target that they hit, they stop. So I looked out with her three winds. One of the bullets had actually gone through her ear lobe first and was directional, which meant that she had to turn and tilt her head to get that bullet directionally to go into her neck from like it couldn't be straight and come in, there was a turn. So we knew that she had she had turned more in this direction, which put that artery in a position to deposit blood back towards the right side of the car, which was where I was seeing all that arterial bleeding.

Then when I looked at the suspect's clothing, now, this just became a little difficult because I never saw the suspect. Right? I never saw the victim, but I also never saw the clothing. I wasn't able to physically examine the clothing myself, which would be the ideal situation.

The clothing was still at the DNA lab at the time I was asked to review the case. To make matters more difficult. He was wearing a black t shirt and red shorts, which make bloodstain work more difficult. So I just had the photographs that were taken of those clothes. So the shirt is not helpful at all because black the shorts, even though they were red, had little white stripes on the outside of both legs. And there was a white stripe on the inside of both legs. So when I looked at those, the outside of the left leg and the inside of both legs were saturated with blood, but the outside of the right leg was completely white. The next photograph, as they're collecting his clothes, he removes his shorts and he is wearing blue boxer briefs underneath, light blue boxer briefs, underneath shorts. And that was the key that turned the lock when I saw those boxer briefs on the top in the outside of his left leg. There was very heavy saturation staining. He had some saturation on the inside of his leg. He had saturation on the top of his right leg, but not in as heavy concentration as it was on the left leg. And then there's no staining on the outside of the right leg. There's no standing on the back. So what that meant is that in a seated position, the left side of his body was more heavily exposed to a blood letting event than the right side of his body, which meant that Cassidy is bleeding from her entrance wound. He had to have the left side of his body in closer proximity to that well. That meant that he had to be in the front passenger seat and she had to be in the driver's seat bleeding back onto him when she was shot. So that answered our question of who was sitting where. And especially when we combine that with the bloodstains that we saw in the vehicle, what we were seeing on his clothing was in agreement with the lack of staining we were seeing in the front passenger seat, was in agreement with the large volume staining we were seeing on the right side of the driver's seat, on the center console, like every little piece of the bloodstains all fit back together to make a complete puzzle. And we saw pattern continuity across from the driver's side all the way across to the passenger side. Once all of those were placed back together and that answered our investigative question.

Mikalaa Martin [00:38:10] And was there any other evidence that helped with placement as well or help support the conclusion that was reached in that analysis?

Ashleigh Berg [00:38:18] You know, they had tested, obviously, the clothing for DNA. Right. And we kind of knew. Right. So the blood did come back to Cassady on on his clothing. But again, they cohabitate. They, they're together. So DNA mixtures are not going to help us. They had tested his hands for GSR, but she has moved her body. Right. He's touched her. So that evidence is contaminated already. He's going to have GSR on his hands. So that's not going to help us. Even if he made a claim of her committing suicide.

He's in the car when it happens. So he's exposed to that gunshot residue event. It's not going to help. It was valid. And I did point out he does have several scratches on his. He does. He is impacted by the airbag. Right. He is in a crash and then he leaves. And when he flees, he he runs across several lanes of traffic. He goes through a green belt, wooded area, and then he goes over several chain link fences. And during all of that event, from head to toe, he receives several scratches and they then be documented these injuries very well. He is bleeding. And the the actual witness who ordered him, the Uber, she did mention that she noticed he was bleeding when she when she first made contact with him. However, there is not a single wound on his body that is sufficient to produce the large volume blood staining that I was seeing in the vehicle. So whether or not those stains were tested was irrelevant because the wounds that he had are not capable of producing the large volume staining that I was seeing. So we couldn't put him at or above the height of that large pattern. And his wounds produced the stains that we saw in the car possible so we can eliminate him as the source of that blood staining simply by the wound patterns that he had.

Mikalaa Martin [00:40:05] And you've previously mentioned the limitations that you faced in your analysis. One being that you weren't able to have access to the suspect's clothing for a direct examination. Were there any other limitations that you had faced in completing your analysis?

Ashleigh Berg [00:40:21] There are always going to be limitations in any analysis, like a big one here. What we talked about was that reporting and testing and describing every bloodstain is not possible. And this would have been like a 47 page report if we talked about every blood stain. And we talk about scene alteration by first responders, that's always a limitation. There's a lot of saturation in here. So is there the possibility that there were some stains that were present on vehicle seats that then blood is deposited, saturates into the fabric and I no longer see because it's obliterated by larger saturation? Absolutely. But I did have the benefit of the body cam footage from the first responder, So I can see a lot of their actions and see these things being made. And that was very helpful. The big one here was limitations in photography, and I didn't have access to his clothing.

Like I didn't analyze the car intact or from the very beginning, like in a lot of cases, like I'm limited to the photographs and the body cam that was provided. That's pretty standard for a lot of reconstructionists or for blood stain pattern analysts. You get the case file that you're given and that is what you have to work with.

Mikalaa Martin [00:41:26] And to round us out. Would you be able to share the final outcome of this case?

Ashleigh Berg [00:41:31] So we did go to trial and I testified, as did many other people, and Simeon Binion was convicted of capital murder of Cassidy and her unborn child. And so here in Texas, that carries an automatic sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Mikalaa Martin [00:41:47] So I know we've brought up a couple throughout the case overview and your involvement in the case. There have been a lot of lessons learned and I would love to hear about as a final takeaway for today, any of the most major lessons learned that may lend insight to any forensic investigators who are listening in today.

Ashleigh Berg [00:42:07] If you feel that you're going to need any kind of expert for whatever the analysis may be, whatever you're confronted with in your case, it's always best, if you can, to include them in the documentation process as early as you possibly can. It would have been helpful. Not to the detriment of the department at all. They did an outstanding job. I work with them all the time, but it would have been helpful to to see that vehicle completely intact from the beginning instead of trying to put it back together from the pictures before some of the pieces were removed before sending items out for testing. Same thing. Hindsight's 20 20. Things we learn. And I still I learn things every day. Every time I work a case, oh I could have done that differently. Consider your sequential processing. I couldn't get my hands on the clothes. And I do a lot of BPA work on clothing and fabrics. So before that went out for DNA testing, it would have been nice to get in the lab and do some IR work with IR cameras, maybe with a microscope to see is the spatter, is this contact transfer? What kind of staining is there? Because with the black and the blue and the red fabrics, a lot of times we can observe stain patterns that are not visible to the naked eye. So maybe we could have visualized some patterns, maybe not. You know, they could have completely been saturated and not been visible at all. But, you know, we don't know. And then I think for any analyst, the big thing is just remember that analysis occurs one step at a time. Like when I first started on this case, there was blood everywhere and it was vastly overwhelming. There was a lot going on in this car. And so it was really important to pare down that investigative question and evaluate every single

piece objectively and decide what do I need? Even though this is fascinating to me as a bloodstain analyst, why does this really have to do with what we're trying to answer? And to just approach that objectively and just one bite at a time. Same way you eat an elephant, just one bite at a time.

Mikalaa Martin [00:43:58] Thanks so much for sharing all those amazing takeaways and lessons learned. I think that will be very memorable for our listeners today. Well, Ashleigh, thank you so much for sitting down with us today. It has been an absolute pleasure talking with you and getting to discuss the super fascinating case. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time.

Ashleigh Berg [00:44:19] Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Mikalaa Martin [00:44:21] If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like and follow Just Science on your platform of choice. For more information on today's topic and resources and the forensic science field, visit ForensicCOE.org. I'm Mikalaa Martin and this has been another episode of Just Science.

Speaker 2 [00:44:41] This episode concludes our 2024 case study season. Tune in next year for a season about the Aspire Project, which aims to advance service oriented policing through inclusion, relationship building and engagement. Opinions or points of views expressed in this podcast represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.

Introduction [00:00:01] RTI International's Justice Practice Area presents Just Science. Welcome to Just Science, a podcast for justice professionals and anyone interested in learning more about forensic science, innovative technology, current research and actionable strategies to improve the criminal justice system. In episode three of our case study season, Just Science sat down with Dr. Michael Nirenberg, a clinical and forensic podiatrist and current president of the American Society of Forensic Podiatry, to discuss how analyzing a perpetrator's gait and footprint evidence located at a crime scene can help advance investigations and resolve cases. While locomotive characteristics like the way our hips swing when we walk are not as individualizing as fingerprints or DNA, forensic podiatrists can analyze and compare video footage of a perpetrators gait to a person of interest gait to develop supplemental forensic evidence. This additional information can be used to support a conviction for the exoneration of a falsely accused individual. Listen along. As Dr. Nirenberg describes the role digital evidence plays and gait analysis, how forensic podiatrists analyze and compare the gait of a perpetrator to a person of interest. And several cases where the analysis of gait or footprint evidence were key to supporting investigations. This episode is funded by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence. Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Here's your host, Mikalaa Martin.
Mikalaa Martin [00:01:35] Hello and welcome to Just Science. I'm your host, Mikalaa Martin, with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, a program of the National Institute of Justice. On today's episode, we will discuss several case studies demonstrating the value and utility of footprint evidence located at crime scenes, analysis and the subdiscipline of forensic podiatry. Joining us today to discuss these topics is Dr. Michael Nirenberg. Welcome to Just Science Dr. Nirenberg.

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:02:05] Thanks for having me.

Mikalaa Martin [00:02:06] So, Dr. Nirenberg, to kick us off, can you tell us about what it means to be a forensic podiatrist and your journey to this forensic subdiscipline?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:02:15] So I was a podiatry student. I wrote a article on forensic podiatry, and that was published in the Podiatry Journal at the time. And in that article I wrote it just because I was interested in how podiatrists using their knowledge of feet and the lower limb, which is what podiatrists focus on. We treat the foot, the ankle and the lower limb. Using that knowledge to help law enforcement solve crimes and or help a defense attorney show that their client is not the criminal. And so I wrote that paper back in 1989. And in that paper, I said, we need an organization to promote knowledge, ethics and whatnot related to forensic podiatry. And a short time later, the podiatrist doing this called me up and they said, we're we're forming that organization that you called for. We want you to join us. And I did join, but I told them, you know, I'm trying to start a practice and I'm too busy. And eventually I ended up being on the board. And now I'm president of that organization, which is the American Society of Forensic Podiatry. So the American Society of Forensic Podiatry is a relatively new organization. It was started in the 2000s, I believe. And what it does is it promotes knowledge and education for podiatrists and actually non- podiatrists who have an interest in feet, footprints, and gait. Podiatrist focus on biomechanics, disorders of the foot and ankle. Using that and combining it with forensic science to answer a legal question, usually a criminal matter.

Mikalaa Martin [00:03:57] Throughout your career in forensic podiatry. You've been called as an expert to provide multiple types of analyzes in criminal cases. What are some examples of the roles you have assumed and the expertise you have provided on these cases?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:04:11] Some of the cases have involved footprints where you have a homicide and there's footprints left at the crime scene. For instance, there was a case in Maine where I testified where a woman had been stabbed just shy of 500 times, and there were two people charged with the crime. Law enforcement asked me to take a look at the footprints at the crime scene to help figure out if either of these two individuals or both could have made the footprints found at the crime scene. In that case, we obtained the footprints from the suspects. And that in itself is an entire process. And then I compare the footprints with the crime scene. And I was able to show that one of the persons charged with the crime could not have made those footprints due to a various number of reasons, including the size of the footprints at the crime scene versus his footprints. And I determined that the other suspect, a woman who was also charged her foot, could have made those footprints for someone who has the same footprint as her. And part of educating the jury is explaining how footprints are distinctive and well two people in theory could have the same footprint. The odds of that are typically low. And at this case, there was other evidence provided for both of these people. And ultimately, the jury could not decide with the man if he was guilty or not. And the woman was found to be guilty and she was sentenced.

Mikalaa Martin [00:05:46] And among other forensic analysis types, perhaps under- discussed or even underutilized is gait analysis. Can you explain what gait analysis is to our listeners?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:05:56] So gait analysis is something that clinicians, medical people, podiatrists and scientists, researchers they do gait analysis and gait is how an animal or a person moves from place to place. It's a locomotor activity. But in the forensics and in the clinical context, when you're talking about people, gait is typically how we move from one place to another. And that can be walking, that can be running, that could be hopping. It could all be a form of gait. But in the forensic context, when we look at gait analysis. We are looking at walking usually and we're comparing one person's walk or the how that person walks at the crime scene to a suspect or a person of interest, how how that person walks. And you're making a comparison and you're looking at that person's manner of walking or their gait literally from head to foot. And there's a process to that that we can talk about. But in a nutshell, in the clinic, people are looking at gait or doing gait analysis to figure out perhaps what's wrong with that person's shoulder or biomechanics or how can we make an orthotic, an arch support a brace to help them walk better? And then forensic gait analysis is doing a comparison of the features that you see from head to foot of a person and comparing that to another person. These are usually cases where their face is not clear or not visible or where a person says That person may look like me, but that's not me. And then law enforcement or a defense attorney might say, I need some additional information and gait is that additional information. Traditionally, gait has been overlooked. There was a case involving gait where a scientist in the 30s determines the criminals gait from shoes, I think boots left at the crime scene, and he described how the criminal walked in detail and in court they had the criminal walk and he walked exactly the way the scientist had described. But forensic gait analysis is involving video and looking at how somebody walks on videotape. And now we get more and more what they call CCTV. So we're getting more gait footage and forensic gait analysis. The first time it was used by a podiatrist was in the video since was in the year 2000, in the United Kingdom, where a podiatrist helped to show that a jeweler was the same person as a known suspect and he was convicted. So it's sort of growing from the year 2000. In the United States in 1996, a dancer who was very attuned to how people walk and move helped identify somebody at a crime that was on video. So it was used here by someone with some knowledge of movement in 1996. It has evolved now to a more peer reviewed standardized process, which goes back to me working with OSAC to help get that process fully developed. But the methodology now has been peer reviewed, it's been published, it's been tested. We know its reliability.

Mikalaa Martin [00:09:16] I appreciate the background and how it's evolved. Can you walk us through with no pun intended there the comparison process and any of the tools that are used in that comparison process?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:09:28] The comparison process involves using a checklist, and we call it a tool, and it's called the Sheffield tool, because Professor Birch, out of the United Kingdom, he with some peers, came up with a checklist of features that are commonly seen on video to compare. And that checklist evolved from clinical medical checklists. So people looking at gait can use when they do observational, they look at someone's gait with their eyes. They have different tools that have been published, peer reviewed and check for their reliability. Those tools work. Meaning if two different doctors, Mikalaa, watch you walk on two different days. Those two doctors, to a certain degree of reliability, will be able to use one of those tools and show what's wrong and what's right with your gait looking at certain features. So Dr. Birch and his associates basically took that concept and said, you know, if it's working for medical researchers, let's translate that to the forensic context. And they looked at the features that tend to show up on video and they listed those features and then they went and they did testing. They published it. They did more testing. And they showed that this is a reliable way of determining, you know, looking at someone's features of gait. So how do you do it? Well, you start by getting video of a crime or a crime scene or a criminal. And you can't say, for instance, you don't know their face and you go through from head to foot looking at that videotape, figuring out all their features. For instance, does their left foot tilt in tilt out or is it straight? Does their knee hyper extend at a certain point in what we call the gait cycle? And you do this for that piece of footage looking at their head, their torso, their arms, their elbows, their hands, their hips, their knees. And you look at all these different features literally from head to toe and you get this tool filled out. And what makes forensic gaitt analysis work and what makes it interesting is you don't just look at one step. You need footage of the person showing multiple steps. Because when we walk, we repeat the same pattern. With each step we take a step. We go where our right foot moves forward, then our left. Then we're back to our right foot. That's one cycle in the gait cycle. In simple terms, we would like to see multiple steps of somebody walking. So when you're comparing if on one step, their arm doesn't completely swing, you're looking at multiple steps, multiple gait cycles when you do this. And that's ideal. If the footage only had one step. I would tell them like, I can't help them.

Mikalaa Martin [00:12:22] So from that overview, it sounds like while gait analysis can provide helpful information on a case, it sounds like there's some things that it cannot be used to inform. Can you speak a little bit about that?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:12:33] So the important thing to keep in mind with forensic gait analysis and this is something that I'm often telling law enforcement detectives and sometimes a detective will call me up and say, I know it's him, and you can tell by how he or she walks and gait in the context that we do it in the forensic gait analysis context. So looking at a piece of video, it is not unique. What I mean by that is people have distinctive mannerisms when they walk. And each mannerism, whether their their hip swings in a circle or straight ahead, that motion is what's considered a class characteristic, meaning there are a lot of people in the population whose left hip may swing in a circular manner when they walk, and that is not at the level of DNA. But what we do do is we're going from head to foot. So each feature is a class characteristic and you stack those on top of one another and you get a higher level of discrimination. But at the end of the day, gait in this context is not unique. Gait in the laboratory where you put little sensors on every joint in someone's body and they're digitized on to a computer screen, that may reach the level of being unique. But at this point, what we're doing is class level characteristics and we're stacking them on top of one another. And as you do that, it becomes more discriminatory. The important thing is that you're also looking for a feature that would rule out them being the same person. So, you know, and this is just a very simple example, and I wouldn't want this example to come back to a specific case I work on. But just as an educational example, if that criminal needs hyper extend when his foot hits the ground, meaning the knee, our knee should not move backwards when our foot strikes the ground. But some people have knee problems and their knee will hyper extend with every step. It sort of bounces backwards a little and that may be for both knees. And you have somebody who's a suspect whose knees never hyperextended. In fact, they don't even extend all the way straight. Their knee is always bent a little for each foot when it hits the ground. So that would be a significant difference. And that would start to lead us down the path of the gait of these two people is different. Now, what I get at this point a lot of times is couldn't somebody just change their gait? And if you've seen a fashion show, of course people can change their gait runway models. I don't think they walk like that when they're doing the laundry. So they they change their gait. But the thing is, is that one forensic gait analysis is not widely known. A criminal may wear gloves to hide their fingerprints because that's pretty widely known. But and they may and they may wear a mask to hide their face because they know they can be identified by their face, but they don't think to change their gait when they walk. So so it is unlikely that they're going to change their gait. It may happen at some point, but when somebody is changing their gait, you know, a experienced forensic gait analyst or even somebody who does gait gait analysis, a lot may be able to look at that and go, something is not actually something is off here that the person is doing. And and if they do do that, you may not be able to use forensic gait analysis. If somebody is just jacked up on five hour energy. I had a armed robbery that I worked on where the lead detective, it was his only case in his entire career he told me he could not solve and he finally figured out that one of the criminals walked the same as a known perpetrator in his in his area where he worked. And so he had me come in to compare the gait of three people. It is violent armed robbery and one person was just jumping around. His gait was erratic to the point that you couldn't compare that gait with anybody else. So I don't know if he was on five hour Energy. I don't know if he was on drugs. I don't know if he was just excited to be doing an armed robbery. But he was just jumping around and it was so erratic that guy couldn't be compared. Now, another guy, the guy, the other person, the other two people at the armed robbery, their gait could be compared and they weren't erratic. But you could get that. If somebody's on drugs, you just may not be able to compare their gait, you know, depending what you have there.

Mikalaa Martin [00:17:12] And you have already given us a couple of case examples where gait analysis has been used to support cases leading to prosecutions. However, it's also been used to support exonerations. Can you discuss a case where gait analysis supported an exoneration?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:17:28] I was involved in a case in New York State. What happened in that case was I was brought on because a man who apparently didn't have the funds at the time for for a high level legal counsel, he was convicted of a kidnaping in 2013. And it was there was a place of business involved. And they sent me it came about through one of these government programs to look into exonerating people who may have been wrongly convicted. And what I did was I looked at the gait of this person who visited the business at that period of time, and I compared it to the gait of the kidnaper, who also visited the same business that the same period of time. So these were two African- American men. And on the surface, they their body types and shapes look similar. But once you compare their gait, you saw their gait was very different. And this video of this kown person walking in and out of this place of business, as well as the kidnaper, this was all done way before he was charged with the crime. So they said it was the same person and the jury found him guilty. And so I wrote a report and there was another report involving showing his cell phone was not at the business at the time of the crime. And there may have been some additional information. But the the judge in New York exonerated him, I believe, in December of 2022, and he was let out of jail immediately. So in the documents that I was sent later, it showed that they referenced the I believe, the judge, as best as I can recall, referenced that gait analysis was part of her decision. So she looked at my report. So that felt pretty good because to me, it's more important in my for me to to free an innocent man then convict or help help free an innocent man than to help free help convict a guilty person. It just feels more meaningful to me.

Mikalaa Martin [00:19:38] And from that example, in a couple earlier case examples that you have provided, it sounds like with gait analysis, having other information or evidence in the case can support it. Can you speak a little bit to the importance of having additional evidence and case information?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:19:55] Mikalaa that's a great question because I think I mentioned earlier that gait is not unique. And so when I get a detective saying I know it's him by his gait or how he walks, I always immediately tell the detective that you need more evidence than just gait analysis to convict somebody because more than one person can walk the same, even though there is all these different features that we pick up with people. And so I always tell the police right up front, if this is your only evidence, I'm not going to be part I'm not going to knowingly be part of having someone convicted based on gait. Gait can exonerate by itself and show these two people do not walk the same. And that creates a large amount of doubt. So I'm up for that. But to to participate in having someone convicted based on on gait by itself, wouldn't it be it wouldn't be fair for the for the for the person charged with the crime.

Mikalaa Martin [00:20:56] And as you've mentioned, the gait analysis hinges on digital evidence, such as surveillance footage or CCTV being available in that case. How does technology such as surveillance footage enable you to perform gait analysis?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:21:09] So cameras are becoming less expensive and more prevalent. And we're using cameras more and more now in society law enforcement, people's phones, they've ring doorbells and the quality of the footage is improving with time. Sometimes you still get footage where the quality is low, the resolution or the frame rate. So. With good quality footage, you'll have a higher frame rate. You'll have more frames in a given instant of time. So you can see more detail. I actually had a case where they had drone footage looking at someone from above. You know, when you look at someone from above, some people will twist from side to side when they walk. There's different features of gait that you can pick up from above. In an ideal scenario, you'll have

a crime scene with multiple cameras. You know, there's three planes. When you look at the human body, there's the frontal plane and then the side plane and then sort of coming straight down on the person. And if you have multiple cameras, that helps because you're seeing more aspects of the person's gait and you can put all three views or cameras together. What the problem with technology and cameras is that the people who sell the cameras are not the people who actually, at the end of the day, need to use the cameras. So I get sent a lot of footage where the camera was placed in a really bad position because the salesman, they never really have to analyze the footage of anybody. And I imagine a better camera company, at a minimum, would get a police officer or law enforcement involved in the camera's placement. So I see an improvement in the placement of these cameras coming in the future as these companies realize we need to give more thought to what these cameras are being used for at the end of the day.
Sometimes there's just a lot of cameras that don't show you much usable footage. Even even if you see people who get robbed in gas stations and whatnot. A lot of times the camera doesn't really show you much of the criminal just because of the place of the camera. So I see that improving in time. I see the quality improving. I see more cameras coming about and I see hopefully law enforcement beginning to recognize that gait can be used to assist in a criminal investigation.

Mikalaa Martin [00:23:38] We have previously discussed the use of footwear impression evidence on the podcast. However, you have supported many cases where footprint impression evidence played a crucial role. Can you talk to us about the distinctiveness of footprints and how footprint impression analysis is completed?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:23:56] What I do is footprints analysis, and I don't look at the ridge detail that a fingerprint examiner would look at. I look at the overall shape, the morphology. I consider the biomechanics of the foot that made the footprint, and I consider some other factors as well. So if there is ridges, if there is region detail or dramatic glyphs, I would tell law enforcement, you know, you need a fingerprint expert perhaps to take a look at that. But I will look at the footprint, the shape, the size, the position of the toes and the biomechanics. And there was a there was multiple studies done by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, by researchers there who ultimately determined that the chance of a match of a footprint is something to the effect of 1 in 1.2 billion. Now, that is under laboratory conditions, not necessarily in the real world, but it does give some measure of the distinctiveness of footprints in the real world. It may not be that high, but our footprints differ again because of our heredity, our biomechanics. Spend the day with me in my podiatry office. I see 30 people. I see 60 feet. Assuming no one's had an amputation. And you know, every foot is different. Even our our left and right feet have been proven scientifically to not be mirror images of one another. So even a lot of people will say my feet are different sizes to that difference. But I've looked at I did a study on looking at identical female twins, and even their foot impressions in footwear were different. So over time, due to injury, due to some people wearing poor footwear, they've shown that women who wear high heels in their early part of their adult life, in their 20s, for instance, and then they stop wearing them later in life. They'll have more foot problems as a result of that than a woman who did not wear high heels when they were younger. And I'm not telling women not to wear high heels, but I'm just giving an example. I think as a podiatrist, high heels are like if you're on a diet, having Haagen-Dazs ice cream once in a while, you know, it's like a decadent treat, put on whatever. But just to show you that it takes a toll on your foot, it can change your foot later as you age and different things develop as you grow older and injury and putting on weight, losing, having being very slim, being underweight, neurologic diseases, medical problems, diabetes. There's a lot of things that affect our feet and make our feet distinctive. Again, not unique distinctive.

Mikalaa Martin [00:26:35] On the topic of case studies. You presented a lecture at the 2024 International Association for Identification or IAI Educational Conference entitled Footwear to Feet: how a killer's feet were connected to shoes found at a homicide. Can you speak to how an association from a perpetrators foot can be made to their footwear?
Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:26:57] So the way we connect or disconnect, the way we show a connection between someone's foot and footwear found at a crime scene is not necessarily by looking at their footprints. We do consider their footprints, but the main thing we do is we compare the shoes the suspect has on his feet at the time he's arrested or questioned by police. So, for instance, in Canada, there was a 14 or 15 year old girl who was raped and murdered in shoes near the crime scene were found. And the shoes near the crime scene had a blood, but the blood was mixed. It was the victim's blood. And there was other DNA found on the shoes. And therefore, the suspect said that these aren't his shoes or someone else wore his shoes or they borrowed issues because it was mixed DNA. And a lot of times with footwear, because we walk around, you don't get just one person's DNA. You get multiple people's DNA on the shoes. So that's when they bring in a forensic podiatrist. And I compared the shoes that he was wearing when he was arrested with the shoes, with the victim's blood found near the crime. And you look at different things inside and outside the shoes. You do an actual what I call a shoe autopsy. It's nowhere near as involved as a real autopsy on a person. But a shoe autopsy, where I look at the wear, I look at the wear patterns, the wear on the bottom of the shoe inside the shoe. And I compare the insole, the foot impression in that shoe to the crime scene shoes. And what's interesting in that case is the person who did the murder wore skateboard type shoes. And the suspect when he was arrested had skateboard type shoes. In Virginia, a guy came home and found a burglar in his home and they scuffled and the burglar stood up and shot him a couple of times and killed him and left his shoe. That shoe left at that crime scene was a basketball Nike shoe. And when that suspect was arrested, he had the new version of the basketball Nike shoe. So it's been interesting that people, at least criminals in a very small subset of criminals that I've had in my life, they seem to purchase or put on a similar shoe and then they wear that. And so the comparison of the wear in one shoe to the wear in the other shoe is stronger. It's a stronger comparison because it's not like he went from wearing a basketball type sneaker, Nike, to wearing, you know, some fancy dress shoe. So you get similar wear patterns in the shoes and you compare those.
Then you look at the person's footprints and compare those. Then you look at the person's foot. And that's the thing that forensic podiatrists do that a lot of other people who look at footprints or compare footwear don't necessarily do and some may do. But podiatrists beyond doing the comparison, actually look at the foot and see how that can relate or not relate to the findings they're obtaining. So in that case, in Canada, I was due to testify and just before I did, they were going to challenge my testimony and I wrote a report showing that this methodology had been done in Canada. It had been appealed to their Supreme Court previously because someone in the RCMP had done something similar. The RCMP stands for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and after they got that report, he decided to to plead guilty. In Virginia I testified and that with other evidence, he was found guilty.

Mikalaa Martin [00:30:43] And from the perspective of a forensic podiatrist, and given the multiple hats that you wear within the forensic community, where do you see the field going next.
Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:30:53] In the future I see gait analysis, forensic gait analysis growing just because of the wide use of cameras. I believe that is going to really weigh large in the future. I know there is a significant need for this. It can be used to assist with defense or law enforcement. It doesn't stand by itself by any means, but it's assistive to assist in investigation. And I see that growing people do not typically use their feet when they do crimes, and they typically don't leave their footwear. That happens now and then. It's not that common, but the forensic gait analysis. That is going to just continue to grow. It's going to become larger. More and more people are reaching out to me to look at footage. The problem and the limiting factor has been is that the footage up until this point a lot of times is just not adequate for meaningful analysis. And I think that will improve just with more cameras getting out there. They'll send me the footage that is not meaningful, but they'll also send me three, four, five more cameras, and somewhere in there I'll have what I need to to do this right for them.

Mikalaa Martin [00:32:06] And for a final takeaway today, are there any identified needs or recommendations you have for overcoming any current challenges or gaps within the forensic podiatry field?

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:32:17] I really think we in terms of forensic podiatry, our biggest challenge is finding podiatrists who have the time and energy to learn what they need to learn to do this. Any podiatrist can be a forensic podiatrist, but to do it right, you really need to be a bit of a foot nerd. And I'm a foot nerd. And the people who do this, I would say, in the kindest complementary way, are foot nerds. And I like problem solving with feet. I like puzzling out things. And as a result of my interest in forensic podiatry, I've stumbled into, you know, doing other kinds of foot related issues pedicurists who may have injured somebody, you know, slip and falls at various places car accidents, patent cases, patent infringement cases and other cases, fraud and whatnot. So like, for instance, there was a case where somebody said he was hurt at work and he couldn't even walk. He had trouble walking and he had an ankle injury. And in between to doctor visits, they did surveillance footage where basically he wasn't just walking normally, he was like carrying big bags of groceries and whatnot. He was doing better, better than most people do. So I've fallen into some other things. But the biggest challenge for forensic podiatry is finding a podiatrist who a lot of podiatrists are interested in this and they sort of dabble in it and they find it fascinating and they love learning about it and they love attending lectures and seminars and hearing about it. But to make the leap to start to do it requires that you just learn a lot of forensic science and have that knowledge base. And, you know, people are so busy nowadays that there's not a lot of people who who have the time to put into it.

Mikalaa Martin [00:34:06] Thank you for your time discussing the fascinating realm of forensic podiatry. Dr. Nirenberg, it has been a pleasure talking with you today.

Dr. Michael Nirenberg [00:34:14] Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed talking to you, Mikalaa. I really appreciate it.

Mikalaa Martin [00:34:19] If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like and follow Just Science on your platform of choice. For more information on today's topic and resources in the forensic science field, visit forensicCOE.org. I'm Mikalaa Martin and this has been another episode of Just Science.
Speaker 2 [00:34:42] Next week, Just Science sits down with Denton County Sheriff's Office senior forensic investigator Ashleigh Berg to discuss the capital murder case that was resolved through bloodstain pattern analysis and the use of surveillance footage and real time tracking data uncovered throughout the investigation. Opinions or points of views expressed in this podcast represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.

Introduction [00:00:01] RTI International's justice practice area presents Justice Science. Welcome to Just Science, a podcast for justice professionals and anyone interested in learning more about forensic science, innovative technology, current research and actionable strategies to improve the criminal justice system. In episode two of our case studies Season Just Science sat down with Tim Fayle Training Capability Lead for IDEMIA Australasia and Chair of the International Association for Idenifications Latent Print Certification Board to discuss the utility of friction ridge detail inadvertently captured via photographs as a valuable and potentially underutilized type of evidence within a variety of case types. While the use of latent fingerprints recovered from crime scenes has been established as an important type of forensic evidence for decades, the increasingly widespread use of social media and other digital platforms has contributed to even more opportunities to garner friction ridge detail evidence following a crime. Practitioners and researchers alike have demonstrated the value of utilizing photographs, presenting inadvertently captured finger and palm friction ridge detail obtained via social media posts, other digital forums and cellphone data to identify perpetrators and help bring justice to victims. List along, as Tim described several cases where inadvertently photographed friction ridge detail was utilized to make an identification to a perpetrator. The various methods and techniques latent print examiners can add to their toolkit to analyze and compare this type of friction ridge detail and his recommendations for ensuring this type of evidence is not overlooked or underutilized within future cases. This episode is funded by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence. Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may evoke emotional responses or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Here's your host, Mikalaa Martin.

Mikalaa Martin [00:01:53] Hello and welcome to Just Science. I'm your host, Mikalaa Martin, with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, a program of the National Institute of Justice. On today's episode, we will discuss the utilization of ridge detail inadvertently captured and digital evidence, which is becoming increasingly more common due to the widespread use of social media. Joining us today to discuss this type of possible identifying evidence and its application and a variety of modern day and cold case types is Mr. Tim Fayle. Welcome to Just Science, Tim. Thank you for sitting down with us today.

Tim Fayle [00:02:30] Thank you, Mikalaa And thank you for having me.

Mikalaa Martin [00:02:33] Of course. So, Tim, I would love to kick off today's session and episode with you sharing a bit about yourself and your journey to and through the discipline of forensic science.

Tim Fayle [00:02:44] Yeah, certainly. I've had a bit of a varied experience, shall we say, multiple countries, as you can tell from my accent, I'm from Australia originally. I started in forensics doing a forensic science degree at the University of Technology in Sydney in Australia. I then started working for the New South Wales Police, initially as a Scene to Crime Officer, which is basically a CSI. I did that for a couple of years and then moved into fingerprints in 2005. Again, my expertise in Australia in 2009 also got IAI certified, which is International Association for Identification, Certified Latent Print Examiner Certification, and in 2012 decided with my family to make a bit of a big move and shifted over to California to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office in San Jose. So again, as a fingerprint examiner there, I became director of the fingerprint unit there called the Sheriff's Identification Unit and stayed there for just shy of ten years. And right around the tail end of COVID times, we decided that was the perfect opportunity to move our family back to Australia because, of course, travel was so easy at that time. So we did get to experience a 747 flight with ten people and four of them being my family back to Australia and then two weeks in a quarantine hotel, which was, shall we call it, a life experience. And then after moving back to Australia, I began working for IDEMIA as their Training Capability Lead in Australia. We had a major upgrade to the National Automated Fingerprint Identification system here in Australia, and I was responsible for training all the examiners in Australia on the new system. So that's kind of my short bio.

Mikalaa Martin [00:04:21] That is quite the international journey. Lots of the forensic ecosystem that you've experienced from the practitioner side to the vendor side, so that's great. I know that you mentioned the International Association for Identification, so the IAI. So you're currently the chair of the latent print Certification Board. Can you tell us a bit about your role in the primary aims and objectives of the board?

Tim Fayle [00:04:45] Yes, certainly. So the board is responsible for maintaining the latent print certification program for the IAI. We're responsible for creating new testing materials, ministering the tests, marking the tests and maintaining certification registries. We also currently are in the midst of all the certification programs for the IAI and not just the latent print one. Getting the program accredited as well. So as for anyone who's been through an accreditation at an agency, there's a lot of background work with that. So those are the main responsibilities. I've been on the board since 2015 and I've been chair of that latent print cert board since 2019. So I'm in my second and final term as, as chair. It's been very fulfilling professionally. It's it's wonderful to give back. It's a lot of work, as anyone who's on the cert board will tell you. But very rewarding work, I would say at that, too.

Mikalaa Martin [00:05:40] So speaking of the IAI, you recently presented a lecture at the IAI's Forensic Educational Conference entitled Social Media Fingerprints and Other Inadvertently Photographed Ridge Detail. Can you provide an overview of this lecture for us?

Tim Fayle [00:05:55] This lecture was actually I first gave it in 2015 at the Centennial Conference in Sacramento, and it was after my kind of first case dealing with this kind of evidence. And really, it's targeted at evidence that perhaps some examiners are still unaware of. I would hope that more and more examiners are more and more familiar with it as we progress now on to 2024. It's a type of evidence that you could receive in your day to day work. It's a type of evidence that often detectives either don't know about, don't know the possibility for use, aren't even thinking in that space. And so my idea was just to sort of raise some awareness. So as well as the case I worked on and I presented on some other cases that I found that were published in 2015, it was slim pickings. There were only a very small number that I could find, man, that we'll talk about throughout this, who's done quite a bit of research in this, Shane Turnage out of Canada. He was one of the few who had done some research in this work. The case in this kind of evidence sphere. It was really just to sort of raise awareness with people about, hey, this is actually a kind of evidence that you could receive. It's not controlled, but you need to know how to deal with it when you get it. That's kind of the realm of what I was targeting. Now. I was looking, as always, with any lecture for a what you might term a sexy title. So social media fingerprints are so certainly quite good. However, I also found that it didn't really capture every type of a circumstance that this type of evidence could happen. So as well as photographs of friction ridge skin that might appear in Facebook, Instagram, other social media posts, it also include inadvertently captured detail in, say, like a photograph on a phone that's been seized in a search warrant. So I don't know that my title of the talk is it's a bit of a mouthful in the end. And you know, the UK, when they decided to talk about it, just called it digital friction ridge detail, which is probably a lot easier to describe, but that's essentially the building blocks of the talk. And then the talk that I gave this year at the conference was just an update. So I had some more recent case work that was in there in those years. In between, I've also created an online course and just sort of giving an update. There's also been a validation study out of the UK, which was a really important extra step in working this sort of evidence.

Mikalaa Martin [00:08:13] Awesome. And the year that stuck out to me. So 2015, would you say that that is kind of the year that all of this started to emerge or at least become discussed within the community?

Tim Fayle [00:08:23] I mean, certainly for me, as I mentioned, there were a few people who had raised some awareness about it before Shane Turnage in particular out of Canada. Chris Crisis as well had published about a case that he'd worked on. But for me, my introduction to it was really around 2015 because that was the first case that I worked. And that case at Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office we have had a number of police agencies that would submit evidence to us, and one of those being Los Altos Police Department. And I got a call from a detective one day who said he'd found suspect for a series of burglaries that had self incriminated himself on some Instagram posts, basically just bragging about the proceeds of the crimes and everything. But the Instagram account had been set up anonymously so he couldn't trace who had set it up. But in trawling through some of the posts, he found a photograph and he said, Hey, I've got a photograph of that guy's hand. I'm just wondering if you'd be able to identify the guy from his handprint. And it's in this photograph. So for the fingerprint examiners listening in, he said, it looks really good. It's really good quality. So the fingerprint examiners listening in, I'm sure you've heard that before, where your hear it looks like really good quality to me and then you get it and it's terrible. This was not that case. This one. He sent me the image and I immediately said, Yeah, I think we can do something with this. It was a photograph. He was actually trying to sell drugs as well, and he was holding a pill in his hand, which turned out to be a clonazepam pill. That pill, just from the markings on it, on Drugs.com. I could figure that was a clonazepam pill which had a diameter of eight millimeters. So conveniently enough, he placed a scale on his hand to allow me to scale that accurately, to scale as well. Searched it in an automated fingerprint identification system, or AFIS, and got a hit to a person, provided the information after we got the identification verified to detectives and he was able to go and investigate that lead actually recovered some stolen property from that suspect that when I went around for a search warrant on his house. So that was kind of my first introduction into this sphere. That same year was when I first gave the talk at a conference and sort of triggered my interest in looking into this type of evidence.

Mikalaa Martin [00:10:28] Awesome! And you mentioned that there were a couple additional cases that you had spotlighted in your presentation this year that also came out kind of prior to that 2015 date. Maybe after that 2015 date, would you be able to talk a little bit about those additional cases as well?

Tim Fayle [00:10:45] So there had been some published in Evidence magazine. Chris Gross, I mentioned, had published a case that he had had that was a search warrant photograph where a suspect who was not allowed to possess firearms was holding a gun in a photograph and was able to identify the person from that. Some of the more recent ones that I talked about in the talk at this conference, there was one that probably a number of latent examiners may recognize from 2018 on chat forum called CLPEX.com. A photograph was posted that site saying, Hey, every examiner, can you search this? We need to know who this person is. And essentially, they were sexually abusing a three year old girl and there was a photograph of some abuse and some ridge detail of an index finger was visible in in that photograph. These images had been uploaded to a dark web forum that pedophiles obviously liked to frequent and so detective had found it, had sent it to some examiners. They did not get any identifications from their searches. So they thought, well, let's try everything we can, because this was a particularly heinous criminal who had done a lot of very bad things in the pedophile sphere for a very long time. And so it was posted to this chat forum. So a lot of examiners will probably, if they were to to see the image again, they'd say, I recognize that I searched that back in 2018. So when the guy was eventually arrested, everybody got reverse hits. That was in 2019 when he was eventually arrested. So they did end up tracking him down by other means. And but everyone got reverse hits on it after the arrest. But that was one that a lot of people would probably be at least somewhat familiar with because of the posting on that forum.

Mikalaa Martin [00:12:21] I appreciate you sharing these two case studies, Tim. I find that they demonstrate the utility of this type of evidence and a variety or spectrum of case types. From these two case studies alone, it sounds like this type of evidence can prove to be recoverable and valuable in any case that contains digital evidence. So in your response, you also specifically called to any fellow latent print examiners who may be listening in today. For that audience, what are the main takeaways for modern day latent print examiners? Does this type of evidence bring about the need to expand the toolkit of traditional analysis and examination techniques?

Tim Fayle [00:12:59] I personally think so. First of all, awareness, as I've mentioned a few times, awareness is the key. So just being aware that this type of evidence exists that you can use it, you can get identifications from it, and these images are not to set up where the person is placing a scale on their finger and photographing their finger with the purposes of having it identified. So it's very different to, for example, a live scan capture of a fingerprint where it's a controlled environment, right? It's controlled with the capture of that. It's a known scale. In these images. You don't have a known scale. So having the awareness about the type of evidence, having the awareness about how to use this type of evidence as well. So, I mean, if you have a suspect, a 1 to 1 comparison is fairly straightforward, but not all the time. Sometimes the ridge detail is not facing the camera.
Matter of fact, that happens quite a lot. And so it could be trailing away in one direction or another. And so being able to understand the techniques that are available to be able to correct that perspective issue, that that's present in the image so that you can make a 1 to 1 comparison. And then if you don't have a suspect or if the suspect is not identified, being able to search that in an AFIS system effectively and accurately with an accurate scale is critically important. So knowing how to scale the image correctly, how to know that you are within the tolerance that exists for being within correct scale so that you know that your search has been accurate to hopefully obtain an identification. If a person in the database that you are searching, those tools are very necessary. I would also say even further than just the analysis of evidence is the knowledge set to be able to have a conversation with detectives and even other investigators. So like you, CSI, who are at a crime scene or get a search warrant who come across something like this so that they know when they come across this type of evidence that it is the type of evidence that can be submitted to the fingerprint unit and can be useful in the investigation. I think those aspects are really important today's age as well.

Mikalaa Martin [00:15:02] You mentioned the importance of scaling quite a bit in that first key takeaway. And so to tie this back to the first case study you highlighted today, what's fascinating to me is the out of the box thinking to look up the diameter of the clonazepam pill as a way to scale the image with this concept of ridge detail in informal or inadvertent photographs where a scale is likely not included or maybe is included in a nontraditional way. What methods can latent print examiners employ to recalibrate the image to correct the scale?

Tim Fayle [00:15:33] I've narrowed it down to three major ways to do that, and the first one is kind of what we discuss with the clonazepam pill. So if in the image there is a an object with a known size and it's in the same or very close to the same plane as the ridge detail, then that known object size could be used to to recalibrate your image to scale. So a good example being that pill. Another example being the case of crisscrosses that I mentioned earlier, where the gun was being held by the offender. That gun, you could tell from the markings what make and model the gun was and any make and model known of the gun you can look up the sizing of the various parts of that gun as well. So so that is one way. So a known object within the image. But but the key there is it's got to be close to the plane of the ridge detail that you're targeting. Otherwise you scale is not going to be accurate. The next way is, is a way that Shane Turnage has published on and it's using average hand dimensions and these so he's published on and he's got a nice cheat sheet available for it where it's got average sizes of each of the flanges, each of the sections of palms. So using that, it may not be super accurate, but what I have found through my research and others have found through their research is that AFIS systems have a pretty high tolerance for error margin in accuracy of scale, to the point where I found there were only issues if the scale was out by plus or minus 20% out of correct scale. That was when I started to see a negative effect on the AFIS searches. So there is quite a decent error margin built into AFIS systems and the searching algorithms with accuracy of scale. But obviously with that in mind, you want to be as accurate as you possibly can be. That's the second method is by average hand dimension size. And then the third way is by a ridge count. Espouse book, quantitative and qualitative. I forgot the exact title, but most people note is as the QQ book. His book talked about the average width of friction ridges, and so you can use that information to do a ridge count of I would say you want to target a minimum of ten ridges and preferably 15 to 20 if you have that many. They should be parallel ridges and preferably with as few ridge breaks as possible. So as few bifurcations and ridge endings breaking up the flow of the ridges as possible. You obviously want to avoid curved areas as well. So straight parallel ridges if possible, getting a ridge count and then using that spells average width to figure out the size and the scale from that. And I've had very good success with that as well. So those are kind of the three methods that could be used to recalibrate an image to scale in this circumstance.

Mikalaa Martin [00:18:18] And going back to that first option, you mentioned the importance of plane. So how can latent print examiners adjust perspective for ridge detail on a non perpendicular plane?

Tim Fayle [00:18:29] There's a number of different options there. And Photoshop is hopefully a tool that most examiners are familiar with and have available to them. If Photoshop is not available. There are some tools in other programs. I'm less familiar with those, but I do find the ones that I've seen they tend not to be as powerful is or is as good with this particular issue as the Photoshop tools are. So the three kind of tools and they kind of in order of ease of use, but also the harder they are, the more powerful the tool is as well. It always seems to be the way, right? Like you would love for a tool to be both powerful but very easy to use. But it's not always that way. So there's one called lens Correction in Photoshop, which is a very simple one where you can just basically correct the horizontal or vertical perspectives. Kind of like if you think about rotating a globe, it's

that kind of thought to it. The reason it's in Photoshop is to correct any distortion from know. For example, if you've used a fisheye lens and objects are distorted in the image, you can use that lens correction to just kind of help correct for that. That's the purpose of it in Photoshop. But it can be useful for these circumstances to correct perspective. The next one is perspective crops. So this is in the crop menu of Photoshop and it's called Perspective Crop. And you can basically create a crop you are going with the angle that your friction range detail is on. And then when you click the tick, it will take that angle and make it on a straight plane. The biggest problem with that one is you can't really see the effect of your perspective crop until you click that tick. So there is no like previewing of it.

So it is a little trickier to get used to that one, but a bit more powerful than the lens correction. The last one is unfortunately in Adobe's infinite wisdom they have stopped using the 3D space in Photoshop after version 22 of Photoshop, so I've always highly recommended to turn off your auto updates to Photoshop if you want to use this particular function in Photoshop. You can even have like an older version of Photoshop and the newer version of Photoshop loaded on your computer at the same time. If you have enough disk space, I guess. But it's a filter, it's in the filters menu called Vanishing Point and Vanishing Point allows you to rotate either an entire image or a section of an image around the X, Y, and Z in an Australian or Z axes and not only rotate, but you can also compress or expand on those axes as well. So as well as being able to correct the perspective around to to being much more two dimensional, which is obviously what we're looking at with a live scan or ink to capture fingerprint. So as well as correcting that perspective, you can also correct the unnatural expansion or contraction that will happen when a fingerprint or friction ridge detail is out of correct perspective. So usually if the print is tailing away from the camera, the ridges will be compressed in that area that's tailing away from the camera. And if it's sort of angled more towards the ridges will be more expanded compared to so shall we call it normal compared to a two dimensional capture. So being able to correct for those issues, you can preview what you're seeing when you're using that 3D space. As I say, the biggest problem is unfortunately Adobe has done away with the 3D space in Photoshop after version 22, so if you want to use that particular tool Version 22 is it for you! Those are the three main ones I have actually started investigating and another tool called Perspective Warp, which is available in Photoshop as well. I'm kind of in the early stages of looking into the capability with this particular type of evidence in mind. I'm still in the very early stages there, but if someone wants to have the play around with Perspective Warp as well, my initial look at that seems fairly promising.

Mikalaa Martin [00:22:12] And maybe we'll hear about it at next year's IAI.

Tim Fayle [00:22:16] Yes, I would hope I can do an update there. Yes.

Mikalaa Martin [00:22:18] In keeping with the theme of overcoming challenges and preparing this type of evidence for latent print analysis and comparison with the need to compare social media and other inadvertently captured fingerprint evidence to two dimensional known exemplars. Is it safe to assume many times friction ridge detail is not captured in the two dimensional aspect?

Tim Fayle [00:22:40] Almost always that's the case. The times where it is captured in a two dimensional aspect is and there is a case out of Australia which is a really good one of this, where again, it was a very boastful sort of enterprise by the criminals involved here.

They had committed an armed robbery, they were waving a gun in front of the camera. They were smart enough not to put their face in front of the camera. They had a whole bunch of cash on the bed, you know, kind of waving the gun in front of the camera and the light in the room as the gun was being waved in front of the camera. If you pause the still of the video, the light shone on the gun at such an angle that you could actually see a latent fingerprint on the gun because it was a shiny metal. So that in that case, that's a two dimensional print, right? Because it's a latent print as opposed to friction ridge skin. That was a pretty cool case as well because they were able to calibrate that one to scale via ridge count and search it and get an identification from that print on the gun. But I would say that two dimensional example that I gave would be the exception rather than the norm. It is almost always the case that you're looking at friction ridge skin with this type of images and therefore it's going to be three dimensional.

Mikalaa Martin [00:23:48] And how can that be corrected by latent print examiners in the non oddball cases of having a 2D print?

Tim Fayle [00:23:56] First of all, the accurate recalibration, the scale is very important. But second of all, why that vanishing point filter in Photoshop in particular is so powerful. Because it allows an examiner to not only correct perspective if the ridge detail is tailing away in one direction or another, but as well as that correct the compression or expansion of ridges so that the print appears much more like a two dimensional capture of the same ridge detail would appear. And that's ultimately the goal, right? If we can get the three dimensional friction ridge detail image to appear much more like a live scan or inked captured ten print, two dimensional print is of the same person, well then we're going to have a much higher success rate and accuracy with searching that print and being able to identify it. That's ultimately the goal and the ability to correct for those distortions really mainly around accurate recalibration to scale and correcting perspective in the image.

Mikalaa Martin [00:24:56] So I'd like to talk a little bit about enhancement to latent prints and inadvertently capture friction ridge detail. So for the techniques that are used, are they different from traditional approaches to enhancements made.

Tim Fayle [00:25:09] Aside from things like the perspective corrections I would say not really. It's just applying what hopefully examiners already aware of to the situation. So hopefully examiners are familiar enough with the color wheel and with being able to use like lightens like an opposite will darken. And obviously there's the fluorescent aspects to color, but that's generally not what we're dealing with here. So, you know, being able to use a like color, you know, skin color has a very specific tone in certain races. So it tends to be in a specific area of the color wheel and then either using a like color to lighten that area, if that's what you need to do in your image or dark and out with the opposite color, those are kind of the main sort of enhancements. Other ones that I found very useful again in this sort of Photoshop sort of sphere. If people don't have these sort of enhancements available in their AFIS system would be things like curves, which are great with pretty much any image really, and also levels. In my online course I talk about a specific way of using levels where you can actually target and see what you are removing from the image so that you can avoid removing any ridged detail information. And that's achieved by holding the alt key in when you slide the minimum and maximum bars of levels.

Mikalaa Martin [00:26:28] And one other thing I'd like to talk about is in this era of heavy use of social media times, a lot of times we see photographs that are altered by the poster via filters or even the application of artificial intelligence. Does the use of this type of technology lead to any challenges or considerations for this type of evidence?

Tim Fayle [00:26:49] Yeah, certainly. One of the areas that examiners really need to be aware of is is control of the audit trail of your images. And then, you know, that should be a standard practice with any type of evidence, right? Regardless of the evidence. With this

type of evidence it's the images that especially if they've been posted to social media, those social media sites, all the ones to my knowledge, there is some level of automatic processing that the social media site applies to any image that's uploaded to the site.

Usually it's a compression so that they limit how big the file sizes are that are being loaded on the site for fairly obvious reasons there. But yeah, things like filters obviously available, whether they're on the camera itself of a particular phone or they could be in a software application. You know, Snapchat is famous for having a lot of filters or even the social media site itself might have some filters that you could load it with. So you load an image and you say, I want to apply this filter to it. So those filters, though, by and large, will leave traces in the metadata. So they will be traceable. And the key with this type of evidence is controlling the audit trail for the moment you can, which you can't control from the moment of capture. Obviously. But from the moment you receive it, you can. And so having that audit trail controlled from that moment, and then if there's any question about any alteration that might have happened to an image before you got it, hopefully there would be traces in the metadata. So being able to have the metadata analyzed in those circumstances as well would be important. But it's obviously a concern with this type of evidence. There is a possibility that, you know, an image could be modified before it's posted and some sort of effect to the ridge detail has happened in that case. I would also say for those who have been fingerprint examiners long enough, that type of modification, without leaving an obvious trace of it in the image itself that a fingerprint examiner would be able to see visually would be exceptionally difficult.

Mikalaa Martin [00:28:40] And going back to a theme that came up earlier surrounding education, especially investigators and cases, in your opinion, is there anything that the latent print community can do to educate law enforcement on the utility and value of this type of evidence?

Tim Fayle [00:28:56] Yeah. Conversations, Communications. Like most things in life, right. And especially work conflict, all of it. It always comes down to communication, right? So this is no different. And I would say the key here is having those conversations with your detectives, talking to them about this type of evidence, talking to them about how you can use it if they come to you with this type of evidence, what kind of cases you can use in the pedophile cases, search warrant, social media post for any kind of crime, all of those types of cases, you can have a discussion with the detectives. You could show them examples. There are now plenty of them that have been published. So just doing a Google search on this kind of information, you'll be able to find a whole bunch of published articles about cases where this type of evidence has been involved.

Mikalaa Martin [00:29:41] I love how you mentioned kind of the onset of of cases employing this kind of approach early, early on, starting those conversations. To swap over to the other side of maybe outcomes. Are there any legal considerations surrounding the use of photographed hands and other ridge detail posted on social media or other media platforms?

Tim Fayle [00:30:02] So first of all, there's the legality of obtaining any evidence which applies to, well, any evidence that way we want to talk about, right? So above and beyond that initial legality of seizure of evidence, which by and large the detectives are the ones who mainly have to worry about. The audit trail of those images, as I've mentioned before, is is really critical here. So maintaining that audit trail, whether you have a digital image management system that does that as part of the process that it has for images from the moment it's stored, it archives the original copy. And then you're only ever working with a copy of the original as opposed to the original image. Or if you have to do that manually.

Either way, maintaining that audit trail, if you use Photoshop, Photoshop has a setting to turn on your metadata tracking, so it will track anything that is done to that image that you've done to it in Photoshop in the metadata via that metadata tracking. So that's key. I would also say in the legal aspect like we have with any new enhancement tool or development medium, you know, a new chemical, a critical thing that happens with any of those circumstances is a validation study. So luckily for us, a validation study has been done, has been completed and has passed accreditation and that was done in the UK. And so that validation study was very broad, ranging to very lengthy document. The UK agency that did it is more than happy to share that validation study with examiners, but they passed, I believe it was October 2023. The validation study was was approved through their accreditation assessors. So I would say those those two things are pretty key. And being able to point to that study, maybe having your own internal assessment in your own agency, not a full blown validation study because that's already been done for for start, but some sort of internal confirmation that this type of evidence works in in your procedural set up, I would say is also important. Really, those are the key things to be aware of, legally speaking, in my opinion.

Mikalaa Martin [00:32:02] And a few items I feel and themes that have come up through our discussion. But I would be curious to know in your perspective and in your your journey with this type of evidence and presenting to various audiences and learners for adding this to their toolkit, are there any identified needs or recommendations that you have for overcoming any of the current challenges or gaps regarding this type of evidence in the field?

Tim Fayle [00:32:26] Yeah. So probably my biggest one and I made mention of this in my talk at the conference this year, is making sure that you don't have such a restrictive policy on the receipt of images of friction ridge detail so that you eliminate some of this type of evidence from coming into your lab from the get go. And what I mean by that is, particularly in the US because of, you know what, slow down from the Mayfield era, for example, with latents requiring a thousand PPI minimum resolution to be submitted, at least to the FBI for searching, for example. So having a and I know a number of agencies that have policies like this where they say all images of friction ridge detail, must be a minimum of 1000 PPI, otherwise they will not be accepted. And having a restrictive policy that doesn't even allow an image to be assessed on its own merit is potentially very damaging for this type of evidence. Because remember what I said about social media platforms so often compress the images when they're posted to social media. The control of the capture of these images isn't there compared to a CSI capturing a photograph of a print at a crime scene, or a lab technician photographing a light on an evidence item where they know the camera settings they have to use. They know how to photograph a print so that it's a thousand PPI when it's recalibrated minimum with this type of evidence though that's not the case. Now with the quality of phone cameras just getting crazier and crazier, it tends to be a bit less of a problem these days, but it's still it definitely exists. And so not having such a restrictive policy to preclude receiving an evidence image, if it happens to recalibrate the under 1,000 PPI is really important here. So that very first case that I talked about, the 2015 one out of Los Altos, when I recalibrated that to scale using that Clonazepam pill as a scale, it came back to around 320 PPI. So it would be very much below what most examiners would consider as acceptable. Being either a 1,000 or some use 500 minimum. However, every time I've put that on screen, which I did again at the conference and I said, Who here in this audience believes that this print is perfectly suitable to be used in comparison and to be able to be identified. And well, as far as I could tell, everyone in the crowd raised a hand. It's at a crystal clear, beautiful palm print that we're talking about with very clear detail. It's just a case that the image is 320 PPI. So

I think having a policy that allows you to assess images on their own individual merit and assess if the detail is clear enough to be able to accurately and confidently determine the detail, ridge detail, that's that's visible in the image as opposed to saying hard and fast, No, it has to be a thousand PPI or else. That's my number one recommendation here. And this conversation I had with a number of people at the conference this year and matter of fact, had a back and forth on on email with with a few people is okay, here's our current policy. How could we adjust it so that it's not as restrictive but still making it clear to the people who submit their crime scene evidence to us that they need to maintain a minimum standards for their evidence. So having the verbiage around that, it does sort of force them to do it, what we might say the right way and having the proper resolution for the images they're capturing under controlled circumstances versus an uncontrolled circumstance like a social media post image and being able to assess it on its own merits.

Mikalaa Martin [00:35:59] You bring up a great point regarding the technological advancements that have occurred over the past several years with smartphone camera capabilities. From your own casework, experience and discussions with agencies that have utilized this type of evidence in their cases, could you see inadvertently photographed or friction ridge detail being utilized and cold case investigations, whether that be cases with social media evidence or even photograph evidence from cases predating the current social media era?

Tim Fayle [00:36:29] Yeah, absolutely. Or even the search warrant photos. Right. So search warrant images could go back, you know, 40, 50 years. Right. And not digitally, obviously. But if there's somebody sitting in a cold case folder, an image that happens to include ridge detail in it, then why not? And actually on that front, this is one that I didn't include in this talk, but I did talk about it, the conference as a different case. I presented on a 1979 cold case homicide as the conference as well, where in that particular case and it was very fortuitous. And I always say to examiners, if you have something to present about, even if you don't think someone wants to hear it, there are people that do want to hear it. Please do present at conferences. And one of my best reasons for that was this case. Anyway. When I was putting together the talk, I looked at the autopsy photos and I realized that there were four photographs of the forearm and hand of the victim, and they were taken of I don't know what the medical terms of it, but showing the palm of the hand and then showing the back of the hand so so rotating, but showing the forearm and the hand. And in those images now, these were Polaroids, right? And they were scans of the Polaroids. So I've zoomed into these the hand parts of these Polaroid images, the scans of the Polaroids that I had. And I realized, particularly in the high Pacino area of the palms, there was good ridge detail there and went ahead and compared that to the remaining latents in the case. And lo and behold, was able to identify one of those remaining prints in a very probative area to the victim and ruled that one out from being considered as a potential suspect one. So absolutely, when you're talking cold case, there's a real case example where this type it was an inadvertently captured ridge detail there is no way known that that coroner or the coroner's assistant was trying to capture the ridged detail in that hand. When they photographed the forearm and hand, they were purely just trying to show some injuries that the person had sustained during the attack. But there's a real life example where this can be applied to Cold case. So absolutely, I think it has application obviously in more recent years, cold case work for sure, because you're dealing with digital evidence, you're dealing with social media posts, you're dealing with iPhones and other types of phones, cameras, capturing things. But even the older ones for sure, absolutely can be applied.

Mikalaa Martin [00:38:47] That's an incredible case, especially for scanned Polaroid captures. Thank you for sharing that.
Tim Fayle [00:38:54] Yeah, absolutely.
Mikalaa Martin [00:38:55] Thank you for your time discussing the fascinating topic of social media fingerprints, Polaroid fingerprints, and other inadvertently photographed ridge detail and how this type of evidence can support case resolution. Tim, it has been a pleasure talking with you today.

Tim Fayle [00:39:11] Thank you. And a pleasure as well Mikalaa. And I very much appreciate your time and asking me to be involved in this.

Mikalaa Martin [00:39:17] If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like and follow Just Science on your platform of choice. For more information on today's topic and resources in the forensics field, visit forensicCOE.org. I'm Mikalaa Martin and this has been another episode of Just Science.

Introduction [00:39:36] Next week, Just Science sits down with Dr. Michael Nirenberg to discuss the forensic subdiscipline of forensic podiatry and a variety of cases that he is supported through performing gait analysis and utilizing footprint impression evidence.
Opinions or points of views expressed in this podcast represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.
 

Introduction [00:00:01] RTI International's Justice Practice area presents Just Science. Welcome to Just Science, a podcast for justice professionals and anyone interested in learning more about forensic science, innovative technology, current research and actionable strategies to improve the criminal justice system. In episode one of our case study season just sat down with Anthony Earles, Forensics Identification Unit supervisor at the Maui Police Department, to discuss the Maui wildfires that occurred on August 8th, 2023, including the collaborative nature of the mass disaster emergency response effort, the forensic methodologies and technologies used to identify recovered human remains and the various challenges encountered during response mobilization due to the isolated geographic location of Maui County, Hawaii. When deadly wildfires impacted Maui County, available resources and existing infrastructure were put under strain. Despite these initial obstacles through the collaborative response of over 100 individuals from federal agencies, external partners, state and local forensic science service providers, as well as members of the Lahaina Community. Maui police department was able to expand its response capacity, recover unidentified human remains and identify these remains using a variety of forensic identification techniques, including rapid DNA technology and more.

Listen along as Tony describes how Maui Police Department and the many forensic professionals and first responders involved were able to locate and identify unidentified human remains, the importance of collaboration and communication in mass disaster response, and lessons learned that may support mass disaster response preparedness planning efforts within the forensic community. This funded episode by the National Institute of Justice's Forensic Technology Center of Excellence. Some content in this podcast may be considered sensitive and may invoke emotional responses or may not be appropriate for younger audiences. Here's your host, Mikalaa Martin.
Mikalaa Martin [00:01:56] Hello and welcome to Just Science. I'm your host, Mikalaa Martin, with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence, a program of the National Institute of Justice. On today's episode, we will discuss the tragic Lahaina fire that occurred in August of 2023, claiming the lives of 102 individuals and the mass disaster response taken in Maui to locate and identify these human remains. Joining us today to discuss these response efforts is Mr. Anthony Earles. Welcome to Just Science Anthony. Thank you for sitting down with us today.

Anthony Earles [00:02:33] Aloha and greetings from Maui. Please feel free to call me Tony. All right?

Mikalaa Martin [00:02:38] You got it, Tony. To kick off today's episode, could you share a bit about yourself and your journey to and through the discipline of forensic science?

Anthony Earles [00:02:46] I got my master's in Forensic science in 1987. Now I realize that is before DNA was accepted in criminal trials in the United States. So we were the first graduating class of Virginia Commonwealth University's newest program in forensics. And I have been working with the Maui Police Department since 2006. I started as a police evidence specialist. That's what they call them here in Hawaii - crime scene investigators. And in 2016, I was promoted to the supervisor of the forensics identification units, where I oversee the county of Maui forensic facility, and that includes the cold case unit, crime scene unit, digital forensics, fingerprints and the morgue.

Mikalaa Martin [00:03:34] Sounds like you have a lot on your plate. Perfect. Well, to dive into our case study for listeners who may be unfamiliar, could you give us an overview of

Maui and Lahaina Hawaii, including their geographic location and any key information that is relevant to better understanding the impact, scale and deployment efforts for the Lahaina Fire?

Anthony Earles [00:03:53] For those who may not be aware, the state of Hawaii is eight islands in our chain that are inhabited. We are approximately 2500 miles from San Diego. So we're kind of in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Maui County itself encompasses four of the eight islands. So there is Maui, the largest, Molokai, Lanai, and there is an uninhabited island in our county - Kahoolawe. Maui County has about 165,000 residents. But realize that our daily average of tourists is around 75,000 per day on Maui. On August 8th of 2023, our police department consisted of 196 sworn officers. That includes our outer islands, the smaller islands. A minimum of 24 beat officers are working at any given time on the island of Maui. And we have seven forensic professionals in our forensic facility on a daily basis. A little bit about Lahaina. Lahaina is located on the west side of the island.
Lahaina has over 13,000 residents before the fire, and thousands of visitors daily can easily double that population on the west side. The size of Lahaina is approximately eight square miles and of note is the fact that there is a single access road, the whole nor pilani highway that is accessed from the south and the north.

Mikalaa Martin [00:05:36] And prior to the fire, what infrastructure, communication networks and incident management systems were in place for mass disaster emergency response scenarios?

Anthony Earles [00:05:47] Well, I'll take this piece by piece. So infrastructure. Again, Lahaina is on the west side of Maui, and it's kind of isolated from the major population centers. For example, our main airport in Kahlui is in central Maui. Wailuku town is the seat of government, both state and county. And Kihei Wailea is a large population of tourist accommodations on the South Side. Realize that due to that isolation on the West Side, most Lahaina residents only venture out to come into town to shop at Costco. It is about a 22 mile drive, taking anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half because it is a narrow, winding coast side road and there can be a lot of heavy traffic with all the tourism. And I will jump in to communications. Before the fire police and emergency systems constantly are being upgraded every year and they have been very well maintained and very effective coverage for our island community. Again, with the four islands that comprise Maui County. Since the islands have the challenges of coverage is that the mainland might not understand realize that when you have islands, there are going to be the inability to place towers along the shoreline. So towers providing coverage for the west side, for example, are actually located on the two neighboring islands of Lanai and Molokai. Same thing with cell phones. The major carriers provide truly adequate services except in very remote locations. So as far as our incident management systems, like most agencies, the Maui Police Department participates in countywide mass casualty training exercises, constantly including tabletop exercises, exploring various possible scenarios involving all the community partners, including hospitals, mortuaries, airports, private construction companies, which we depend on a lot of times for loaning the county equipment use for large fires, brush fires, that kind of thing on a normal basis, and just realize that our infrastructure at the forensic facility, our daily operation is around seven live people working in this building. During the Lahaina response, we expanded to 127 people. Yes. And you can imagine the challenges from not only the day to day, just toilets, for example, not able to be able to handle the increased loads. We had to bring in portable toilets, air conditioning, refrigeration failures it's not used to being able to operate from six in the morning until midnight every day at high capacity. Our facility wasn't designed to handle those extended hours and operational requirements, so supplies like your paper towels, toilet paper, everything had to increase coming into the building to support those who came to assist us during the disaster.

Mikalaa Martin [00:09:00] Thank you for sharing a little bit about the tabletop exercises that were conducted in advance of the Lahaina Fire. I'd like to go back to discussing the infrastructure communication networks and the incident management systems and how those elements were impacted by the fires.

Anthony Earles [00:09:18] I will tell you, during the Lahaina fire, we were tasked with many and numerous, we were tasked with things that constantly popped up that were almost impossible to plan for and trying to make sure that effective services were constantly provided. Also realized that there were actually four fires on that day, not just the Lahaina fire. So we had four areas of Maui that were being affected immediately, and our fire departments, for example, our police departments, everyone was responding to multiple areas. So it was not limited to just the west side. So we had other people in our community that we also had to look after. And unfortunately, the Lahaina fire, it seems to have done the most damage. But we did have actually upcountry there were more than 20 residences that were affected. And we thought at one point with the situation that was going on, a hurricane had just come by and was sitting to the south of the island and was creating over 80 mile an hour winds. So we were worried that the large tourist area as well in Kihei Waleha was going to be affected. There was a large by far the largest fire was on the border of that area. And so all of this was having to be considered at the same time.

This affected our initial shipments, for example, of rapid DNA instruments that were being brought to Maui to assist us during the investigation. Our first instrument that was shipped had to be shipped to the farthest north island of Kauai and realized that it had to be picked up by U.S. Coast Guard C-130 airplane and delivered directly to Maui from Kauai. It arrived on day three Post-fire. So even though the declaration of a state of emergency does have positive impact, we had to go over a couple of speed bumps and challenges initially with shipments. Also realize that, as I said, the Lahaina town has a single egress route to the north and the South. Realize that with the heavy winds over 80 miles an hour, trees, power lines, stalled vehicles were blocking the roads. Realize also that when you talk about the vehicles, internal combustion engines require oxygen to provide power to the engine. And because of the high temperature fires, yes, the metal on cars were actually melting. The cars were not able to run. So they were stalling in the middle of the road, creating more roadblocks and the fast burning structures themselves. Many of the buildings were older, constructed of wood instead of the modern metal framing. And another challenge was the fact that cellular service was interrupted. The towers were down for all the carriers on the west side. So the morgue facility is approximately 22 miles away. And even though we are here to receive the recoveries, we still have to communicate with those that are conducting the recovery operations on the west side. Our Maui Police Department radios were fully functional throughout, which is, again, because of our preparations and keeping our communications systems upgraded constantly. They were no problem. However, for those of us who only used police radios before, it only allows a single speaker at a time. So again, that can be challenging when there's hundreds of people that are trying to communicate different things during the emergency. Another challenge was street signs being destroyed by the fire. It made navigation sometimes challenging, not only for people from Maui who were familiar with the street signs before, but because our off island workers who came from our federal agencies may not understand the speaking of the Hawaiian names of the streets and the neighborhoods, a lot of times the Hawaiian names seem similar and their pronunciations are very close and confusing sometimes to off island workers. So again, these were inherent to the fact that the majority of the streets did have Hawaiian names.

Mikalaa Martin [00:13:51] After receiving this call about the fires, would you be able to walk us through some of the first steps that were taken by your team upon request to respond and provide a timeline of the key events that took place during the front end of the deployment efforts.

Anthony Earles [00:14:07] I received a call from another detective that the fires are raging in Lahaina and we're going to be expecting to have numerous casualties. The fire did burn very fast. It did extinguish itself by the morning, pretty much thoroughly. So realized first thing on the ninth, we made 40 recoveries by Criminal Investigation Division on that very first day. Again, these were recoveries that were obvious. They were in the roadways.
They were along the roadways on the sidewalks. So they had to be recovered initially to make sure that we could provide transportation for searchers who were going to be performing. Search and recovery. Realize also on day one post fire that on our side, as far as receiving the recoveries, we had to start expanding the temporary morgue. Luckily, we were able to utilize the adjacent vacant lots to our forensic facility to accommodate eventually five refrigerated shipping containers. And we started on day one post fire with daily morning briefings every morning at 630, and we were tasked with problem solving.

Again, remember, we still have limited cellular and tech services, so everything is being conducted by police radio. This was the morning briefings was an opportunity for a very open floor discussion. There was no such thing as chain of command issues. This was an opportunity for people to bring problems and bring solutions and ideas. It was a collaboration. There was an opportunity for discussion and our goal was to solve whatever problem came and make sure that we could move forward with the very best information that we had. It was also an opportunity as new team members were coming aboard from federal responses and other agencies statewide to integrate those workers and introduce them, make sure that everyone knew what our roles were, including the recovery site. So again, we were trying to coordinate from our side of the forensic response, which is just the receiving of the recoveries and communicate effectively to the recovery site. By day three, our rapid DNA instrument was on site. Our first one. Another surprise happened was that the media was starting to look for stories and they were starting to provide coverages of our temporary morgue area, which was the refrigerated shipping containers and by day six post fire. We realized that we needed to have a team and a task force that could integrate all of the facets that were going to be involved. So we started the MINT. That stands for the Morgue Identification and Notification Task Force. These were leaders from each agency and segment of the operation to help problem solve. Again, no chain of command. If we had a problem, let's solve it. We would meet in the room all together, the leaders from all the agencies. And again, that was on day six. We were already communicating with our recovery command center and effectively by that point were able to get majority of the cellular communications back up. By day eight, our morgue capacity had fully expanded from our pre fire 100 shelves to 300 shelves. And our DMORT, which is the Disaster Mortuary Operations Response team, is the federal response was fully functional on day eight. And to those of you who may be on the mainland where people can just drive in from your local jurisdictions to help realize that everyone had to be flown in. And again, the challenges of being 2500 miles from the mainland. Recoveries continued for months. The last recovery was six months after the fire. So on February 9th of 2024, we had our last recovery, and that was number 102 as identified.

Mikalaa Martin [00:18:34] And Tony, I think there is a lot there, but kind of three of the major themes that stuck out to me that you mentioned and all of that was collaboration, community and problem solving. I think those are some really big takeaways. If you kind of

wanted to speak more about their importance or kind of their central role that they played in response efforts.

Anthony Earles [00:18:55] Yes. And I will tell you, the federal system, FEMA, as well as DMORT, provides a valuable resource to a local jurisdiction that is overwhelmed to capacity. And when they show up with their team as an assessment team first arrives on island and then they determine what's needed. Within two days, the rest of the actual team arrived on the island and that very next day they're ready to go. So by day eight, Post-fire our DMORT was fully functional and was providing the autopsy assistance that was needed for the extensive operations that were needed for identifying the decedants. And realized that as the recoveries progressed through the timeline, the initial recoveries were more whole, they were less destroyed by the thermal defects. But I will tell you, as recoveries progressed, they became more cremated and scattered just because they were harder to find as well as they were more located inside of structures that were harder to search. And again, I was not part of the search side. I was purely on the side of the forensic morgue operations and identification. But the collaboration was extreme. We had community members, organizations, companies, you name it. The great thing about being a small community is that you pretty much know or someone knows somebody in those organizations. It just takes a phone call and we can get something working and we get things moving. We tell them what we need and they make it happen. And our community did step up tremendously to support our efforts as well as the Lahaina community on that side as well. Communications, again, everyone has different operational plans and everyone's goal is the same. The goal is to get to the end of the operation with as many decedents positively identified as possible, and those remains returned to the families in as quick as possible. But again, being very thorough. So everyone may have a little different way to get there. But that's what's great about the federal system. The federal system works with the local jurisdiction. And once they leave, they leave you with all of their work product. So all of the database that was created was left with us. And so we had to continue to use that. And we still use that as we're finalizing the identifications on some of the most severely damaged cremains. So the process is a long haul process. It is not a sprint. It is a marathon.

Mikalaa Martin [00:21:57] And you've brought it up a little bit prior to now, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about the search and identification methods and techniques that were employed to find and identify these remains.

Anthony Earles [00:22:09] I will tell you again, I was not part of this search side. That was handled through a command center on the search and recovery. But we did have a command center in our police chief's office that was meeting constantly from day one. And we would report there constantly, sometimes multiple times throughout the day. And our goal was to make sure we communicated what our needs were and what we were encountering, to make sure that everyone was communicating effectively across search and recovery as well as the morgue operations. I will say that by day four, Post-fire, we had our first scientific identifications of decedents using fingerprints and rapid DNA technology. The other scientifically accepted identification method, such as dental, was a little later. That was around three weeks in the post-fire timeline that our dental IDs began. But that was because it was challenging to find dental records, and I will talk about that a little later. But as our preliminary after action report identified, 63 total were identified by rapid DNA, 17 were identified with fingerprints. And again, those were the earlier recoveries. Then 14 were confirmed by dental. Two were confirmed by medical devices.
So I will also talk about during the identification methods, the use of dogs, as far as my understanding, in recovery of unidentified human remains. Again, we were not directly

involved. Our involvement was to communicate that we had a primary recovery and we were conducting autopsy and we were missing parts or major portions. And we would communicate that with the recovery side and go send another team with an anthropologist to conduct a secondary and sometimes a tertiary recovery. But I will tell you that the 40 dog teams that were from the mainland were, from what I understand, very helpful and effective, especially with the earlier recoveries. Again, these were more intact without extreme fire damage. But as the recoveries became more cremated and scattered, the guidance from the experienced anthropologist was truly valuable and could not have been done without those anthropologists. So the anthropologists that came were from, of course, the DMORT. They provided anthropologists both on the morgue side, as well as the search and recovery side. Same also came from DPAA, which is the Defense P.O.W. MIA accounting agency that was based in Honolulu. We have worked with them as a forensic statewide partner before, but these are some of the best anthropologists in the world, and they specialize in identifying remains of our military that have been left in prior incidents throughout the world. So they are highly trained and very well tasked with being able to identify extremely damaged remains. Now in the morgue during the autopsy process, as we were seeing the primary recoveries, we would communicate with the search and recovery command and tasked them with sending another team back for a secondary search. We also created an immediate Excel spreadsheet that we had to track, and we shared this on a file for forensic personnel to be able to keep it up to date as possible with the latest information as to where the recoveries were- the primary. When a secondary recovery was conducted. What were the results? And if that was finalized and we were completed with that site. The anthropologists would conduct assessments of the remains here at the morgue, and they would we're looking for completeness, wanted to make sure that we were documenting. They were documenting it through photography and as well as through inventory sheets with skeletal designs that they would mark with red markers to show what was recovered and what were we missing. Again, we were trying to also verify the singularity of remains. So remember that during this event sometimes people were found together. During this extreme event, this this experience, you can only imagine that you were trying to take shelter anywhere you could and some time that was together. So it was our job to make sure that we separated those and were able to identify if there were multiple remains. We had to make sure that we verified the identity of each and every one of the recoveries. Also, as far as postmortem fingerprints, well, I will say, and I would love to send our appreciation to the FBI lab in Quantico. They sent a fingerprint specialist who was wonderful and training our team on techniques for optimizing the recovery of fingerprints from the decedents. Those initial recoveries without extensive thermal damages. The fingerprints were obtainable, but realize that a lot of our decedents were actually older victims, and most of them do not have arrest fingerprints or known fingerprints on file. A lot of them didn't even have driver's licenses, which, again, we can't even search driver's licenses and compare it through AFIS anyway. But I will say finding known prints was sometimes challenging for the older members of our community. And then as far as our dental identifications realized that our records were lost in the fires. Most of the Lahaina residents tend to stay on that west side. Most of them conduct all of their business on the West Side, including their dental visits. And unfortunately, several of those dental offices were also burned, delaying our ability to be able to obtain those known dental records. As far as medical devices and medical X-rays from previous medical treatments. Some of the individuals were identified with medical records, including X-rays from prior treatments. We even had two recoveries that were identified using implants.
One was a pacemaker and the other was a hip joint. Both of those have unique serial numbers that were used to make that identification. And then, of course, the largest by far was the use of rapid DNA. So on day four, Post-fire, our first DNA identification was confirmed and realize during the height of operations at the morgue we had five DNA

instruments onsite, operating with a team from across the country assisting us in the morgue, recovering samples, taking those samples to the teams that were conducting the rapid DNA analysis. And then the results and the identifications were being reported to our forensics team.

Mikalaa Martin [00:29:47] So, Tony, you mentioned the use of rapid DNA technology to support identification efforts. For those listeners who may be unfamiliar. Can you explain how rapid DNA is used in mass disaster scenarios?

Anthony Earles [00:30:00] So rapid DNA technology, it was tremendously helpful that 90 minutes to 2 hours that it takes for that analysis to go through and give you a positive identification was truly amazing. And our goal, again, is to be able to secure a positive identification of the decedent and to allow the families to proceed with their loved one's disposition. And they really need to have that positive identification to begin that closure process. So the rapid DNA was by far one of the most valuable tools that we had available to our use throughout this operation. And it continues to date again from our preliminary action report 63 were positively identified using rapid DNA. So, again, we would not have been able to do it without that technology.

Mikalaa Martin [00:31:05] Can you talk a little bit about the processes used and the general experience in obtaining family reference samples to compare to DNA profiles developed from the located remains?

Anthony Earles [00:31:17] Realize that our Maui community is comprised of people from numerous countries, making it sometimes challenging to secure family reference samples. We needed family reference samples from worldwide, so the FBI provided assistance as well as the Mexican consulate. We were able to have samples recovered by law enforcement agencies worldwide and shipped directly from the FBI to Maui Police Department for analysis. We realized early on that some folks are reluctant to provide their DNA samples to law enforcement. So we spent quite a great effort with social media promoting a message that those family reference samples would only be used for identification of their family members and absolutely nothing else. That was a great undertaking initially, but once the message was passed through out with social media, we had the help of community leaders and religious leaders speaking in their native languages in public service announcement type messages to communicate that we would only use those DNA samples from the family members to identify the decedents. So nearly one month after the fire, we conducted a family briefing on the West Side. This was by invitation only. It was for immediate family members only. There was to be no lawyers, no media members, no non-family members. The event was a quite a production, you can imagine. Again, this is about one month after the fire started with a Hawaiian blessing.

There were numerous religious leaders there for consultation. The Maui Police Department answered questions directly and realized that there were sometimes very difficult situations. For example, one family lost numerous members. So our forensic pathologist, our resident forensic pathologist was there as well to meet with them and answer their questions directly. We also provided numerous available resources, such as from the Red Cross, FEMA, County and state agencies that were providing assistance.

We had all of these resources there, as well as, believe it or not, we were still recovering family reference samples. So it was a truly important part of the process to make sure that we were dispelling rumors, false information. You could not believe how much media was coming out with false information and partial truths that were being twisted. So it was our opportunity to talk directly to the families and make sure that they realize we are still here for them.

Mikalaa Martin [00:34:24] And you've mentioned it quite a bit, so many collaborators and contributors to these efforts. But in general, can you explain how that support assisted in expanding the forensic capacity for the emergency response?

Anthony Earles [00:34:38] Maui Police Department's expanded response included so many local, state and national agencies. Maui Search and Rescue was one of the initial ones. Hawaii National Guard based here on Maui, the Army National Guard based here on Maui. The Honolulu Fire Department sent over backup for our Maui Fire Department. The National Park Service here on Maui provided officers, the Customs and Border Patrol, FEMA, as well as urban search and rescue, came from the mainland. Again, the Department of Defense P.O.W. M.I.A. Accounting Agency, Health and Human Services. In Honolulu our FBI evidence response team, who are forensic partners that we worked with, greatly provided tremendous rapport and support throughout from day four. They were probably the quickest ones to be able to respond. But we've had a long term relationship with the evidence response team and our federal partners and statewide. Again, we're stuck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So we have worked together as an island community on collaboration with our forensic partners. DMORT itself coming from the mainland with all of the tools that they needed. The rapid DNA provider that helped us with getting all of the team members to come to help us to analyze the samples from the morgue, as well as the family reference samples and to train us on how to utilize the equipment so that once they departed to go to another disaster, we were able to continue our work. And of course, the Mexican consulate were very helpful. The anthropologists were vital. Again, DMORT, DPAA, the University of Hawaii west Oahu sent representatives, as well as California State University in Chico. All of these organizations sent anthropologists to help us, not only in the morgue operation, but in the search and recovery. The expanded capacity could not have been done without help from our local construction firms, helping to build the privacy walls as well as building the driveway parking lot and just moving all of the shipping containers around. So the shipping companies helped us any and everyone came in and helped us as a community.

Mikalaa Martin [00:37:08] And I think that that is incredible for the local efforts and the national efforts to support Maui. With the influx and the expansion of support professionals did you encounter any obstacles in managing the support of agencies deployed to provide additional capacity?

Anthony Earles [00:37:27] Wow. It seemed like every day there was a challenge, if not numerous challenges. Our morning briefings became our opportunity to solve any and all problems as they arose. We tried not to let anything sit and wait. We wanted to handle it upfront and get it done. Again, this was an open floor and everyone we went around the room, everyone who was there at the morning briefing was asked for their input, not to put them on the spot, but it was their opportunity to make sure that their input was heard by the team. One of the biggest obstacles was initially realized that over 3000 were reported missing in those first days following the fire. So over 150 federal, state and county law enforcement officers followed up on each and every one of those reports. Realize that they had to follow up on every one of those reports, consolidating duplicated reports, because sometimes numerous family members would report the one individual as missing. So they whittle it down from over 3000 into the credible list of those that were truly unaccounted for. Our final identified victims was 102. We today have only two remaining on the list of unaccounted for.

Mikalaa Martin [00:38:58] And thinking about the the human side and the individuals involved. Mass disaster events can be physically and mentally demanding and distressing for both the community members that are impacted and the forensic professionals that are supporting the deployment efforts. Can you speak a bit about the support and systems in place to promote forensic professionals physical and mental well-being while at the deployment site?

Anthony Earles [00:39:22] Well, I will tell you, the forensic professionals who assisted us throughout this response were dedicated to their work. They were showing up ready to work, and they worked until the very last minute each day. We actually had meals delivered more than three times a day to our morgue facility so that the forensic professionals could take a break, go up to our lunch room, have a lunch, and then go right back to work. We also had mental health support throughout the event from probably the third day after the fire. We had experts visiting our facility multiple times. We actually went on the first couple of times they came to the facility. We would bring them into the autopsy suite so we could introduce them. We would go in and now realize we had four autopsies being conducted simultaneously. So there were about sixteen people working.
Immediately we would walk in. I would ask people to put down what they were doing for just a moment. I would like to introduce so-and-so, our mental health expert. Their contact information was posted throughout the buildings as well as the opportunity for them to meet them directly. They would come through, walk through the building, and they would come and talk to them in the lunchroom. They would go walking through the different areas of the building. One day we even had a comfort dog come through the building to help. Now, again, we did not take the dog inside the morgue. But I will say throughout the office areas, one of the big things that you realize when you're working from six in the morning to 11 at night, the federal response is those people came to work. So they work long day. But the host agency has to consider you have to take breaks. You can not work that way day in and day out. So we had to consider our staffing because you have to have your staff on site throughout the work of the federal agency. So smaller agencies, you have to consider that you need to schedule your people to split the days and the shifts to make sure that you have ample coverage and that the work gets done, but that your people can take breaks because you've got to take care of yourself to make sure you can take care of others. I personally constantly circulated throughout the building and all throughout the grounds of our expanded morgue to check on team members, asking them how are they doing? Asking them What do you need to do your job and to make it easier. Another tool that we would use is during the morning briefings, I try to maintain optimism, realizing that everyone was facing such grim duties. We had celebrations every day. We would celebrate how many positive IDs we were able to accomplish the day before. We would celebrate birthdays, anything we could think of to try to make something positive and to make people have some positive outlook as to where the end was going to be. And there is an end to the race.

Mikalaa Martin [00:42:36] Thank you for sharing Tony. I think well-being is so important and I appreciate all the examples that you've provided that other agencies can pick up and utilize, maybe even just for daily work as well, to keep morale high. So moving into post deployment efforts, are there still remains that are unidentified?
Anthony Earles [00:42:55] Yes, there are still remains that are being tested with advanced DNA analysis, and these are very severely damaged unidentified human remains. They are being conducted by not only rapid DNA provider as well as AFDIL, which is the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory out of Delaware. I will mention, though, if you as a smaller agency after a federal response, you would like to continue to

utilize these federal resources. You need to secure those federal resources by a MOU or a memorandum of understanding. And sometimes that can take months to get in place. So make sure you start that process early well in advance of when you're going to need it. So we actually started that in mid-September to progress through the point of where we are because they are projecting the FEMA and EPA are projecting that the recovery sites will be finalized. As far as all of the reconstruction that's going on in Lahaina through at least February of 2025. So we have already got it in place that AFDIL will provide services as well as DPAA with anthropology needs in case we have another unexpected recovery.
Realize that that work is still going on in Lahaina. The rapid DNA provider again is also continuing to analyze those challenging samples. So we are still working on DNA analysis.

Mikalaa Martin [00:44:40] And on the same page as the lessons learned to establish MOUs earlier in advance. Are there any other lessons learned from this mass disaster that are being utilized to develop actionable next steps regarding deployment strategies and infrastructure needs?

Anthony Earles [00:44:57] Our preliminary after action report was issued by the police department about six months after the fire. It lists 32 recommendations at that point. I think our final after action report will have a few more. But there were already 32 recommendations that we had identified that are already in progress and underway. From our side of receiving recoveries. I will say that recovery photography and notes was very vital in looking back and answering questions that would come up during the autopsy process. Sometimes there were questions as to, you know, was the recovery from indoor versus outdoors? Was the location next to a concrete structure or were they next to a structure that was totally damaged? Was it a partial or a whole cremation? And again, your photography and your notes by those recovery teams turned out to be vital. So I know a lot of times when your recovery teams are tempted to just make the recovery and move on, take the few moments to document properly, it will help your investigation. Also get those anthropologists and the fingerprint experts integrated into the process as soon as possible. The anthropologists, they are trained to recognize human remains. A lot of times the structural debris that has been damaged can be confused with human remains or human remains may be overlooked. A lot of times also there are animal, non human remains. We even had one recovery that was a medical specimen that was deemed by a forensic pathologist to not be a decedent from the fire. The fingerprints. Again, those are your quickest and easiest identification, generally giving quicker closure to families. So get that help on site earlier.

Mikalaa Martin [00:47:06] Moving into post deployment efforts. And you've alluded to it a couple of times during our discussion is the preliminary after action report that was issued by Maui Police Department. Can you talk us through some of the major findings and takeaways from that report, as well as any lessons learned from the overall deployment effort that you think would be valuable to share with our listeners today?

Anthony Earles [00:47:31] As I mentioned a little earlier, I reiterate the importance of being involved with your statewide and regional forensic partners before you need each other. We as a statewide group, including the FBI evidence response team in Honolulu, have had long standing relationships. We have regular meetings. We get together and we discuss forensics as far as a future for the state, but also problem solve some of the challenges that we all have. No matter where you are, we all have the same challenges in the forensic community. So the DMORT, for example, the DMORT personnel from the mainland, they have the same challenges that we have here on Maui. It's just that their location may have a little different perspective to it. Also, I would recommend build your

relationships with your community. We are again fortunate to be a small community, so we are friends with our neighbors. So I was able to pick up the phone and call the owner of the property next door and say, Hey, you may have heard about our situation. We need to use your property. We need to use it for expansion of our morgue facility. We're going to be bringing in some refrigerated shipping containers. Are we okay to move forward? So, again, build your community together before you need them.

Mikalaa Martin [00:48:55] Thank you for your time discussing this case study as well as your experiences and lessons learned Tony. It has been a pleasure talking with you today.

Anthony Earles [00:49:03] And thank you very much. Aloha.

Mikalaa Martin [00:49:06] If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to like and follow Just Science on your platform of choice. For more information on today's topic and resources in the forensics field, visit forensiccoe.org. I'm Mikalaa Martin, and this has been another episode of Just Science.

Introduction [00:49:28] Next week, Just Science sits down with Tim Fayle to discuss social media, fingerprint and other inadvertently photographed ridge detail. Opinions are points of views expressed in this podcast represent a consensus of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of its funding.