The Onion Field Killer is dead. Gregory Powell, a.k.a. the Onion Field Killer, died of prostate cancer at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville which is part of the state prison system. In 1963, Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith killed LAPD officer Ian Campbell in an onion field near Bakersfield. Campbell’s partner, Karl Hettinger, managed to escape and […]
Evidence
Recap #cclivechat Aug 3, 2012
Our guest today was Virginia Braden! Virginia Braden is a licensed Private Investigator and Behavioral Profiler specializing in violent crimes and cold case investigations. This includes death investigations, missing persons, and unidentified remains cases as well as rapes, sexual and physical assaults, stalking, domestic violence cases and elder abuse and child abuse cases. Virginia Braden […]
#cclivechat Recap June 15, 2012
In today’s #cclivechat, Sue Carney covered body fluids testing, limitations of tests and forensic interpretation of body fluids with us. It brought a few surprises such as that urine and feces contain very little DNA, that some cells look identical and are thus less suited for forensic purposes. Sue also indicated the difficulties with several tests and […]
Book alert: “Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery” by John Leake
“Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery” about Duncan MacPherson by author John Leake is my new “must read” for this summer. Duncan Alvin MacPherson (Feb 3, 1966 – Aug 9, 1989), a Canadian professional ice hockey player, went missing during a short stay in Austria. John emailed to give me the heads up about the book. I scanned […]
Is this the car that killed Karen Caughlin?
A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner, could this be the car that killed Karen Caughlin? The paper Sarnia This Week wants to know. Several people have wondered about this. They remembered that they used to own a car just like that. So they called Crime Stoppers and waited. When nothing happened they went to the authorities. Nothing […]
Guest post: Road death investigation by Dave Thomas
Guest post: Road death investigation by Dave Thomas. Dave has been a police officer for 15 years with the last 3 years on road policing. _________________________________________________________ Road death investigation and the importance of forensic evaluation. As a road policing officer based in the United Kingdom, I have seen advances in the last few years in automobile […]
Recap #cclivechat March 30, 2012
Today’s CCLiveChat centered on postmortem toxicology and pharmacokinetics. Neither topic can be discussed within the hour but we got some good questions in for Peter Mullen! In general, pharmacokinetics is understanding the “time-course” of a substance in the body or, how fast does it travel through the body? All depends of course on what was taken and in […]
Forsenic anthropologists crack historic cases
Forensic anthropologists at Texas State University are helping to solve four unusual cold cases, for the television series “The Decrypters” that will air on the National Geographic Channel beginning March 29, 2012. “The series will tie the investigative methods used by forensic anthropologists to sweeping events in American history,” said Michelle Hamilton, who with Kate […]
Recap #cclivechat Feb 17, 2012
This recap of CCLiveChat is courtesy of Sue Carney. Today saw a massive turnout of cold case live chat stalwarts, old and new, for a regular-style cold case brainstorming session. Sadly, just as chat began, Alice got the tragic news of the death of her friend Phillip Finch, staunch supporter in the Zeigler case. As Alice […]
#CCLiveChat recap Feb 3, 2012
It has been dubbed the most entertaining CCLiveChat ever and the only thing I did was mention snot. He! We were talking about body fluids so it was not that far out, right? But seriously, we had an enlightening chat with Sue Carney about blood patterns, how they evolve, wet versus dry blood, how blood […]