Behind the Yellow Tape: On the Road With Some of America's Hardest Working Crime Scene Investigators

Table of Contents

.PRAISE FOR Bodies We’ve Buried

“This wonderful book will take you on a fascinating and sure-footed journey through the real world of crime scene investigation and the real people in it.
Bodies We’ve Buried
is original, informative, and delightfully readable.”—Patricia Cornwell

“A fascinating inside look...The Academy’s rigorous, hands-on curriculum is not for the faint of heart or the queasy. The same could be said for the book’s vivid you-are-there descriptions . . . People looking for an interesting read will enjoy sharing the challenges of the CSI training course and the behind-the-scenes stories that Hallcox and Welch recount. Their enthusiastic and comfortable style welcomes all readers, viewers and nonviewers of
CSI
alike, into their world.”—Dr. Fred Bortz,
Chicago Sun-Times

“Hallcox and Welch take readers inside the world’s top CSI training school for a spooky, but fascinating, look at what they do and how they do it.”—
The Knoxville News-Sentinel

“More gruesome than anything on
CSI.
”—
Giant

“It isn’t pretty, but exposure to such disturbing sights and smells helps detectives track down the bad guys.”—
Nashville Scene

“Shares with readers the gritty reality of forensic work. The authors caution that the actual work is a lot less glamorous than it looks on TV and often involves crawling through the mud or examining putrid corpses. And nothing is as simple as it seems, from photographing crime scenes—where the details, from film speed to lighting, are crucial—to processing evidence, which is selectively sent off to a state lab to be dealt with. Students in the course also pay a visit to the infamous Body Farm, where they examine and analyze decomposing corpses. Given the popularity of
CSI
and its many imitators, many will find reading about the real science enlightening and engrossing.”
—Booklist

 

BODIES WE’VE BURIED

BEHIND THE YELLOW TAPE

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Copyright © 2009 by Hallcox & Welch, LLC.

All interior maps courtesy of Pamela Johanns, Johanns Design.

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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / January 2009

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hallcox, Jarrett.
Behind the yellow tape : on the road with some of America’s hardest working crime scene
investigators / Jarrett Hallcox and Amy Welch ; foreword by Patricia Cornwell.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-44065989-8

1. Criminal investigation—United States—Case studies. 2. Crime scene searches—
United States—Case studies. 3. Evidence, Criminal—United States—Case studies.
I. Welch, Amy. II. Title.
HV8073.H2228 2009
363.25092'273—dc22

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

—T. S. ELIOT

T
here’s always evidence, if you know where to look. So we realize in
Behind the Yellow Tape
, a collection of real cases worked by real people who aren’t likely to end up on talk shows, and probably won’t like all the fuss when the public gets its hands on this tremendously entertaining, provocative book.

Behind the Yellow Tape
isn’t at all what you see on TV. It’s better. It isn’t done with
magic boxes
, as I refer to the television tools of CSIs, with their unlimited funding, limitless boundaries, and the ability to divine what happened and why. Jarrett Hallcox and Amy Welch trekked across America, spending countless hours with police and investigators as diverse as the sheriff’s department of Sevier County, Tennessee, and the NYPD. As forensic experts themselves, who have each earned a ticket to the inside, the authors were given access to cases that they have re-created in such colorful, extraordinary detail, I got nervous and felt compelled to call Jarrett Hallcox after I’d read the first ten pages.

“Hey,” I said uneasily, because he’d asked if I’d write a foreword to the book, and I was beginning to think I should have said no. “I’m confused. Is this fiction or nonfiction?”

“What do you mean?” he replied, baffled.

“I mean is it factual? Every word of it.”

“Yes. Every word of it, I swear.”

“Because I can’t put my name on it and then find out later you made it up. What they call nonfiction-fiction or whatever,” I said. “That’s what it reads like. How the hell did you get all this detail, right down to what was said at the scene or what was going on inside someone’s psyche?”

Painstaking research is the simple answer. Spending inordinate amounts of time talking to the cops who worked the cases, and going over every word of every record and interview. What comes to mind is an old saying I hear all the time from people who work in the world of crime: “You really can’t make stuff like this up.”

Of course, the big bonus is that Hallcox and Welch go to great lengths accurately describing the minutiae of forensics that no one can seem to get enough of these days. What you’ll see is the very necessary demythologizing of crime scene investigation—what was and wasn’t done in cases that shed blood and took lives.

What exactly is a crime scene investigator? Not the high-heeled, leather-clad version that Hollywood crams down our throats on a nightly basis, but the
real
crime scene investigator: the real CSI. Though there are no strict definitions, a crime scene investigator is simply a member of the police force who works a crime scene. Contrary to their name, they don’t actually investigate crime—though some do have the dual responsibility of crime scene work and investigation. And they are not scientists either, unlike the character on
CSI
, Gil Grissom, who is shown toiling hours and hours in a laboratory. Simply put, CSIs are the people who collect evidence, do minimal analysis of that evidence, and prepare the rest to be sent to the lab. That’s it. They don’t use scanning electron microscopes, and they don’t chase down murderers in long, dark alleyways. Hollywood purposefully gets it wrong, because sometimes being a CSI is boring. Crawling on your hands and knees, decked out in blaring white Tyvek suits, looking for one spent shell casing in the grass, or better still, sorting through a Dumpster behind an old Chinese restaurant, looking for a hair in day-old moo goo gai pan just doesn’t make for a good prime-time broadcast.

Yet Hollywood’s version has created a forensic fervor of epidemic proportions. The CSI craze has taken off, run amok, and left an indelible mark on pop culture. Hollywood’s contribution to making crime scene investigation fashionable and “hot” cannot be denied. Just go to any college campus with a forensic science program and you will see it packed to the gills. The study of forensics is at its zenith, and Hollywood can be thanked for that. But unfortunately it has also had a negative impact as well. Shows such as
CSI
and
Cold Case
have caused some of the general public to have unreasonable expectations regarding crime scene investigation, due in large part to the sensational portrayal of crime scene investigators and their crime scene practices. And all of this has caused a new illness to develop, afflicting many, many Americans. It is called the
CSI Effect
.

The CSI Effect is a clear indicator of just how pervasive the forensic craze is. Smart, intelligent people are watching these forensic shows on television and thinking that they are true representations of crime and crime scene investigation. Some of these same people, armed with this silicone-enhanced knowledge of forensic science, end up as jurors who make their decisions based on what they have seen on TV and render verdicts based on what they think they know. “I saw it on television” has become an all-too-familiar response in courtrooms across America. It doesn’t matter the size of the city or the type of crime; the CSI Effect does not discriminate. If you don’t think the CSI Effect is a problem, just ask any forensic investigator who has testified at a hearing. We guarantee he or she will have a story to tell.

Why does any of this matter? Who cares, right? Wrong. It matters because the crime scene investigator is the first line in seeking justice. In most criminal cases, the burden of proof comes down to the evidence—no more, no less. If the CSI does not find the evidence, collect it, and package it properly, then a trial won’t even happen. There may not even be an arrest. The fate of a criminal begins and ends with the crime scene investigator and his or her ability to work a crime scene.

That’s where we come in. We have spent the last six years of our lives working with and training crime scene investigators at the National Forensic Academy (NFA) in Knoxville, Tennessee. Here, men and women from all walks of life and all types of law enforcement agencies come together to hone their CSI skills in an intense, hands-on training program unlike any other in the country. Three times a year and for ten weeks at a time, these CSIs train in the field via re-created crime scene scenarios. Cars are blown up, bodies are buried, and human blood is spattered in an effort to teach CSIs the best methods for working crime scenes. It is from here that benchmarks in the art of crime scene investigation are set, and it is from here that we, former administrators of this renowned academy, learned the real world of crime scene investigation and the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the crime scene investigator.

So we decided to tell their stories; to walk a mile in their shoes; and hopefully, just maybe, to debunk some of the Hollywood myths surrounding the CSI. Not to mention, we wanted to give CSIs everywhere their due because, contrary to how they are portrayed on television, their jobs are not glamorous, high paying, or even particularly rewarding at times. They don’t have the corner offices or the high-tech labs—and you can rest assured none of them drive Hummers. Sometimes television has a way of blurring the lines between what is real and what is make-believe. But we know what’s real. It is these men and women, from border to border and coast to coast, who get up and go to work, laboring every single day to put bad people away, to make the rest of our lives better and safer. These are the stories of the men and women who dedicate their lives to working behind the yellow tape.