For the breath testers out there!

Happy Holidays to all!

http://www.ncsu.edu/faculty-and-staff/bulletin/2011/12/the-science-of-santa-2/

Forensics of Horror Part 1: Ted Bundy

It's October again, the leaves are falling, the pumpkins are out, and so are the Christmas Halloween decorations. Which means it's time to focus on the Forensics of Horror again. Last year I focused on the supernatural boogie men, but this year I'm going to focus on the human monsters, which in my opinion, are infinitely more scary.

This week: Ted Bundy

 I had quite the surprise researching Mr. Bundy, nee Theodore Cowell, to find that he had his very own tie to my home state of Vermont. He was born in 1946 at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers right in Burlington. The Lund Family Center still exists helping pregnant young Vermont women though the name has changed. He was only in Vermont for a couple of months before moving to Philadelphia where he was raised under the impression that his grandparents were his parents. In 1951 he moved with his real mother where she married  Johnnie Bundy, a military cook.


His profile seems to be that of every successful serial killer. Well behaved, charismatic, quiet... He met his first love in 1968. When she left, deciding he was not husband material, he was devastated and became withdrawn and depressed. He learned his mother was not his sister as he had believed for so long. Eventually he started another relationship and though "Elizabeth" thought he was unfaithful she stayed utterly devoted.


In 1974 women began disappearing from the local college campus...


In 1975 he was stopped by police for a moving violation. In the vehicle, police found pantyhose, handcuffs, an ice pick and a crow bar. The front seat was missing. Police suspected him of burglary. Now at this time there was a woman who claimed to be attacked, the items she described were the same as those found in Bundy's car. The police made the connection and he was charged with attempted kidnapping. He was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Police were also trying to tie him to a known murder and eventually felt they had the evidence to move forward. According to credit card statements he had been in the area at the time of the murder.


In the murder trial Ted Bundy decided to represent himself. This allowed him to be in the court room without leg irons and move with complete independence in the court room, and more importantly, freely between the courtroom and the court library. In June of 1977, he escaped, leaping from a window in the library. A week later he was captured.


One would think this would make the guards more cautious but on December 30th, he escaped from prison and moved to Tallahassee Florida, next to Florida State University. He lived under the name Chris Hagan and would occasionally attend lecture. 


On Saturday, January 14, he broke into Florida State University's Chi Omega sorority house and bludgeoned and strangled to death two women, raping one of them and brutally biting her on her buttocks and one nipple. He beat two others over the head with a log. They survived thanks to the arrival of their fellow roommate Nita Neary, who came home and interrupted Bundy before he was able to kill the other two girls.

On February 9th, 1978 he killed again, this time a 12 year old girl who he mutilated. Investigators were able to match bite marks on the victims to Bundy. Remember at this time, DNA evidence was not used but we do have an example of forensic work in the bite molds which are still used to this day.


Good ol' Ted thought he could still beat the guilty verdict and turned down a plea deal.


In 1979 he want on trial for the sorority murders where he again acted as his own attorney. The trial was televised and Ted attempted to play up to the media and charm the jury. It didn't work. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.


In 1980 he was put on trial for the death of Kimberly Leach, the 12 year old victim. This time he had an attorney and his court room behavior was nothing like the charismatic man known to so many. He appeared angry, slouched and glared. Appearing perhaps more the man he really was than the congenial mask. He was found guilty and received a third death sentence.


During the sentencing phase, he surprised everyone by calling Carol Boone, who was convinced of his innocence, as a character witness and marrying her while she was on the witness stand. She later gave birth to Bundy's child, a little girl who Bundy adored. Eventually Boone divorced Bundy after finally realizing he was guilty.

On January 7th, 1989, prior to being put to death, he gave details of more than 50 women he claimed to have murdered. Those closest to the case thought there were as many as 100 victims to Ted Bundy, but whether this is true or not has not been proven. He confessed to keeping severed heads and participating in necrophilia. On January 24th, 1989 at 7:13am he was put to death by electric chair while the crowd outside cheered his death.

But it's not over, because just recently Ted Bundy has made the news again. Speculation was that eight year old Ann Marie Burr may have been Ted's first victim when he was 14 years old and lived in the girl's neighborhood. A DNA profile of Bundy was recently obtained and now cold cases are being brought to light again in an attempt to link Bundy to previous murders with the forensics capability that is available now. This case did not show a match, but how many others will? The very fact that we are still looking at Bundy after his death shows the fascination is not over.




 

Four Loko Removes Caffeine...Surprise, Surprise

Well, we didn't really think Four Loko was going to go away just because of a ban did we? Of course not! As I posted last November the focus on Four Loko appeared to be all on the caffeine content which was a dramatic missing of the point. Well, Four Loko has removed the caffeine, guarana and taurine, and is good to go again.

Almost.

Apparently someone has actually noticed that the alcohol content is kind of a problem. Probably because all those kids were suffering from alcohol poisoning rather than caffeine overdoses.

The focus is now on changing the label so that people know that when they consume one Four Loko, they are actually consuming 4 or 5 drinks rather than one. I'm sure this labeling will stop the problem, after all it's not like anyone ever abuses alcohol or that college kids knew full well that they were getting a good deal for $2.50... I'm sure it will all be better now.

Gender Bias in Pharmaceuticals

This post has nothing to do with forensics, but it does have to do with pharmaceuticals and thus toxicology so I deem it relevant. I'm sure I could find an overdose case and really tie it in, but the reality is this is my blog so...

It all started with a quick trip to my local Rite Aid where I went to the analgesic section of the store actually in search of Pamprin which they didn't have. That's ok. We shall change and adapt, it's alright.

So I saw Excedrin Menstrual which seemed like a good substitute, but as a chemist I never actually buy anything pharmaceutical related without looking at the ingredients so I picked up the box and took a look. When I did this I saw something unusual. You see I'm also a migraine sufferer and happen to have a bottle of Excedrin Migraine at home. The unusual thing was that this bottle of Excedrin Menstrual looked an awful lot like my Excedrin Migraine.

When I say an awful lot alike, I mean exactly the same. See below. Anyone see a difference? Bueller? Bueller?

Well... ok. So it's exactly the same medication. I can see that, they'd market it differently so people will understand that it can be used for different things. Alright. I'll buy that.

Now here's where I suddenly got angry. 

The Excedrin Migraine medication was priced at $5.49 for 24 geltabs whereas the Excedrin Menstrual was priced at $6.49 for 20 geltabs.  That's 22.8 cents per pill for the Migraine medication versus 32.4 cents per pill. Is the pink ink more expensive? Is that what I should believe here?

(BTW: looking at the inactive ingredients there are very slight differences with the Migraine meds having more inactive ingredients than the Menstrual.)

Looking online you can find the Excedrin Menstrual pill cheaper than what I saw at my local Rite Aid, but then again you can also find the Migraine version cheaper as well. The funny thing is when I went to the Excedrin website I saw advertisement for several promotions for money off, including one for the Migraine medication but none for the Menstrual product...

Now to be fair women are also more likely to get migraines than men so the larger purchasing community for the migraine meds will also be women. However, migraines are also found in men and are not just a "woman problem" making those meds slightly more universal.

We're all familiar with gender bias in pharmaceuticals. The focus on erectile dysfunction, the push back on the male birth control pill until ALL of the side effects are worked out even though women have been dealing with the side effects from theirs for decades.

So, what do you think? Is this another example of gender bias or am I reading too much into this?

Casey Anthony and the CSI Effect

If you have been living anywhere other than inside a cave you have heard about the Casey Anthony case, the woman accused of killing her two year old and lying to her family and authorities about the girl's whereabouts. Just this past week a jury found her not guilty to the murder, manslaughter and child abuse charges citing the lack of physical evidence, though they did convict her of lying to authorities. Granted, I was not on the jury and I was only privy to the information any other public person has had during the course of the trial, but I admit I was stunned by the verdict. The evidence seemed overwhelming and as a mother to me her behavior certainly indicated guilt. This seems to be the opinion of most people in the country seeing the number of calls for Dexter Morgan to rectify the situation. So what went wrong?

The jury cited a lack of forensic evidence to convict. The body of Caylee had been left to the elements for so long that by the time it was found, no forensic evidence could be gathered. I've talked about the CSI effect before where juries have been so influenced by shows like CSI that they expect complete forensic evidence that unequivocally ties a person to a crime. That is simply not possible in most cases and is unrealistic to expect, but as a culture we've become so conditioned to expect evidence to say "yes, she did it" that people seemed to have lost their ability to reason.

Forensic evidence is not always perfect, it may be compromised by time or elements as in this case, there may only be a partial fingerprint, full analysis may not have been performed due to cost and time. Yes, these things are expensive, and yes they do take time. It's not CSI where a speck of blood will tell you who it was and bring up a picture, an address and a full criminal record in minutes. I don't fault CSI. The show is there for entertainment and let's face it, real forensic work is often boring and tedious. Watching an autosampler spin around with a hundred faceless samples would not make good tv.

We just have to remember that shows like that are fiction. They are entertainment and not what anyone should expect when a person goes to sit on a jury. It wasn't that long ago that forensic evidence really began to be used an accepted in the courtroom. Before that juries had to sit and listen to all of the people involved and ask themselves, does this make sense? We seem to have lost some of that ability. Forensic evidence is a valuable tool and has not only put people behind bars, but exonerated them as well, but it is not the only evidence in a case, and it would be a shame if juries forgot that.

Phineas and Ferb, Climate Change and Language Barriers

I recently read an article on climate change that made me laugh. Not because it was particularly funny, but because it was about the language discrepancy between the scientific community and the lay person. In this article they attributed the general population's reluctance to believe in climate change to the lack of concrete language used by the researchers. They urged these experts to use more black and white statements and "regular" language. This is the point where I laughed.

Because here's the thing. We just can't do it! When I went to write this blog post I looked for the original article I read but couldn't find it. I did however find a great article here and I love this portion of it:

"Scientists are often compelled by their education to tell you more about what isn't known than what is known. That intellectual and academic honesty allows critics to use the scientists' own honesty as a brickbat to pummel their work. As an example, for the past 20 years when reporters would call and ask whether this flood, or hurricane or that tornado was due to global warming, the entire scientific community studying the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere would say, "No single event can be attributed to global warming." That is the truth, and climate change skeptics will use that honesty to say, "See, there's no detectible change." "

As a scientist myself I understand this dilema. The more you study science the more variables you discover and you start getting in to the, well that depends on what the definition of "is" is! And it's true. Define your terms is a common phrase in the scientific community. What do you mean by "change?" It's a valid question to the scientific community and unfortunately the lay comunity just thinks you're being difficult or avoiding the truth, when another scientist would simply define their terms and move on.

So why am I talking about climate change on a forensic blog? Because this language barrier exists every time you take the stand. Not only do we have the barrier between ourselves and the jury, but then you have to throw in lawyers and hoo boy, now you have a third language!

I'm reminded of an episode of my son's favorite show. In Phineas and Ferb, the spy bosses give Perry the platapus a robot, but then tell him that the manual is only in Dutch. Unfortunately they don't have a Dutch to English dictionary, but they do have a Dutch to French Dictionary and a French to English Dictionary. So Perry has to use both dictionaries to figure out how to control the robot.

That's like being an expert witness. You have to translate the attorneys question from legalese into science speak and then translate your science speak into layman's terms for the jury. Here's the problem. There are no dictionaries. When you gain familiarity to the legal community you get to the point where you know what they mean to ask even if that's not quite where they're asking, and over time you begin to answer what they mean to ask as opposed to what they actually asked.

Now, what do I mean by this? In breath testing for example an attorney may ask you "Is this test accurate?" I have always hated this question. Why? Because all the attorney wants to know is, is this test right or wrong. To me, my science side starts piping up and yelling in the background what do you mean by "accurate?" To what degree? And accurate of what? Of what the instrument saw or the body burden of the individual?

To answer that question I would state what I was relying upon and then answer whether the test result met the accuracy requirments as by Rule for what the instrument saw in the breath chamber. Is that what the attorneys were always asking? No, probably not.

And the reason I say that it is probably not is because I often run into attorneys who don't understand how two different test results could both be "accurate." Well, define your terms. What do you mean by accurate? When a scientist answers that question they're going to answer whether they were within the accuracy limits required (10% in Vermont for breath alcohol testing) for what was in the instrument at the time the sample was analyzed. If that isn't what the attorney wants to know then they need to change the question.

Although scientists are often aware that there is a language barrier I find that attorneys are often baffled by it. I have often sat on the stand arguing what appears to be minutea to the attorney but what matters quite a bit to me. It's furstrating because although I may know what they mean by their question I simply can not answer it if the terms are inaccurate.

And this is why the urge to researchers to change their dialogue when speaking about their research is doomed to fail. They are still scientists and they must first and foremost be repsected in that community. A person who speaks in blacks and whites and absolutes is not a scientist and will not be taken seriously by that community. That's not how research works. The scientific process will always be to form a hypothesis and then try to disprove it. The answers will always be that the evidence thus far indicates or research suports x, y and z. It will never be x causes z. It will never be in absolutes.

In order to be effective in the courtroom, expert witnesses need to be able to bridge the language barriers without compromising their scientific integrity. It's a difficult balance because you often do fall into answering what is meant by the question as opposed to what is asked. That is why it is so important to qualify every answer you give with what you are basing your answer on. The problem remains that there are no dictionaries and far too often attorneys or the public may not realize that there even is a barrier present.

How we can work more effectively together and walk that line is a difficult one and if anyone has ideas that have worked well, let me know. To me the best we can do is help the attorneys we work with understand that words matter. They already understand this concept in the court room they just need to understand that there is another language spoken by scientists.

I love how the article I mentioned above ends:

"So, scientists are changing the message. It is a subtle change, but important. When reporters like me ask the question, "Was the flood, or the drought or the tornadoes caused by global warming?" The scientists now respond, "No single event can be attributed to global warming, but we told you this was going to happen.""

To scientists that's the compromise you'll get and it's the best our integrity will allow.