Crime Scene Investigator (3 page)

City Road was the smallest station of the Metropolitan Police’s G Division which covered the London Borough of Hackney and included Stoke Newington and Hackney. It was definitely inner city, but City Road bordered with N Division (Kings Cross) and the City of London Police, a small force whose patch was the Square Mile, the financial hub of London. This meant that the lower part of City Road’s ground was a strange mix of a gritty inner city and the financial capital.

My first day at City Road Police Station was, like all new beginnings, a nervous one. Scenes of crime officer Grade 2 (SOCO II) Millen queued with a small line of people in the public foyer of the police station. With a little apprehension I identified myself to the young fresh-faced constable who gave me a cheery welcome and let me through, directing me to the CID office on the first floor. I was met by Norman Craig my boss and mentor for the first two weeks of ‘going live’. Norman was not my regular boss, that was to be Brian Finch, but Brian was on holiday so Norman had been brought in to accompany me in the first few days.

Norman Astle Hamilton Craig or ‘Norm’, as he was affectionately known, was a legend. He was a scenes of crime officer (Grade 1), and so was a god to me, such was the hierarchy within the organisation. I was to realise in later life that the first-line supervisor or manager is the backbone, the rock of any organisation. Norm was a consummate professional with a love of real ale and jazz and our friendship was to last until his premature death in the mid nineties. He was someone I always looked up to and I quickly realised that he knew his craft. He had got ‘it’.

We made our introductions and then went into the adjoining CID office to meet the detectives I would be working with. It was a small office of about eleven detectives headed by a calm detective inspector and three detective sergeants, the rest being constables.

The area had a history and I was to discover later that nearby Worship Street was once the site of an early Elizabethan theatre. Right next to the police station in Shepherdess Walk was the Eagle public house, which I was to get to know very well in the four or so years I spent at City Road. The Eagle was made famous in the nursery rhyme: ‘Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle, that’s the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.’

Our introductions made, Norm and I examined the Crime Book, a record of all reported crime and picked out all new crimes reported overnight that we might be expected to attend. There had been a lot, but we whittled the list down to a priority list of some twenty or so scenes and got on our way. It was going to be a long and busy day and I loved it.

Norm and I gathered my examination case, lamp and clipboard and proceeded to the station yard where we got into a dark green SOCO van. We drove off to my first crime scene a few streets away.

My initial training had taken ten weeks or so at the Detective Training Wing of the Metropolitan Police Training Centre in Hendon, north London. The course consisted of two main portions of Forensic Science and Fingerprints, with a final phase on Law. It is strange to think the course time was equally divided amongst these two main subjects. But the subject of fingerprints was to be the most important single skill in my life as a SOCO in London at that time.

However, times were changing and new opportunities for the scientific investigation of crime were emerging and I and many others had a part to play. So the importance of fingerprint evidence hasn’t diminished but rather has been joined and complemented by DNA and a raft of scientific advances in intelligence and evidence which has transformed the way crimes are investigated. Advances in the science would include new methods of finding and recovering fingerprints using chemicals and light sources of variable wavelength. New computer programs and networks would increase the speed at which they can be searched and identified. Whilst DNA technology was still in the dreams of researchers we had to use the available tools of blood grouping, shoe marks, fibres, paint and glass and many more. Many of the new science applications had been emerging for some time. It would be a little big headed to think that people like me helped their development, but I am sure we helped with their application in both minor and major crime investigations.

I saw my role as SOCO to be the eyes and ears of all the scientists and other experts back in the lab, those who couldn’t be at the scene. It would be my role to recover material and information, recognise the potential and sell that to the investigator. Alongside these developments would be our thought processes and through these how we identify our purpose, undertake our investigations and how we communicate our findings. Put it all together and I knew it would work.

So now I had to put my initial training and sense of purpose to the test. I had a feeling of great anticipation but the nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach was overcome by an eagerness to make a difference.

My first visit was to an office above a parade of shops in Old Street, the swanky offices of a shipping company or some other commercial business in Shoreditch. A window had been broken at the rear first-floor fire escape and the intruder(s) entered and rifled the offices, stealing cash and anything else of value they could find. They had moved a few bottles of wine. Norm and I gathered as much information as we could and then worked our way methodically through the scene from the point of entry to the point of exit as best we could determine. We tried to dodge the office workers who were keen to get back to their desks after I had finished. At some point the detective assigned to the case turned up and interviewed the ‘loser’ and made his enquiries before moving on to his next case. He agreed to call me over the radio if he could reprioritise where I might be needed, and cancel me from those scenes where I was not. Such was the incoming traffic of new crime reports that the list was likely to get longer not shorter.

The term ‘loser’ was not a derogatory term for the victim, as it might appear to someone reading this today, just merely the jargon of the day, reflecting the person reporting the loss but, looking at it now, it does seem strange.

I was on my best behaviour and doing everything by the book to impress Norm. I took samples of glass and paint from the point of entry, recovered shoe marks and examined everything I could along the apparent path of the offender. I was disappointed to find some glove marks at the point of entry, as these would prove difficult to identify but continued to examine other moved items (moved in the view of the occupants) for finger marks. On a bottle of wine I found a couple of sequences of finger marks. These I brushed and developed carefully with aluminium powder applied with a fine brush, before cleaning out with another brush and then lifting on adhesive tape which I then applied to a plate of clear plastic acetate sheet. This was and remains the standard way of recovering latent finger marks on objects without having to seize the whole item. Having written the details on the acetate, I admired the marks before showing Norm.

I packed, labelled and sealed all the items which I had recovered. I obtained the elimination fingerprints of those who might have legitimately touched the bottle at the office. I completed my notes and diagrams, which took some time, before leaving the scene. This was the discipline which was to become the template for my professional life. My first crime scene examination had taken me well over an hour, nearly two, to complete. If this were to continue I was never going to see home again. As we left, I handed the bottle of wine on which I had found the finger marks back to the owner. He gestured that I could keep it and I said I would give it to the CID. Although there are rules about accepting gifts, this seemed harmless. Despite now being covered in grey aluminium powder and quite unappealing on the exterior, it was certainly drinkable and very acceptable for the CID!

The other crime scenes I examined that day merged into what I can only recall as a long day, at the end of which I had a headache. After our last scene, Norm and I returned exhausted to City Road and to the CID Office. We had examined eighteen crime scenes and had bags of evidence, paint and glass samples, shoe and finger marks. All of which had to be processed and documented before the start of a new day tomorrow. I presented the unopened bottle of wine to the detective inspector, who promptly placed it in the office drinks cupboard.

Two months or so later I got a call over the radio from a detective to say that the marks which I had found on the bottle had been identified. I had received my first ‘Ident’ and it meant I had to buy everyone a drink, or so I was told, which I duly did. It was all the sweeter because it had been my very first scene. A few weeks later I was asked to write a statement and the officer in the case knew that the bottle and what was or was not left of its contents was in the inspector’s drinks cabinet. My statement read (from my notes) how I had found the finger marks ‘on a full unopened bottle of wine endorsed “Hock” twelve inches high, the marks were above the front label, seven inches from the base, two inches to the right pointing to four o’clock.’ The problem, the detective pointed out, was the bottle was now most definitely open and empty. I was ribbed by the all the detectives in the office for days. How was I to explain how the contents had disappeared in the intervening time? In the end it didn’t matter. The bottle itself was never an exhibit, nor did it need to be. In normal events I would have left the bottle at the scene as I had tried to do, relying on my notes and diagrams and the finger mark lift I had taken. That was more than sufficient and quite proper within the law. I reminded myself that the bottle itself was no longer relevant, that it was not recorded as recovered property as there was no evidential reason to record it. That didn’t stop the ribbing I received, and I had learnt that I could expect plenty of banter from my detective colleagues and this sharpened my attention to detail.

The ribbing did not overshadow my feeling of success. I had become what many colleagues call a ‘thief taker’. Someone was going to be brought in for questioning and I had played an important part in the process. The individual I had helped identify was later convicted of the burglary. The finger mark I had found had been the spark the CID had needed to find more evidence and resulted in the recovery of some small items of property and the solving of the case.

It was probably from that start that I realised I was not just conducting a crime scene examination. I was part of a process of crime scene investigation, where each component plays a part in the overall outcome and I would have to understand and develop my craft to ensure its full impact. It would be a few years before I could convince my colleagues that we were moving from examining crime scenes to investigating them, but I for one had started that day.

Any schoolchild studying science for the first time will quickly understand the principle of scientific experiment and the concept of ‘a fair test’. This is a question which constantly challenges and I hope will continue to challenge the modern forensic scientist. Is it accurate? Is it reproducible? If we do it again will we get the same result? Is it based on sound research and review by the scientific community? And what does it mean? To the casual reader this may seem unimportant, but those accused or convicted of crime based on scientific evidence would have a different view. So it is a burden and a responsibility that anyone who practises forensic science should understand and embrace.

Less than a hundred years ago forensic science as we know it was barely recognisable. There are examples of scientific evidence being used in criminal trials going back centuries. An early example can be found in the term ‘caught red-handed’. This originates from the sixteenth century, but the earliest printed reference is attributed to Sir Walter Scott in his novel
Ivanhoe
, first printed in 1819. ‘Red-handed’ indicates finding the blood of the victim on the suspect. The assumption made is that the red liquid is blood, human blood, and from the victim. Even in the 1980s human blood could only be distinguished by a series of independent grouping systems, such as ABO, which a scientist could interpret and only then give, by today’s standards, limited statistical probability as to its origin. Not until the introduction of DNA technology in the late 1980s could the discrimination and probability of blood and other body fluids reach any high degree of certainty.

Early attempts by researchers such as Bertillon to identify and catalogue individuals by an elaborate system of anatomical measurement recognised that humans are all different. However, it was overtaken by the much more practical science of fingerprints. Fingerprints could be used to identify individuals and had the added bonus of being recoverable from the scenes of crime.

First used in a criminal case in London in 1902, fingerprints provide a ready and reliable method of identifying individual people. The basis of the system is the premise that no two individuals have the same finger, palm, or footprints. These are the areas of the human body where friction ridges can be found. The ridges are frequently broken by forks or stop at an ending (known technically as bifurcation and ridge endings). These breaks and endings are known as fingerprint characteristics.