• Question: Do you deal with murders a lot?

    Asked by anon-346848 on 13 Jan 2023.
    • Photo: Lorna Dawson

      Lorna Dawson answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      I am often involved in providing search information from environmental trace material to assist police in narrowing down and finding murder victims. I am also often asked to compare and analyse samples from murder victims or scenes with people (such as suspects) objects (such as tools and clothing) or places (scenes or alibi locations). This is then part of the evidential jigsaw that hopefully helps bring justice to the victims family and friends by presentation in court.

    • Photo: Shelina Jilani

      Shelina Jilani answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      Hello 🙂 thanks for the question. I do work on identification work for Murder charges.

    • Photo: Sue Black

      Sue Black answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      We can become involved in any form of death whether it be suspicious, as a result of an accident, suicide or undetermined.

    • Photo: Caroline Wilkinson

      Caroline Wilkinson answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      Sometimes – but only from the point of view of identifying a body.

    • Photo: Richard Case

      Richard Case answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      When I was working for Greater Manchester Police I was assigned to the Serious Crime Team for a couple of years.
      A city such as Manchester has quite a bit of serious crime, and I was often dealing with more than one murder case at a time.
      I had to provide witness testimony regularly and presented evidence at court.

      Now my career is assisting police (and other Government departments) with the databases, so thankfully not so much these days

    • Photo: Katy Bruce

      Katy Bruce answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      I don’t analyse evidence from actual casework yet, I’m still studying! But I hope that the methods I’m developing for looking at cosmetic microtraces, might be used in real cases in the future. Another piece of jigsaw for the overall puzzle!

    • Photo: Prof. W Meier-Augenstein

      Prof. W Meier-Augenstein answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      Yes. Most of the cases I have been asked to assist with were enquiries to assist law enforcement with identification of victims of unnatural death / death under suspicious circumstances (murder; suicide).

    • Photo: Lorna Nisbet

      Lorna Nisbet answered on 13 Jan 2023:

      Forensic toxicologists are more focused on finding out if someone has taken drugs. This means work is mostly based on accidental overdose cases, rather than murders. There is also work from driving while taking drugs/ alcohol, child custody, work place testing, etc.

    • Photo: Kate Barnes

      Kate Barnes answered on 16 Jan 2023:

      I don’t deal with murder casework at the moment, but the research I do can be directly applied to help understand more about when a person died.

    • Photo: Ray Evans

      Ray Evans answered on 24 Jan 2023:

      Sadly, yes, we’re always dealing with murder cases.

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