Fingerprints

Your fingerprint patterns are hereditary.  They are formed before you are born, while you are still in the womb, they never change through out your lifetime, and they are even around for awhile after you die.  So, why are fingerprints so good for identification purposes? They are totally unique, and they never change.

 Crime Scene Processing

When a crime is committed, evidence is sent to a forensics lab where it is examined. The results are of paramount importance in the investigation of the crime. The validity of the evidence is dependent on the way the crime scene was "processed".

 Examination of Questioned Documents

Included under questioned document examination are the following examples: handwriting, typewriting, photocopying and computer printers, forgery, paper and inks, writing instruments, computer disks, gambling machinery, stamps (as in the rubber pad kind) and the dating of documents

Firearms and Toolmark Identification

Firearms and toolmark identification involves more than just guns.  Also included in this broad subject area are explosives, imprint evidence and toolmark evidence.  

Forensic Photography

What items are photographed at a crime scene? Basically, anything that might be evidence is photographed.

 Criminal Law

A brief description of legal terms in laymans words.

Forensic Psychiatry and Profiling

Forensic Psychiatry serves to define what mental illness and disorder are. Profiling is a label given to the process by which a trained forensic psychologist sifts through the aspects of a crime scene to develop a description of the personality of the perpetrator.

Careers in Law Enforcement

In addition to field investigators and lab technicians, there are many support positions; clerks, typists, auto mechanics, evidence technicians, analysts, electronics technicians, special surveillance operations, receptionists, computer techs, photographers, etc. These positions might be at the Federal, state of local level.

Dr. Sam Sheppard ("The Fugitive") Case

Welcome to the companion Web site to the NOVA program "The Killer's Trail" in which a team of experts investigates the forensic evidence in the 1954 murder of Marylin Sheppard. Was Dr. Sam Sheppard guilty of his wifes murder ? You decide.