February 15, 2011 • 37 mins
Numerous television shows feature blood pattern analysis -- but how do these fictional portrayals measure up to the real thing? Tune in as Chuck and Josh break down the science behind blood pattern analysis.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast and Happy Valentine's Day. I'm Josh. That was
(00:20):
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm Josh Clark. Um, this is
Stuff you should know the podcast the Love Edition. Yeah,
let's talk about Valentine's Day and love. Do you want
to hear a possibly um true Valentine's Day fact so
you know where we get the concept of sending Valentine's
(00:42):
Day cards Hallmark. No, it was even earlier than that.
A little guy by the name of St. Valentine. Okay,
again this is uncorroborated, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
Back in the day, St. Valentine used to hang out
with the Pagan I believe Greeks maybe uh Romans, one
(01:02):
of the two and um who had a custom of
hooking up like picking a partner and you know that
was who you're gonna be with for the rest of
the year. Not married, all right, but like all the benefits,
you know what I mean? And um. They to consummate
that choice. They would you know, go off and hook
up like that day February same Valentine comes along and goes,
(01:25):
this is an importance to my god and um, soon
to be your god. So let's let's figure something else out.
How about you guys, keep picking people that you want to,
you know, be friendly with, stop the fornication, and instead
just send notes of affection to one another. Those became
(01:45):
as far as I know, the Valentine's Day card. I'm
sure that sounds sounds good to me, does it all right? Um?
One of the one of the great symbols of Valentine's Day, Chuck,
is the heart, which is almost invariably colored red. It's
a very cute iconography, but if you really think about it,
(02:07):
what you're seeing is the organ colored by our life blood.
What happens when something happens to that organ or that
life blood and it goes from inside that cute little
heart to being sprayed all over the wall at a
high speed velocity, A bunch of things happen. A lot
(02:31):
of tell tale symbols are left behind after the person
falls forward, killed by the love of their life. On
Valentine's Day, no less but but bud spatter, Bud spatter. Yeah,
we should say probably right now, it's not splatter. Blood spatter, which,
strangely enough, is is a an appropriate interchangeable term or
(02:53):
phrase for blood pattern analysis can also be called blood
spatter analysis. To you see that, Yes, it's interchangeable, or
it can be called that stuffed dexter? Does it? Could
you like Dexter? Don't you? Yeah? So do you? Okay?
So I know that I have a lot of bad
karma coming against me. Um, because let me explain why
(03:15):
it wasn't just a blanket statement. Um, because of the
three times now that I've ruined um six ft under
for people who haven't seen the whole thing. But I
have not seen season five. So if you're gonna talk
about Dexter, don't give me any clues as to what
goes on season five aside from the um off camera
(03:36):
breakup of the marriage between Michael Hall and Jennifer Carpenter.
That was very sad, but Julia Styles has nothing to
do with it. She even released a statement she said,
really she felt like she needed to Yeah, interesting, which
is not her style usually. No, she's pretty lucky. So chuck, um,
do you want to talk about dex Uh? Yeah, Well,
I mean, he's a Nina. What I couldn't find out
(03:58):
is he's on the show. He is a crime scene
photographer slash spatter analyst, and I couldn't find if that's
really a thing. So, Mike, Mike, I'm guessing. I'm positing
that maybe in some smaller municipalities they may do double
duty like that, But I bet in Miami they probably
have a dedicated photographer, dedicated analysts. Uh yeah, Actually, UM,
(04:20):
from this article, I believe it says that a lot
of people, um, a lot of people who become blood
pattern analysts UM, start out as cops or detectives or
whatever and kind of um find that they have a
pension for reading blood and they start taking courses and
workshops and become certified. So I imagine, yeah, it's possible,
(04:41):
especially in smaller areas, that people are pulling double or
triple duty like that. Yeah, you're probably not gonna in
some like tiny county, you're not gonna have a full
time crime scene photographer, or maybe it's some local that's
not on the But you know, we'll get to all
that because this is a two parter. Well one reason
chuck that um it's not um just an across the
board filled position or even um available position at every
(05:05):
every UM police department is because, as it's put in
the article, it's as much art as science right now.
It takes a lot of um interpretation and you can't
just you know, hand the stuff over to the prosecutor
and they're just like bam, case closed. There's a blood
pattern analysis. Yeah, look all the blood on the wall.
He did it. But it is used to corroborate other
(05:26):
evidence because as we said, it does tell a story
when um, the person who you love shoot you through
the heart and spattered your blood all over the wall
on Valentine's Day, killing you dead. Yeah. Yes, you can
tell a lot of things, UM. For instance, this list
that I'm about to the type and velocity of the
weapon you always hear about. You know this is a
(05:46):
blunt force thing or knife, stab, wound, gunshot. The number
of blows that this person uh could withstand before dying
and even after death. Yeah, I mean think about a
passion killing, rage killing. Uh, the handedness of the assailant
because everyone knows, you know, if I was going to
punch you in the face, to do with my right
(06:07):
hand hit you on your left cheek, that's how it works. Uh,
position of the victim, and like whether or not they
were moved or they flailed around on the floor for
a little while trying to trying to live, pull themselves
to safety. Perhaps um, the wound that was inflicted first,
like this was to kill wound, and all this other
stuff happened because it was just a sicko type of injury.
(06:30):
How long ago the body has been there, and whether
it was an immediate death or whether they bled out
over the course of hours or whether they Yeah, if
it was an immediate death in the blood just kind
of pulled where they fell, or if they're smears from
them crawling or something like that, which would indicate that
death was delayed or being dragged. Maybe there's nobody. Yeah,
(06:52):
I think that I took from this. It wasn't explicitly said,
but there's UM. You can, especially with an old crime scene, UM,
learn a lot about something where there's no other evidence
just from the blood, like UM, skeletonized blood. Yeah, blood
can actually where there was once a blood droplet, it
(07:12):
can skeletonize and flick away and there will be no drop,
but there will be an outline ring around where the
drop was. Right. Um. You can also uh tell from
the amount of clotting that's taken place. Apparently, once clotting starts,
you know that, um, it's been at least fifteen minutes,
which probably isn't that helpful, but it's been at least
fifteen minutes since the blood exited the body. So like
(07:34):
we didn't come up on the person died more than
fifteen minutes ago, we can say that, um. And then
but if some stuffs more clotted than others, you can
tell that, um, the attack took place over a period
of time. Sure, and we talked about in crimes can
clean up obviously, how it can harden, brain can harden
(07:54):
on walls. So it's not just blood. They're looking at
all sorts of bone fragments and pieces of whatever that's
in you that is no longer in you. But as
we'll see, just the presence of of say brain and
skull fragments UM indicates a head wound. It does you're
all on your way to being certified. UM. And it
also usually indicates you know, probably what type of weapons
(08:16):
we'll see later. Right. Uh. The cool thing about blood, though, Josh,
is that it's very predictable. It's very cohesive, has a
lot of surface tensions, so the molecules like buying really tight,
so it's always a little round sphere until it hits something.
And when it hits something, it's really predictable what happens,
like you can read it and pretty much be able
(08:36):
to tell things that will get into like angle and
velocity and stuff like that with some certainty, so much
that they use in court. Yes, they do to put
people in the pokey sometimes unfairly. We will see that too.
Should we talk about the types of spatter? This is
my favorite part. The three types of spatter hit it?
(08:59):
Then okay, well there's low velocity, medium velocity, and high velocity, right,
and that sounds pretty stupid, but there's um the different
characteristics of each type of velocity group. Right. Um. So
you know when when blood moves, like you said, it
follows like predictable patterns. Um. Gravity, force, surface tension keeps
(09:21):
it together. Um. And for example, say how high up
a blood drop drips from is going to determine how
spread out that drop is, sure, because it has more
time to accelerate and a greater force when it hits
the ground. Then if it's you know, an inch or
two off of the ground. So that's a pretty good
example of a low spatter velocity of blood drip, right, Yeah,
(09:44):
Like I've been stabbed and I'm laying on my couch
with my arm dangling off and it's just dripping off
my fingertip twelve inches to the carpet below. That's great.
The the force that's acting on this low velocity blood
spatter is gravity, nothing else, right. Um. They usually come
from stab wounds, like you said. Uh. And then some
(10:04):
of the properties of a of a low velocity blood spatter, Um,
the force of impact is less than five ft per second,
not much. That's not much. Um, that's like a blood drop, right, Yeah,
between usually between four and eight millimeters. That's about the
size you're gonna get with a low veloci And like
you said, um, it's it's you've been stabbed and you're
(10:24):
laying there. So most of the low velocity blood spatters,
uh come about after an attack, after the injury has
been sustained. Right, It's not sprayed all over the wall. Right.
So stabbing is a pretty good Usually it's stabbing is
low velocity or vice versa. Um, and uh. One type
of low velocity blood spatter from stabbing is called a
(10:46):
passive spatter. That's after you've been stabbed and you're walking
around and you're basically leaving a dripping blood trail. Ye,
should we at this point say that this might be
a little gruesome? It's too late. I think it's a
little late. A right, I guess we could go to
the trouble went back and inserting it. But I predict,
hold on, I predict we will not. We will not.
So let's just say that now you can turn it
off at this point if you have already, if you're
(11:07):
a little creeped out by blood, which I am, Are
you really? Yeah? I mean not you picked these? Yeah,
But I mean it doesn't mean we shouldn't cover it.
I'm not like, I don't have a true phobia, but
I mean, who likes seeing large amounts of blood and
that bright, bright red white surfaces? It's have you ever
passed out at the side of blood? No? No No, it's
not that bad. I had a roommate in college named
(11:29):
John Johnson real name, who was shucking oysters down in
Florida when we were down at the beach once and uh,
he shucked the meat of the palm of his hand
and looked at it, and none of us knew that
he was afraid of his own blood and just fell
right over. And he was a big boy, so he
made quite a clamor he he came to and you know,
(11:51):
it was okay after that, but he fainted dead away
at the sight of his own blood. Well, I'm I
I mean, I've never seen something really, really, really gruesome.
So have you never seen pictures? Yeah? I don't like
that stuff. I don't either, but um, yeah, I'm not
into it, but people are and we'll get to that too.
(12:13):
Medium velocity is next, and that has a force from
five to one ft per second, diameter no more than
formula millimeters usually, and that can be caused by a
blunt object or I love this line, like a baseball
bat or an intense beating with a fist. You've gotta
be a tough guy, dude. If you're If you can
(12:34):
have the same impact as a baseball bat with your fist,
then you're either doing something right or wrong, or you
are you're using breath knuckles. Yeah, that's true. So that
could also be from a stabbing. Actually, um, and in
this case, if you damage an artery, something can happen
called projected blood, and that means you're laying there and
as long as your heart's beating, it's really pumping that
blood out and it can project in a very distinctive pattern. Evidently. Yeah.
(12:58):
I mean like if you if you ever see somebody
who's um carotid artery has been punctured and they have
their hand there, it's just like spewing from between their fingers.
It's projected blood. That's medium velocity, which can be compared
to a like, um, a good squirt gun. What are
those ones called supersuckers, like that kind of spray, um,
(13:20):
And it's not just the heart that's projecting it. And
that's a that's a good example of media velocity, the
heart pumping the blood and projecting it out of the body. Right. Um.
Another medium velocity blood spatter is let's say, um, you're
beating somebody with a lead pipe when you're drawing back
again to exactly that's what I thought of too. I
(13:42):
thought about that, Um, when you're drawing back for another blow,
you're you're whipping the blood off of the lead pipe
after that first blow. So that's medium medium velocity, which
you said is about uh five percent. Yeah, okay, So
then you have high velocity, which is pretty much a
(14:04):
gunshot wound, and that's more than a hundred feet per second.
That's when blood is really hauling. You've got tiny little
sprays on the wall or wherever, and that's the one
where you're gonna find like tissue and bone usually along
with the blood. Chances are um less than one millimeter
in diameter, and you can either have you can have
(14:25):
front spatters, back spatters or both. If the bullet goes
through you, you're gonna have both. Yeah, and then exit one. Yeah.
I think about it like anytime you see somebody get shot,
like the blood almost doesn't spatter, like you'll just start
soaking the shirt or something like that and don't look behind. Yeah,
you look behind and all of a sudden, there's a
huge hole because of cavitatione full metal jacket comes to mind.
(14:48):
Mm hmm. So you have seen grewsome things in the movie.
What is your major mouth function? Uh? And my favorite
thing in this on this page was the bit about
internal muzzle staining and stippling. Sick stuff, but pretty awesome too.
(15:08):
Yeah if basically and well, I guess it could happen
in any kind of gunshot that's close. But I think
of an execution style murder, like when the mobster says,
we need to whack Jimmy two ft. I guess two
ft would be normal. But yeah, he's got he's the
most nondescript gangster of all time exactly which one again? Um,
(15:29):
So they would put the gun like up to his head,
and in that case, the skin, if there's still a body,
can have burns from the gunpowder, and the inside of
the muzzle, because of the cooling of the explosive gas used,
can actually suck blood back inside of the gun. Yeah,
the spray that fine myth. So if you're lucky enough
to get ahold of that gun, they can swab the
inside and like this is Jimmy two feets blood on
(15:51):
the inside of your muzzle here, buddy, that's how you
just throw it in the East river. Yeah, or use
the old pillow method. Don't don't be cheap, right, Wow,
I just gave advice to murderers. Yeah, that's weird. I
guess we did. I've never done that before. Uh. The
other thing, I'm sure you have it. The other thing
that they can look for is, uh, you got to
use brass knuckles is a void and avoid is where
(16:15):
let's say I were to kill somebody and the blood
is spraying on me and the wall behind me. That
will be uh, you're gonna leave a handsome silhouette. Yeah,
not an outline of a body like a cartoon. But
there will be avoid there where they said, you know,
something or somebody got in the way of the blood spatter.
Don't find me that shirt, which is now in a trash.
(16:36):
Can find me that last chance garage hat covered in blood,
that'd be bad news. I love that hat, So Chuck,
you've seen Dexter. We talked about this, right, see them all? Yeah,
I have to except for season five, right, oh Dexter.
I thought you meant like all crime. Oh no, no,
I've seen each episode. Sorry, Um, well, surely you've seen
(16:58):
then at least I know for a fact. And at
least one episode he's messing with like these red strings
in the room. That's when the art department really gets involved. Yeah,
so this you can you can imagine. Check this is
a very painstaking process, each each of these lines, not
just for the art department, but this happens in real life.
It's it's a method of figuring out the angle of um,
(17:22):
the path of blood. Yeah, I thought this might be outdated,
but they still use it sometimes they do. Um. Well,
let's there was something that the article I thought left out,
and it was the importance of determining the angle. It
just went into how we figure out angles. Um. But
there's a lot of import in figuring out what angle
(17:43):
these this blood spray travel traveled, right, Yeah, because it
will tell you a lot of times. You know that
the person who fired the weapon was probably taller than
six ft because the gun was at a certain level,
and so was it a man? Was it likely a man?
Was it likely a woman based on the height? Right? Um,
the if if it's a downward angle, then that might
(18:04):
corroborate the idea that this person was killed execution style,
which juries like to hear about if that's going on,
because that's like get on your knees type of thing. Usually, Yeah,
that's pretty cold blooded. Um. If somebody's pleading self defense
and said they were on the floor, an upward angle
would would corroborate that and might you know, get them
off in their self defense plea. Um. There's a lot
(18:25):
of reasons why figuring out the angle is very important, right, agreed,
And it's also probably the most scientific of um. Blood
pattern analysis math heavy, triggeronometry heavy. Yeah, we tried, we
should say, we tried to find a math heavy and
I made the mistake of emailing our editorial department to
get someone to describe it. And I thought, we're all
(18:48):
half hearted attempt That's why we're writers. So we don't
have to do math, especially not triggering out we do
now though I think I have this lift, but it's
really not that hard. Actually, once I reread anytime. Let's
talk about the strings for first, So it is you do? Uh?
You do? They do use these strings, elastic strings. Each
one represents a drop of blood. So if you have
(19:09):
a lot of drops of blood, you're gonna have a
lot of strings. It's gonna take a while, right, um.
But you you create a you you find a level,
right like you create a level point. You start running
strings through the level point from the blood to you know,
somewhere else in space, the wall or ceiling, and then
(19:29):
all of a sudden, after you start doing a few
of these strings, you're gonna find that they all come
together at a certain point. And that point is the
area of convergence a k a. What was originally a
person's head, right, and that's where all the blood came from.
So you're gonna find where where, where they on the ground,
where they up high. Um, basically you're creating in real
(19:51):
life a three dimensional model of the path this blood
took right and where the person was standing, where they
were in relationship to the wall, all that stuff. You're
probably going to figure out, um, how the person was
attacked from what side, that kind of thing. So that's
it's it's very important and that's the old school, really
methodical way to do it, right. Yeah, you're gonna explain
(20:12):
the trigonomic This is for college boy blood pattern analysts.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, because I'll explain the way I
would do it short, okay, which I think is actually
how the um how this this article describes it. Well,
we'll see how Chuck would do it. Okay. So, um,
(20:32):
when blood hits when when blood hits a surface, whether
it's drywall or the floor or the ceiling or something
like that, if it if it falls or travels uh
straight up and down, it's it's that's a ninety degree angle. Yeah,
you're gonna get a little roundrop you get a round drop.
But the the stronger the angle right, the more severe
(20:56):
the angle, the drop starts to elongate. It's like you
know when you skip a stone. It's kind of like that,
or when you spill any liquid, And that's another way
to put it. So as it um, as it elongates,
it gets longer and thinner. And what you can actually
do is take the measurements of each one of these drops, right,
(21:18):
and you take let me see if I got this chuck,
you take the width right, so obviously we were writers.
Anytime this comes up, you take the width and you
divide it by the length, and that gives you a number. Yes,
this is trigonometry by the way um and you deter
(21:39):
you take that number and you use a calculator and
you use the arc sign function. Don't ask us to
really explain how to come even in the even in
the article like I couldn't find it. And arc sign
is the converse of sign or co sign one of
those um And basically what you're finding is the angle
(21:59):
of a right triangle by taking the opposite side and
dividing it by the hypothenuse, and that will give you
once you figure out the arc sign of that number
the angle. And that's the college boy way of figuring
out the angle that blood traveled from the area of
convergence exactly. So a quick example, if you have a
(22:22):
two millimeter wide blood stain that's four millimeters long, you
divide that and you get point five, and the arc
sign of that is thirty. And we figured out the
arc sign of five is thirty. Point five is thirty
by using that calculator, and thirty would be your angle.
That means a thirty degree angle is is what you're
looking at, right, So this is how Chuck would do it.
Chuck would get a computer program called No More Strings.
(22:47):
I guess they couldn't use no strings attached. That's what
I would have called it. Maybe you can make a
competing program maybe so, uh, no More Strings is a
program that actually creates a three dimensional model and you
plug in all your numbers and it does it for
you with uh computer animation. And that's I want to
say modern. It is modern, but they do still use
a string method um and a lot of times they
(23:08):
say that will be more convincing to a jury if
they can look at animation. Then hear some nerd uh
explain it? In front of them while they're falling asleep exactly. No,
I mean I think that's very much the case. That's
probably why that software is probably more used than either
of the other two methods these days. Yeah, I would
call it the jury Swayer program. That's what I would
(23:29):
call it. I would call it the widow Maker. Alright. Uh,
a little history, Yeah, we usually cover that first, but
we didn't. I think this, U this is a fine article.
I like the way it was paced and then laid out. Yeah,
very detailed. It's been around actually since the eight nineties.
They've been you know, analyzing blood stains and spatter, but
(23:51):
they didn't really start using it until much later. The
the first guy I love the name of this book,
the first guy from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Poland.
His name was Dr Eduard Pietrowski, wrote a book called
concerning the Origin, shape, Direction, and Distribution of the blood
Stains following head wounds caused by blows and imagine that
(24:14):
was also his uh how we got the ladies alright,
telling me wrote that, but showing his book to the ladies,
and uh, it would be I think probably about fifty
years later that they actually started using these interpretations in court.
That guy laid the groundwork for how to do it
at least for a beating. Yeah, for Paul Kirk. Yeah,
and Paul Kirk was a physician UM in Ohio. Right. Yeah,
(24:39):
there's a case of Samuel Shepard being prosecuted for murder
and Dr kirk um figured out from blood spatter analysis
where UM Samuel Shepard was when he attacked the victim. Allegedly, Well,
he was prosecuted so or convicted, so that's the fact.
(25:01):
And then it also showed that UM sam Shephard or
that the victim was attacked with by a left handed person.
But I'm assuming Sam Shepard was one the case bamp.
Blood spatter analysis is on the map. I wonder what
the jury thought about that first, because it means now
it's so all over the place, you know, all about
the stuff. But the first time someone like recreated a
(25:24):
scene and said he was this tall and left handed,
were they like, Wow, that's amazing or what are you
talking about? I wonder probably why it's amazing, Just like
once today, have you heard of the c S I effect? Yeah,
we talked about it, did we. Yeah, it was a
long time ago. It was between episode zero and one.
But explain it because we have new listeners. Oh well,
(25:46):
welcome new listen hey, new listeners, listen up. The c
s I effect is basically juries watching things like c
s I dexter all this um television ized um blood
spatter analysis or forensic science and expecting that so if
a prosecutor fails to deliver, that means that the case
(26:06):
isn't all that great. Or conversely, if the prosecutor of
the defense can deliver some whiz bang, no more strings,
three D graphics of somebody getting shot or not getting shot,
the jury is swayed because you know, that's how you
weren't that's how you win a case. So, um, there's
a there's an expectation that a case has to have
(26:26):
that kind of thing. That's the c s I effect.
Someone going that's not how they do it on TV,
Yeah exactly, or hey, that's exactly how they do it
on TV probably has the reverse effect to You could
also just as easily call it the Dancing with the
Stars effect the American idol effect, like, well, those are
different effects, but they have the same effect. Bleeding, deadening,
(26:48):
combing down. Uh, there was a third gentleman Josh and
the history of blood spatter analysis Dr Herbert McDonald, And
he came around in the early set. He wasn't born
in the early seventies, because I'd be pretty young to
be studying this guy thinks the house or blood spatter.
My brother worked on that. He came into prominence with
blood spatter in nineteen seventy one and wrote a book
(27:10):
about it, probably more updated version than the Polish Gentleman.
And he started training officers in that and got together
at a convention in nineteen eighty three and said to
his fellow guys like, yeah, we should start a group.
We just started an organization. Imagine get pretty loaded out
(27:34):
of blood spatter I convention. And so they did. They
started the International Association of blood Stained Pattern Analysis Analyst.
That's a great chuck. I hope I don't get in
trouble for that. I don't think you will. Yeah, he
was a great guy. He didn't try to murderers earlier.
Chamberlain case. Should we go ahead and hit this one? Yeah?
You're a fan of Seinfeld. Are you familiar with the
(27:57):
maybe a dink I wake out baby? Yeah? Yeah? Wow.
That was Elaine doing her best Meryl Streep who actually
said the ding I ate my baby, who was doing
her best. Lyndy Chamberlaine, who in real life said a
dingo ate my baby. Um, and is what the original
line was, and I think Elaine changed it to eight.
(28:18):
That's much more severe either way either way. In nineteen
eighty in Australia, the Chamberlain family, Richard and Lyndy and
their two kids, Zaria and Reagan, were camping Air's Rock
another kid they had third there too. Actually they did
it never gets any press, okay, it's like I want
to stay out of this. Um. Well, they were camping
(28:40):
with their three kids at Air's Rock and apparently, uh Lynda,
the mom noticed a dingo near her kid's tent and
went over and saw the dingo. I guess it was
nighttime running off with something. She said, she couldn't see what,
but when she looked at the inside the tent, she
saw that the four week old or ten week old
Azaria was missing and that there was blood. So there
(29:02):
was a huge search of this park and they found
a dingo, layer found the baby's clothes and now bloody
and UM basically didn't buy the mom's story or the
parents story that it was a dingo. They think that
they thought pretty quickly off the bat that there was
(29:22):
something fishy, something kinky, as you would say, um, and
they started investigating her and kind of under the assumption
that this that they framed a dingo, they'd actually murdered
their baby. Yeah. That A couple of the things that
happened was they found um. When they found the little jumper,
it was not torn that much. It was bloody, but
(29:43):
the snaps were closed and it looked as it had
been pulled off of a body. Um. The keep key
thing that happened was is the mom said, Lindy said,
you know, there was a jacket, she had a jacket on,
and they didn't find any jacket at all. And Uh.
The other thing that happened was the Yeah, there was
a witness, not a witness, but someone nearby camping that
(30:03):
obviously when all the bruhaha started, she came over there
and she saw the cops pick up the jumper and
just fold it and take it away. And even she,
I think at the time, thought you probably shouldn't be
handling evidence like that. It's not the way to do it.
And they didn't photo document the scene right now, big mistake.
(30:25):
They basically mishandled all the evidence in the thing. They
were hit cops from Central Australia handling, handling like a
huge murder case or a huge death case. Yeah, so
they muddled the whole thing to the point where there
was just basically a lot of speculation. Uh. They had
one expert testify that from the blood stain on the
jumper it looked like a throat was cut, and that's
pretty much what sealed her fate to be convicted. Well,
(30:47):
what also sealed her fate, um is that she remained
very cool and unemotional throughout this trial, and the jury
hated her. They did not like her. They didn't understand
why a woman could remain collected her baby was dead,
let alone when she's being tried for it, you know,
if she hadn't really killed the baby. So in addition
(31:08):
to just blotched, botched handling, a blood pattern analysis or no,
no real blood pattern analysis. Um, it was you know,
her demeanor that helped convict her as well. I want
to see that movie. I haven't seen it. I haven't either,
I just know about it for some reason. Yeah, Well
she got an Academy award nomination, but all she has
to do a show up and she gets an Academy
(31:29):
work on manation. Not necessarily true, Let's get real. No
you bout this point out a stinker of Meryl streeps.
I'm just saying she's played the same character a few times.
Oh please, Okay, we won't go down that road. Um.
What happened to the Chamberlain's well, she was convicted of murder,
and he was convicted right to as well of being
(31:50):
an accessory or some a accessory to murder. Right yes,
And she was in jail, sent to prison for life.
And then three years later her a guy was hiking
in a similar area, felt it was death. Oh my god.
And when they went and found his body, he was
near a dingo layer, several dingo layers, and they found
(32:11):
the missing jacket just by chance, because this guy had
fallen to his death. They did that, and I don't,
as far as I know, Richard Chamberlayne did not push
him to his death so they could find the planted jacket.
So they actually said, no, this clears you, guys. We
found the jacket years later, covered with blood near dingo layers. Torn.
(32:33):
Sorry you got here's one point three She got one
point three mill Australian it pounds Australian dollars Australian units
of money, austrillion dollars dollars and apparently that was only
about a third of their legal fees. So it's not
the happiest ending. Although she did end up out of
(32:54):
jail and exonerated. She got to meet Meryl Streep. I imagine,
so I wonder if she met Leah Louis Dreyfuss. Probably not,
probably not so. Um, that's blood pattern analysis. There's a
lot of really cool graphics and illustrations. Did you see those?
And by graphics we don't mean awful awful pictures. There's
(33:16):
some pictures of blood and if you read the captions
you're like, um, but no, it's not like anything that
the average person couldn't handle. Um. But now there's some
cool illustrations of how you figure out areas of convergence.
That kind of stuff really puts the punch into trigonometry.
That's what how stuff works. Does absolutely type in blood,
(33:38):
just blood, it'll bring up a bunch of cool stuff.
But if you really want to do a good search,
do blood pattern in the search bar. The bloody bleeding
gushing search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
since I said bloody bleedy blood what did I say
bloody bleeding search part? Since I said that, it means
it's time for the listener mail. Josh, I gonna call
(34:01):
this uh mlingling monk Housers. Jerry either laughed at that
or she blue snot because she's sick. This is from Brooks,
and Brooks says, Hi, guys and Jerry, I've been loving
your podcasts for the last few weeks, new new listener.
If loving our podcast is wrong, brook doesn't want to
be right while he's been driving forty five minutes to
(34:23):
a different hospital for his eer rotation. He's a fourth
year med student. During the monk Housen podcast, you mentioned
m lingering, which made me think of one of the
patients we saw in the e R last week. And
he says that this doesn't violate any hippo oath because
he doesn't have any like details. At ma'am. I don't
know if I believe him, but we'll see. Young guy
(34:44):
came in complaining of sudden onset flank pain classic for
kidney stones. We asked him for a urine sample to
check for microscopic blood. Our first clue that something was
up should have been when he asked if we needed
to watch him supply the sample. That's only roots sen
procedure and drug testing, not medical testing. When we got
the sample from him, it was totally bloody and we
(35:06):
knew it was contaminating, so we asked him for a
catheterized specimen, and I was totally shocked when he said, Okay,
not many people think the catheter. I think he was shocked. Yeah,
I think he was shocked by the size of the
tube used to get the sample. He nearly jumped off
the table during the process, but during his moving an
(35:27):
empty blood vial shook out of his pocket. What we
concluded was that he had stolen a vial of his
own blood from a lab earlier in the day brought
it to the e R with a goal of convincing
us he had a kidney stone his secondary gain aside
from a lingering painkillers. Yeah, my boss was not amused,
(35:47):
though I was. I just thought you'd enjoy hearing about
a good solid case of lingering from j D of Scrubs,
from Brooks of Josh in predemption. It's a good one. Brooks.
We appreciate thanks for sending that in. That's awesome. Good
luck med student, fourth year, fourth year. Good luck in
the real world. We're pulling for you. Keep sending us
(36:10):
cool stories. My mom was an ear nurse for decades
and she always had the best stories ever. Yeah. Um,
if you have a good story about probably not too
many blood spatter stories. That a good Valentine's Day story.
We want to hear it. Wrap it up sending in
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(36:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
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Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast and Happy Valentine's Day. I'm Josh. That was
(00:20):
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm Josh Clark. Um, this is
Stuff you should know the podcast the Love Edition. Yeah,
let's talk about Valentine's Day and love. Do you want
to hear a possibly um true Valentine's Day fact so
you know where we get the concept of sending Valentine's
(00:42):
Day cards Hallmark. No, it was even earlier than that.
A little guy by the name of St. Valentine. Okay,
again this is uncorroborated, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
Back in the day, St. Valentine used to hang out
with the Pagan I believe Greeks maybe uh Romans, one
(01:02):
of the two and um who had a custom of
hooking up like picking a partner and you know that
was who you're gonna be with for the rest of
the year. Not married, all right, but like all the benefits,
you know what I mean? And um. They to consummate
that choice. They would you know, go off and hook
up like that day February same Valentine comes along and goes,
(01:25):
this is an importance to my god and um, soon
to be your god. So let's let's figure something else out.
How about you guys, keep picking people that you want to,
you know, be friendly with, stop the fornication, and instead
just send notes of affection to one another. Those became
(01:45):
as far as I know, the Valentine's Day card. I'm
sure that sounds sounds good to me, does it all right? Um?
One of the one of the great symbols of Valentine's Day, Chuck,
is the heart, which is almost invariably colored red. It's
a very cute iconography, but if you really think about it,
(02:07):
what you're seeing is the organ colored by our life blood.
What happens when something happens to that organ or that
life blood and it goes from inside that cute little
heart to being sprayed all over the wall at a
high speed velocity, A bunch of things happen. A lot
(02:31):
of tell tale symbols are left behind after the person
falls forward, killed by the love of their life. On
Valentine's Day, no less but but bud spatter, Bud spatter. Yeah,
we should say probably right now, it's not splatter. Blood spatter, which,
strangely enough, is is a an appropriate interchangeable term or
(02:53):
phrase for blood pattern analysis can also be called blood
spatter analysis. To you see that, Yes, it's interchangeable, or
it can be called that stuffed dexter? Does it? Could
you like Dexter? Don't you? Yeah? So do you? Okay?
So I know that I have a lot of bad
karma coming against me. Um, because let me explain why
(03:15):
it wasn't just a blanket statement. Um, because of the
three times now that I've ruined um six ft under
for people who haven't seen the whole thing. But I
have not seen season five. So if you're gonna talk
about Dexter, don't give me any clues as to what
goes on season five aside from the um off camera
(03:36):
breakup of the marriage between Michael Hall and Jennifer Carpenter.
That was very sad, but Julia Styles has nothing to
do with it. She even released a statement she said,
really she felt like she needed to Yeah, interesting, which
is not her style usually. No, she's pretty lucky. So chuck, um,
do you want to talk about dex Uh? Yeah, Well,
I mean, he's a Nina. What I couldn't find out
(03:58):
is he's on the show. He is a crime scene
photographer slash spatter analyst, and I couldn't find if that's
really a thing. So, Mike, Mike, I'm guessing. I'm positing
that maybe in some smaller municipalities they may do double
duty like that, But I bet in Miami they probably
have a dedicated photographer, dedicated analysts. Uh yeah, Actually, UM,
(04:20):
from this article, I believe it says that a lot
of people, um, a lot of people who become blood
pattern analysts UM, start out as cops or detectives or
whatever and kind of um find that they have a
pension for reading blood and they start taking courses and
workshops and become certified. So I imagine, yeah, it's possible,
(04:41):
especially in smaller areas, that people are pulling double or
triple duty like that. Yeah, you're probably not gonna in
some like tiny county, you're not gonna have a full
time crime scene photographer, or maybe it's some local that's
not on the But you know, we'll get to all
that because this is a two parter. Well one reason
chuck that um it's not um just an across the
board filled position or even um available position at every
(05:05):
every UM police department is because, as it's put in
the article, it's as much art as science right now.
It takes a lot of um interpretation and you can't
just you know, hand the stuff over to the prosecutor
and they're just like bam, case closed. There's a blood
pattern analysis. Yeah, look all the blood on the wall.
He did it. But it is used to corroborate other
(05:26):
evidence because as we said, it does tell a story
when um, the person who you love shoot you through
the heart and spattered your blood all over the wall
on Valentine's Day, killing you dead. Yeah. Yes, you can
tell a lot of things, UM. For instance, this list
that I'm about to the type and velocity of the
weapon you always hear about. You know this is a
(05:46):
blunt force thing or knife, stab, wound, gunshot. The number
of blows that this person uh could withstand before dying
and even after death. Yeah, I mean think about a
passion killing, rage killing. Uh, the handedness of the assailant
because everyone knows, you know, if I was going to
punch you in the face, to do with my right
(06:07):
hand hit you on your left cheek, that's how it works. Uh,
position of the victim, and like whether or not they
were moved or they flailed around on the floor for
a little while trying to trying to live, pull themselves
to safety. Perhaps um, the wound that was inflicted first,
like this was to kill wound, and all this other
stuff happened because it was just a sicko type of injury.
(06:30):
How long ago the body has been there, and whether
it was an immediate death or whether they bled out
over the course of hours or whether they Yeah, if
it was an immediate death in the blood just kind
of pulled where they fell, or if they're smears from
them crawling or something like that, which would indicate that
death was delayed or being dragged. Maybe there's nobody. Yeah,
(06:52):
I think that I took from this. It wasn't explicitly said,
but there's UM. You can, especially with an old crime scene, UM,
learn a lot about something where there's no other evidence
just from the blood, like UM, skeletonized blood. Yeah, blood
can actually where there was once a blood droplet, it
(07:12):
can skeletonize and flick away and there will be no drop,
but there will be an outline ring around where the
drop was. Right. Um. You can also uh tell from
the amount of clotting that's taken place. Apparently, once clotting starts,
you know that, um, it's been at least fifteen minutes,
which probably isn't that helpful, but it's been at least
fifteen minutes since the blood exited the body. So like
(07:34):
we didn't come up on the person died more than
fifteen minutes ago, we can say that, um. And then
but if some stuffs more clotted than others, you can
tell that, um, the attack took place over a period
of time. Sure, and we talked about in crimes can
clean up obviously, how it can harden, brain can harden
(07:54):
on walls. So it's not just blood. They're looking at
all sorts of bone fragments and pieces of whatever that's
in you that is no longer in you. But as
we'll see, just the presence of of say brain and
skull fragments UM indicates a head wound. It does you're
all on your way to being certified. UM. And it
also usually indicates you know, probably what type of weapons
(08:16):
we'll see later. Right. Uh. The cool thing about blood, though, Josh,
is that it's very predictable. It's very cohesive, has a
lot of surface tensions, so the molecules like buying really tight,
so it's always a little round sphere until it hits something.
And when it hits something, it's really predictable what happens,
like you can read it and pretty much be able
(08:36):
to tell things that will get into like angle and
velocity and stuff like that with some certainty, so much
that they use in court. Yes, they do to put
people in the pokey sometimes unfairly. We will see that too.
Should we talk about the types of spatter? This is
my favorite part. The three types of spatter hit it?
(08:59):
Then okay, well there's low velocity, medium velocity, and high velocity, right,
and that sounds pretty stupid, but there's um the different
characteristics of each type of velocity group. Right. Um. So
you know when when blood moves, like you said, it
follows like predictable patterns. Um. Gravity, force, surface tension keeps
(09:21):
it together. Um. And for example, say how high up
a blood drop drips from is going to determine how
spread out that drop is, sure, because it has more
time to accelerate and a greater force when it hits
the ground. Then if it's you know, an inch or
two off of the ground. So that's a pretty good
example of a low spatter velocity of blood drip, right, Yeah,
(09:44):
Like I've been stabbed and I'm laying on my couch
with my arm dangling off and it's just dripping off
my fingertip twelve inches to the carpet below. That's great.
The the force that's acting on this low velocity blood
spatter is gravity, nothing else, right. Um. They usually come
from stab wounds, like you said. Uh. And then some
(10:04):
of the properties of a of a low velocity blood spatter, Um,
the force of impact is less than five ft per second,
not much. That's not much. Um, that's like a blood drop, right, Yeah,
between usually between four and eight millimeters. That's about the
size you're gonna get with a low veloci And like
you said, um, it's it's you've been stabbed and you're
(10:24):
laying there. So most of the low velocity blood spatters,
uh come about after an attack, after the injury has
been sustained. Right, It's not sprayed all over the wall. Right.
So stabbing is a pretty good Usually it's stabbing is
low velocity or vice versa. Um, and uh. One type
of low velocity blood spatter from stabbing is called a
(10:46):
passive spatter. That's after you've been stabbed and you're walking
around and you're basically leaving a dripping blood trail. Ye,
should we at this point say that this might be
a little gruesome? It's too late. I think it's a
little late. A right, I guess we could go to
the trouble went back and inserting it. But I predict,
hold on, I predict we will not. We will not.
So let's just say that now you can turn it
off at this point if you have already, if you're
(11:07):
a little creeped out by blood, which I am, Are
you really? Yeah? I mean not you picked these? Yeah,
But I mean it doesn't mean we shouldn't cover it.
I'm not like, I don't have a true phobia, but
I mean, who likes seeing large amounts of blood and
that bright, bright red white surfaces? It's have you ever
passed out at the side of blood? No? No No, it's
not that bad. I had a roommate in college named
(11:29):
John Johnson real name, who was shucking oysters down in
Florida when we were down at the beach once and uh,
he shucked the meat of the palm of his hand
and looked at it, and none of us knew that
he was afraid of his own blood and just fell
right over. And he was a big boy, so he
made quite a clamor he he came to and you know,
(11:51):
it was okay after that, but he fainted dead away
at the sight of his own blood. Well, I'm I
I mean, I've never seen something really, really, really gruesome.
So have you never seen pictures? Yeah? I don't like
that stuff. I don't either, but um, yeah, I'm not
into it, but people are and we'll get to that too.
(12:13):
Medium velocity is next, and that has a force from
five to one ft per second, diameter no more than
formula millimeters usually, and that can be caused by a
blunt object or I love this line, like a baseball
bat or an intense beating with a fist. You've gotta
be a tough guy, dude. If you're If you can
(12:34):
have the same impact as a baseball bat with your fist,
then you're either doing something right or wrong, or you
are you're using breath knuckles. Yeah, that's true. So that
could also be from a stabbing. Actually, um, and in
this case, if you damage an artery, something can happen
called projected blood, and that means you're laying there and
as long as your heart's beating, it's really pumping that
blood out and it can project in a very distinctive pattern. Evidently. Yeah.
(12:58):
I mean like if you if you ever see somebody
who's um carotid artery has been punctured and they have
their hand there, it's just like spewing from between their fingers.
It's projected blood. That's medium velocity, which can be compared
to a like, um, a good squirt gun. What are
those ones called supersuckers, like that kind of spray, um,
(13:20):
And it's not just the heart that's projecting it. And
that's a that's a good example of media velocity, the
heart pumping the blood and projecting it out of the body. Right. Um.
Another medium velocity blood spatter is let's say, um, you're
beating somebody with a lead pipe when you're drawing back
again to exactly that's what I thought of too. I
(13:42):
thought about that, Um, when you're drawing back for another blow,
you're you're whipping the blood off of the lead pipe
after that first blow. So that's medium medium velocity, which
you said is about uh five percent. Yeah, okay, So
then you have high velocity, which is pretty much a
(14:04):
gunshot wound, and that's more than a hundred feet per second.
That's when blood is really hauling. You've got tiny little
sprays on the wall or wherever, and that's the one
where you're gonna find like tissue and bone usually along
with the blood. Chances are um less than one millimeter
in diameter, and you can either have you can have
(14:25):
front spatters, back spatters or both. If the bullet goes
through you, you're gonna have both. Yeah, and then exit one. Yeah.
I think about it like anytime you see somebody get shot,
like the blood almost doesn't spatter, like you'll just start
soaking the shirt or something like that and don't look behind. Yeah,
you look behind and all of a sudden, there's a
huge hole because of cavitatione full metal jacket comes to mind.
(14:48):
Mm hmm. So you have seen grewsome things in the movie.
What is your major mouth function? Uh? And my favorite
thing in this on this page was the bit about
internal muzzle staining and stippling. Sick stuff, but pretty awesome too.
(15:08):
Yeah if basically and well, I guess it could happen
in any kind of gunshot that's close. But I think
of an execution style murder, like when the mobster says,
we need to whack Jimmy two ft. I guess two
ft would be normal. But yeah, he's got he's the
most nondescript gangster of all time exactly which one again? Um,
(15:29):
So they would put the gun like up to his head,
and in that case, the skin, if there's still a body,
can have burns from the gunpowder, and the inside of
the muzzle, because of the cooling of the explosive gas used,
can actually suck blood back inside of the gun. Yeah,
the spray that fine myth. So if you're lucky enough
to get ahold of that gun, they can swab the
inside and like this is Jimmy two feets blood on
(15:51):
the inside of your muzzle here, buddy, that's how you
just throw it in the East river. Yeah, or use
the old pillow method. Don't don't be cheap, right, Wow,
I just gave advice to murderers. Yeah, that's weird. I
guess we did. I've never done that before. Uh. The
other thing, I'm sure you have it. The other thing
that they can look for is, uh, you got to
use brass knuckles is a void and avoid is where
(16:15):
let's say I were to kill somebody and the blood
is spraying on me and the wall behind me. That
will be uh, you're gonna leave a handsome silhouette. Yeah,
not an outline of a body like a cartoon. But
there will be avoid there where they said, you know,
something or somebody got in the way of the blood spatter.
Don't find me that shirt, which is now in a trash.
(16:36):
Can find me that last chance garage hat covered in blood,
that'd be bad news. I love that hat, So Chuck,
you've seen Dexter. We talked about this, right, see them all? Yeah,
I have to except for season five, right, oh Dexter.
I thought you meant like all crime. Oh no, no,
I've seen each episode. Sorry, Um, well, surely you've seen
(16:58):
then at least I know for a fact. And at
least one episode he's messing with like these red strings
in the room. That's when the art department really gets involved. Yeah,
so this you can you can imagine. Check this is
a very painstaking process, each each of these lines, not
just for the art department, but this happens in real life.
It's it's a method of figuring out the angle of um,
(17:22):
the path of blood. Yeah, I thought this might be outdated,
but they still use it sometimes they do. Um. Well,
let's there was something that the article I thought left out,
and it was the importance of determining the angle. It
just went into how we figure out angles. Um. But
there's a lot of import in figuring out what angle
(17:43):
these this blood spray travel traveled, right, Yeah, because it
will tell you a lot of times. You know that
the person who fired the weapon was probably taller than
six ft because the gun was at a certain level,
and so was it a man? Was it likely a man?
Was it likely a woman based on the height? Right? Um,
the if if it's a downward angle, then that might
(18:04):
corroborate the idea that this person was killed execution style,
which juries like to hear about if that's going on,
because that's like get on your knees type of thing. Usually, Yeah,
that's pretty cold blooded. Um. If somebody's pleading self defense
and said they were on the floor, an upward angle
would would corroborate that and might you know, get them
off in their self defense plea. Um. There's a lot
(18:25):
of reasons why figuring out the angle is very important, right, agreed,
And it's also probably the most scientific of um. Blood
pattern analysis math heavy, triggeronometry heavy. Yeah, we tried, we
should say, we tried to find a math heavy and
I made the mistake of emailing our editorial department to
get someone to describe it. And I thought, we're all
(18:48):
half hearted attempt That's why we're writers. So we don't
have to do math, especially not triggering out we do
now though I think I have this lift, but it's
really not that hard. Actually, once I reread anytime. Let's
talk about the strings for first, So it is you do? Uh?
You do? They do use these strings, elastic strings. Each
one represents a drop of blood. So if you have
(19:09):
a lot of drops of blood, you're gonna have a
lot of strings. It's gonna take a while, right, um.
But you you create a you you find a level,
right like you create a level point. You start running
strings through the level point from the blood to you know,
somewhere else in space, the wall or ceiling, and then
(19:29):
all of a sudden, after you start doing a few
of these strings, you're gonna find that they all come
together at a certain point. And that point is the
area of convergence a k a. What was originally a
person's head, right, and that's where all the blood came from.
So you're gonna find where where, where they on the ground,
where they up high. Um, basically you're creating in real
(19:51):
life a three dimensional model of the path this blood
took right and where the person was standing, where they
were in relationship to the wall, all that stuff. You're
probably going to figure out, um, how the person was
attacked from what side, that kind of thing. So that's
it's it's very important and that's the old school, really
methodical way to do it, right. Yeah, you're gonna explain
(20:12):
the trigonomic This is for college boy blood pattern analysts.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, because I'll explain the way I
would do it short, okay, which I think is actually
how the um how this this article describes it. Well,
we'll see how Chuck would do it. Okay. So, um,
(20:32):
when blood hits when when blood hits a surface, whether
it's drywall or the floor or the ceiling or something
like that, if it if it falls or travels uh
straight up and down, it's it's that's a ninety degree angle. Yeah,
you're gonna get a little roundrop you get a round drop.
But the the stronger the angle right, the more severe
(20:56):
the angle, the drop starts to elongate. It's like you
know when you skip a stone. It's kind of like that,
or when you spill any liquid, And that's another way
to put it. So as it um, as it elongates,
it gets longer and thinner. And what you can actually
do is take the measurements of each one of these drops, right,
(21:18):
and you take let me see if I got this chuck,
you take the width right, so obviously we were writers.
Anytime this comes up, you take the width and you
divide it by the length, and that gives you a number. Yes,
this is trigonometry by the way um and you deter
(21:39):
you take that number and you use a calculator and
you use the arc sign function. Don't ask us to
really explain how to come even in the even in
the article like I couldn't find it. And arc sign
is the converse of sign or co sign one of
those um And basically what you're finding is the angle
(21:59):
of a right triangle by taking the opposite side and
dividing it by the hypothenuse, and that will give you
once you figure out the arc sign of that number
the angle. And that's the college boy way of figuring
out the angle that blood traveled from the area of
convergence exactly. So a quick example, if you have a
(22:22):
two millimeter wide blood stain that's four millimeters long, you
divide that and you get point five, and the arc
sign of that is thirty. And we figured out the
arc sign of five is thirty. Point five is thirty
by using that calculator, and thirty would be your angle.
That means a thirty degree angle is is what you're
looking at, right, So this is how Chuck would do it.
Chuck would get a computer program called No More Strings.
(22:47):
I guess they couldn't use no strings attached. That's what
I would have called it. Maybe you can make a
competing program maybe so, uh, no More Strings is a
program that actually creates a three dimensional model and you
plug in all your numbers and it does it for
you with uh computer animation. And that's I want to
say modern. It is modern, but they do still use
a string method um and a lot of times they
(23:08):
say that will be more convincing to a jury if
they can look at animation. Then hear some nerd uh
explain it? In front of them while they're falling asleep exactly. No,
I mean I think that's very much the case. That's
probably why that software is probably more used than either
of the other two methods these days. Yeah, I would
call it the jury Swayer program. That's what I would
(23:29):
call it. I would call it the widow Maker. Alright. Uh,
a little history, Yeah, we usually cover that first, but
we didn't. I think this, U this is a fine article.
I like the way it was paced and then laid out. Yeah,
very detailed. It's been around actually since the eight nineties.
They've been you know, analyzing blood stains and spatter, but
(23:51):
they didn't really start using it until much later. The
the first guy I love the name of this book,
the first guy from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Poland.
His name was Dr Eduard Pietrowski, wrote a book called
concerning the Origin, shape, Direction, and Distribution of the blood
Stains following head wounds caused by blows and imagine that
(24:14):
was also his uh how we got the ladies alright,
telling me wrote that, but showing his book to the ladies,
and uh, it would be I think probably about fifty
years later that they actually started using these interpretations in court.
That guy laid the groundwork for how to do it
at least for a beating. Yeah, for Paul Kirk. Yeah,
and Paul Kirk was a physician UM in Ohio. Right. Yeah,
(24:39):
there's a case of Samuel Shepard being prosecuted for murder
and Dr kirk um figured out from blood spatter analysis
where UM Samuel Shepard was when he attacked the victim. Allegedly, Well,
he was prosecuted so or convicted, so that's the fact.
(25:01):
And then it also showed that UM sam Shephard or
that the victim was attacked with by a left handed person.
But I'm assuming Sam Shepard was one the case bamp.
Blood spatter analysis is on the map. I wonder what
the jury thought about that first, because it means now
it's so all over the place, you know, all about
the stuff. But the first time someone like recreated a
(25:24):
scene and said he was this tall and left handed,
were they like, Wow, that's amazing or what are you
talking about? I wonder probably why it's amazing, Just like
once today, have you heard of the c S I effect? Yeah,
we talked about it, did we. Yeah, it was a
long time ago. It was between episode zero and one.
But explain it because we have new listeners. Oh well,
(25:46):
welcome new listen hey, new listeners, listen up. The c
s I effect is basically juries watching things like c
s I dexter all this um television ized um blood
spatter analysis or forensic science and expecting that so if
a prosecutor fails to deliver, that means that the case
(26:06):
isn't all that great. Or conversely, if the prosecutor of
the defense can deliver some whiz bang, no more strings,
three D graphics of somebody getting shot or not getting shot,
the jury is swayed because you know, that's how you
weren't that's how you win a case. So, um, there's
a there's an expectation that a case has to have
(26:26):
that kind of thing. That's the c s I effect.
Someone going that's not how they do it on TV,
Yeah exactly, or hey, that's exactly how they do it
on TV probably has the reverse effect to You could
also just as easily call it the Dancing with the
Stars effect the American idol effect, like, well, those are
different effects, but they have the same effect. Bleeding, deadening,
(26:48):
combing down. Uh, there was a third gentleman Josh and
the history of blood spatter analysis Dr Herbert McDonald, And
he came around in the early set. He wasn't born
in the early seventies, because I'd be pretty young to
be studying this guy thinks the house or blood spatter.
My brother worked on that. He came into prominence with
blood spatter in nineteen seventy one and wrote a book
(27:10):
about it, probably more updated version than the Polish Gentleman.
And he started training officers in that and got together
at a convention in nineteen eighty three and said to
his fellow guys like, yeah, we should start a group.
We just started an organization. Imagine get pretty loaded out
(27:34):
of blood spatter I convention. And so they did. They
started the International Association of blood Stained Pattern Analysis Analyst.
That's a great chuck. I hope I don't get in
trouble for that. I don't think you will. Yeah, he
was a great guy. He didn't try to murderers earlier.
Chamberlain case. Should we go ahead and hit this one? Yeah?
You're a fan of Seinfeld. Are you familiar with the
(27:57):
maybe a dink I wake out baby? Yeah? Yeah? Wow.
That was Elaine doing her best Meryl Streep who actually
said the ding I ate my baby, who was doing
her best. Lyndy Chamberlaine, who in real life said a
dingo ate my baby. Um, and is what the original
line was, and I think Elaine changed it to eight.
(28:18):
That's much more severe either way either way. In nineteen
eighty in Australia, the Chamberlain family, Richard and Lyndy and
their two kids, Zaria and Reagan, were camping Air's Rock
another kid they had third there too. Actually they did
it never gets any press, okay, it's like I want
to stay out of this. Um. Well, they were camping
(28:40):
with their three kids at Air's Rock and apparently, uh Lynda,
the mom noticed a dingo near her kid's tent and
went over and saw the dingo. I guess it was
nighttime running off with something. She said, she couldn't see what,
but when she looked at the inside the tent, she
saw that the four week old or ten week old
Azaria was missing and that there was blood. So there
(29:02):
was a huge search of this park and they found
a dingo, layer found the baby's clothes and now bloody
and UM basically didn't buy the mom's story or the
parents story that it was a dingo. They think that
they thought pretty quickly off the bat that there was
(29:22):
something fishy, something kinky, as you would say, um, and
they started investigating her and kind of under the assumption
that this that they framed a dingo, they'd actually murdered
their baby. Yeah. That A couple of the things that
happened was they found um. When they found the little jumper,
it was not torn that much. It was bloody, but
(29:43):
the snaps were closed and it looked as it had
been pulled off of a body. Um. The keep key
thing that happened was is the mom said, Lindy said,
you know, there was a jacket, she had a jacket on,
and they didn't find any jacket at all. And Uh.
The other thing that happened was the Yeah, there was
a witness, not a witness, but someone nearby camping that
(30:03):
obviously when all the bruhaha started, she came over there
and she saw the cops pick up the jumper and
just fold it and take it away. And even she,
I think at the time, thought you probably shouldn't be
handling evidence like that. It's not the way to do it.
And they didn't photo document the scene right now, big mistake.
(30:25):
They basically mishandled all the evidence in the thing. They
were hit cops from Central Australia handling, handling like a
huge murder case or a huge death case. Yeah, so
they muddled the whole thing to the point where there
was just basically a lot of speculation. Uh. They had
one expert testify that from the blood stain on the
jumper it looked like a throat was cut, and that's
pretty much what sealed her fate to be convicted. Well,
(30:47):
what also sealed her fate, um is that she remained
very cool and unemotional throughout this trial, and the jury
hated her. They did not like her. They didn't understand
why a woman could remain collected her baby was dead,
let alone when she's being tried for it, you know,
if she hadn't really killed the baby. So in addition
(31:08):
to just blotched, botched handling, a blood pattern analysis or no,
no real blood pattern analysis. Um, it was you know,
her demeanor that helped convict her as well. I want
to see that movie. I haven't seen it. I haven't either,
I just know about it for some reason. Yeah, Well
she got an Academy award nomination, but all she has
to do a show up and she gets an Academy
(31:29):
work on manation. Not necessarily true, Let's get real. No
you bout this point out a stinker of Meryl streeps.
I'm just saying she's played the same character a few times.
Oh please, Okay, we won't go down that road. Um.
What happened to the Chamberlain's well, she was convicted of murder,
and he was convicted right to as well of being
(31:50):
an accessory or some a accessory to murder. Right yes,
And she was in jail, sent to prison for life.
And then three years later her a guy was hiking
in a similar area, felt it was death. Oh my god.
And when they went and found his body, he was
near a dingo layer, several dingo layers, and they found
(32:11):
the missing jacket just by chance, because this guy had
fallen to his death. They did that, and I don't,
as far as I know, Richard Chamberlayne did not push
him to his death so they could find the planted jacket.
So they actually said, no, this clears you, guys. We
found the jacket years later, covered with blood near dingo layers. Torn.
(32:33):
Sorry you got here's one point three She got one
point three mill Australian it pounds Australian dollars Australian units
of money, austrillion dollars dollars and apparently that was only
about a third of their legal fees. So it's not
the happiest ending. Although she did end up out of
(32:54):
jail and exonerated. She got to meet Meryl Streep. I imagine,
so I wonder if she met Leah Louis Dreyfuss. Probably not,
probably not so. Um, that's blood pattern analysis. There's a
lot of really cool graphics and illustrations. Did you see those?
And by graphics we don't mean awful awful pictures. There's
(33:16):
some pictures of blood and if you read the captions
you're like, um, but no, it's not like anything that
the average person couldn't handle. Um. But now there's some
cool illustrations of how you figure out areas of convergence.
That kind of stuff really puts the punch into trigonometry.
That's what how stuff works. Does absolutely type in blood,
(33:38):
just blood, it'll bring up a bunch of cool stuff.
But if you really want to do a good search,
do blood pattern in the search bar. The bloody bleeding
gushing search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
since I said bloody bleedy blood what did I say
bloody bleeding search part? Since I said that, it means
it's time for the listener mail. Josh, I gonna call
(34:01):
this uh mlingling monk Housers. Jerry either laughed at that
or she blue snot because she's sick. This is from Brooks,
and Brooks says, Hi, guys and Jerry, I've been loving
your podcasts for the last few weeks, new new listener.
If loving our podcast is wrong, brook doesn't want to
be right while he's been driving forty five minutes to
(34:23):
a different hospital for his eer rotation. He's a fourth
year med student. During the monk Housen podcast, you mentioned
m lingering, which made me think of one of the
patients we saw in the e R last week. And
he says that this doesn't violate any hippo oath because
he doesn't have any like details. At ma'am. I don't
know if I believe him, but we'll see. Young guy
(34:44):
came in complaining of sudden onset flank pain classic for
kidney stones. We asked him for a urine sample to
check for microscopic blood. Our first clue that something was
up should have been when he asked if we needed
to watch him supply the sample. That's only roots sen
procedure and drug testing, not medical testing. When we got
the sample from him, it was totally bloody and we
(35:06):
knew it was contaminating, so we asked him for a
catheterized specimen, and I was totally shocked when he said, Okay,
not many people think the catheter. I think he was shocked. Yeah,
I think he was shocked by the size of the
tube used to get the sample. He nearly jumped off
the table during the process, but during his moving an
(35:27):
empty blood vial shook out of his pocket. What we
concluded was that he had stolen a vial of his
own blood from a lab earlier in the day brought
it to the e R with a goal of convincing
us he had a kidney stone his secondary gain aside
from a lingering painkillers. Yeah, my boss was not amused,
(35:47):
though I was. I just thought you'd enjoy hearing about
a good solid case of lingering from j D of Scrubs,
from Brooks of Josh in predemption. It's a good one. Brooks.
We appreciate thanks for sending that in. That's awesome. Good
luck med student, fourth year, fourth year. Good luck in
the real world. We're pulling for you. Keep sending us
(36:10):
cool stories. My mom was an ear nurse for decades
and she always had the best stories ever. Yeah. Um,
if you have a good story about probably not too
many blood spatter stories. That a good Valentine's Day story.
We want to hear it. Wrap it up sending in
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(36:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
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