February 17, 2011 • 26 mins
Crime scene photography is a crucial aspect of forensic investigation, but it's by no means a new part of detective work. In this episode, Chuck and Josh explore the history and modern use of crime scene photography.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House staff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(00:20):
Snap Snap snap. That was my camera impression. You could
you get your little iPhone? You could do you know
the little sound if you want to. I guess I could.
Is it this? That's your iPhone camera? My own personal rendition?
Did I introduce this yet? I have not? I'm Josh Clark.
You did? Oh? I did? You didn't say this is
stuff you should know? This is stuff you should know?
(00:42):
The podcast? Right, that's right. I have you noticed I've
started to differentiate between the podcast and the nothing else?
Oh yeah, here, let's see what we got there? You go? Yeah, So, Chuck,
had you been you know, in the act of vandalism, murder,
theft um, or had you done it gotten up and
(01:04):
left some sort of scene behind that picture would have
constituted crime scene photography. That is not my intro. Uh.
Did you notice in this article again named Alphonse Bertillon, right,
He was a nineteenth century French photographer who was credited
with um creating the concept of crime scene photography for
(01:28):
forensic police investigation. He's also credited with creating something that
any smoking gun fan will appreciate. This guy for mug shots,
like mug shots. Mug shots. Um, he created mug shots,
I should say for the purpose that they're used today
cataloging and criminal This guy with this face, with these
(01:51):
tattoos has done this crime right, or has been questioned
for this crime or whatever. It's it's a way of
documenting what a person looks like, so there's no mistaken identity.
That kind of thing. Uh. And when um Bertillon came
up with this, it was it was kind of a
lifesaver for people suspected of being criminals, or for criminals
because in France at the time, UM, you may be
(02:13):
branded with a hot iron. That's how they identified repeat offenders. Yeah,
so that was kind of a safe But Bertillon was
also very much interested in eugenics, which was the idea
that you could create a fitter, better human race by
basically sterilizing or killing people who didn't fit the idea
(02:36):
of fitness, right, epileptics, criminals, that kind of thing, uh,
And part of eugenics was based on um phrenology or
the shape of the skull, the shape of the face characteristics.
And Bertillon came up with eleven character characteristics that you
could measure drawn on ethnic lines, largely very much so
um but using calipers and other instruments, and he came
(02:58):
up with this uniform measure meant set. That's the other
reason he started doing mug shots right, And it actually
worked for a while until uh in the early turn
of the century, the last century, not this past one,
the one before UH Leavenworth Prison, a guy was using
this bertignon um measurement. They have a standard procedure by
(03:22):
them to book somebody in named William West. And this
guy who was doing the measurements, that was his job,
so he knew everybody in the prisons measurements by heart
pretty much. He was like, I have measured your face before,
and this William West is like, no, I promise you
I have not been here before. And he's like, I
don't know. Let me look. So he looks it up
(03:43):
and sees that yes, he has indeed come up with
the same exact measurements for these eleven different distinct characteristics
which Bertillon calculated to be one in about four million,
the chances of two people having the same characteristics. And
not only that, this Leavenworth forensics guy, UM finds that
(04:04):
they're attributed or cataloged with a guy by the name
of William West. Here's the thing. The guy he was
booking processing wasn't lying. The other William West was still
in prison in Leavenworth with the same eleven characteristics. So
as of that guy's processing, there were two William West
with identical facial characteristics in Leavenworth at the same time.
(04:28):
So was that the beginning of the end of mugshots
being used in that way pretty much, because from what
I understand with the characteristics, it was sort of like
he was using this proof like just look at the guy,
just look at him right, look at the face. Well,
not not only that, by studying, by creating a catalog
of people along these eleven characteristics, like how far apart
(04:49):
your eyes were, like how protruding your eyebrow, your eyebrow ridge?
Is that kind of thing? Um, you would conceivably and
we're very much doing something along the same lines with
d N today. Um, we're conceivably saying, well, this person
with this you know, pronounced eyebrow ridge is um, you know,
very much predisposed to acts of murder and violence because
(05:12):
if you, as you've seen all these other people that
we've cataloged, had this protruding eyebrow ridge and that common
characteristic shows that you're a murderer. Not to nab a criminal, no,
but it's the same point that we're at with these
DNA data bases that we've spoken about. To Chuck, let's
get back to crime scene photography, shall we. Yes, Bertillon
was the first guy to really do that, and he um,
(05:33):
he was the first guy to I mean, there's been
forensic photography, they said, since pretty much the camera's been around.
But he was the first guy to say, you know what,
let's do some different angles, and let's get some real
close ups, and let's survey the whole scene, and now
we have sort of a picture of what the whole
crime scene looks like and methodical. He was the first
(05:53):
to really apply a method to it. Before um, it
kind of grew out of newspapers printing crime scene photos
like The Guy in Road to Perdition. Um. Jude Law. Yeah,
I enjoyed that it was a good movie, but they
would they would go for the art or the shock
value of it, not necessarily the evidentiary value. So yeah,
(06:13):
it's very sensationalistic. U. Crime Scene photography is obviously very
important because evidence is transitory. Um. You clean up a
crime scene, you remove the body, lift the fingerprints, you
do all that stuff. So you need to get it
while the egg is still in the pan. As they
say that, I think you just say that so before
(06:35):
everyone else comes in and does their thing, um, the
crime scene photographer. There's a lot of pressure on on
these men and women to go in first because they've
got their c s. I guys outside saying all right,
come on, let's get this over with so we can
start analyzing it. Right. But they gotta be first because
you don't want to disrupt the scene. Yeah, and you
(06:55):
have to take your time, and you have to do
it right, and there's standard procedures that you have to
come up with very much. Um. But yeah, it's kind
of a high pressure job. It's it's a very important job.
You remember when we were talking about, UM, blood pattern
analysis just a couple of days ago, it seems it
seems like just no time at all, UM, But you
were talking about how maybe some police departments have people
(07:18):
pulling double duty with blood pattern analysis. Uh, not necessarily
so with crime scene photography. Uh, this isn't so. This
is not as much in art as a science, even
though it's something that grew out of an art um.
This this position is very valuable, so much so that
the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has its own crime scene
(07:39):
photography and videography department, and they dispatched them independently of
the police. Interesting, so there'll be two on the scene
because they found that documenting a crime scene is so
important to closing a case that they just they have
their own peeps doing it, their own, their own homies. Alright,
(07:59):
so let's talk about the classifications of forensic photos. There's
uh three of them, and at first it sounds like
no dub. But it's a little more interesting than that.
You've got your overview, you've got your mid range, you
got your close up. You think overview, you think, yeah,
they just take the big wide shot. They take a
lot more than that. They take pictures of the outside
of the buildings. They take a pictures entrances and exits.
(08:21):
They take pictures of uh, let's say it's there's a
crowd of folks standing around that police tape. You know
in the movies they always return to the scene of
the crime. You can pick them out of that crowd.
So they take pictures of the crowd. Not only that,
if the police are canvassing the crowd and some people
wander off or whatever, you can use that to go
find those people who may be potential witnesses. Uh. They
(08:42):
will take pictures of uh, not just the room, but
every angle of the room, the corners of the room, um,
the different rooms in Like let's say the murder occurred
in a bedroom. They're not just gonna stick to the bedroom.
They're gonna take pictures of all the rooms in the
house because they may say, uh, look at the picture.
The phone was off the hook in the other room,
(09:03):
so let's go lift fingerprints off the phone handle, or
trace the last call that was made something like that
coming from upstairs. It's inside the house. So that's the overview.
That's the overview, right, and that that pretty much is like, Okay,
here's the boring part, and then the oh my god,
(09:23):
now we're at the mid mid range. Right. Yeah, that's
when you use zoom in a bit on some of
the gruesome aspects of the crime. I've told you before.
I think I've mentioned it that I've seen like some
some crime scene photography that's really like oh, Dian the Woods, No,
thank you, Yeah, not for you know, Kurt Cobain. People
are always trying to find that photo his his wouldn't
(09:44):
the crime scene but his death scene. Or was it
that's right Courtney or who's that investigative turnalist that tried
depending on her I know there's a documentary. Yeah it
was that guy, Nick somethmer other Nick Cage, Nick Cave,
Nick Love, No, none of those people, Nick and Jessica. Yes,
that's what it was. Uh So the mid range shots
(10:06):
are pieces of evidence, um, like the murder weapon if
it's there, Um, but you're not you know, you're gonna
do some different variations. You're gonna zoom in on the
murder weapon obviously, but you also want to show it
in relation to where it is on the scene, like
it was laying uh you know, on the floor three
ft from the body. Yes, and now you can take
it away now right. Um, After the mid range we
(10:28):
come to the close up, and the close up is
going to be like maybe the murder instrument, um, a
tattoo on the victim's body, UM scar serial number. If
somebody used like a DVD player to beat somebody else
to death with it, you got to catalog the murder
weapon that kind of thing. Good point, um, So that
(10:49):
this is what the close ups useful for. Uh. And
then when you're taking it a close up photo, you
take one with like an instrument, like a rule or
something like that to provide scae all. Yeah, and then
you also take a duplicate photo of the same photo
without the measuring device. So the defense can't be like, oh,
well that ruler was actually covering up, you know, in
(11:11):
controvertible evidence that my client was not guilty, covering up
the name of the killer. Yeah, so it's important to
take two, you're right. Uh. They also have to be
really detailed with the photolog um has all the details.
Nowadays with digital photography, you have you know, you can
have the sequence of photo number, the date and time,
(11:31):
all that like already stamped on. But back in the day,
they would you know, use a log and a book
to record all this. Um. The filters that they use, Like, hey,
I used to daylight filter out here because I had
to but it's you know, it can't be tainted. So
you gotta let people know that that was a filter use.
You gotta be honest, You gotta be very honest, Chuck.
We also mentioned that you, um, there's a standard operating
(11:54):
procedure that you have to come up with. One of
the big one of the big aspects that lens readents
to crime scene photography is that sensationalism has been pulled
completely out of it has no place in it whatsoever. Um.
And one of the ways that you ensure that you
your photographers aren't being sensational or can't even be accused
(12:15):
of being sensational, is by coming up with the standard
operating procedure and method that you are are going to
employ when taking photographs. Right, So you have to have
things like maximum depth of field, which is the amount
of a photograph that's crisp and clearing in focus. Right.
You can't be all already and do one of those
like a portrait things where the background is blurry might
(12:36):
look neat if you're telling the cadaver to make love
to the camera, you're you're you're on the wrong path
with your crime scene photography. Yeah, the last thing you
want is for your boss to say, boy, these are
really sensational. Yes, because why you might say, well, thanks,
that's not what you're looking for, not at all. You
don't want art school calling you. So other technical specs
that should make up this UM photo taking procedure right are, UM,
(13:02):
you want to make sure that the photos as sharp
sharp as possible, UM, and that none of the devices
that you're using to measure are blocking anything. You don't
want to get creative with how you take the photo.
You don't want to cover up anything, leave anything out.
You can't let anything be blurry. That's important, that kind
of thing, right, And that's just part of this larger
(13:22):
standard standard operating procedure. Correct. Yeah, and that's for for
the picture taken itself, But the procedure also includes afterward. UM,
you have to have a standard chain of custody UM
image security because you know, Dexter leads a crime scene
with the camera and what's he gonna do with it? Right?
Or if he hands it to UM? What's the one guy? Yeah,
(13:46):
the funny comic relief. Yeah, have you seen his trucks?
I couldn't believe it he hands it to UM. I
don't want to get any emails, Chuck, we'll look it up.
He hands it to Macusa macause, and um, Macusa should
sign something that says, I took custody of this flash drive,
(14:07):
um from Dexter Morgan, and my name is MARCUSA exactly,
and then he'll make some vague sexual joke and everyone
will laugh at home. You have to preserve that original
digital image. So let's say you want to blow it
up and change the contrast a bit to to highlight something.
That's all great, that's all groovy, but you have to
(14:29):
note that you've done that, and you have to have
the original in its original form and format as whatever.
If it's a jpeg, you can't make it a gift
or a gift, certainly not an animated gift that's grousing
would be weird. Uh. There are a lot of times
there's image security software to make sure everything stays like
it should. You have to store it in uh, you know,
(14:51):
like on a hard drive. You have to backups of it, right,
just gotta be really, really really detailed. It's not like
your vacation photos. No, anytime you do anything to manipulate
that photo, you should log it and be again, you
have to be just be completely honest. You shouldn't have
any dog in the fight. No, of course not. Your
just your job is to document the scene and and
(15:12):
extract or prevent any emotion from coming into it as
much as possible. Yeah, exactly right. Let's talk about the kit,
which isn't super exciting. But you're gonna have your camera,
maybe a couple. Yeah, if you're into that, you're gonna
have a variety of lenses that will work for different
crime scenes. You're gonna have some filters if you need them.
(15:33):
You want your wide angle lens, you want your mid range.
You want if you want a zoom in on something
and you don't want to get down on the floor,
you might want a zoom lens. Yeah, be a good
IDEA light meter make sure everything looks great. So, Chuck,
what is the um? I noticed? The great card? Was
the great card? I saw it works with the light meter. Yeah.
I think you use that to to to set your meter.
(15:54):
Is that right? Like you use the like that's your
like your meter understands this is the g card. It's
it's the zero value. I think so. I think it's
sort of like white balancing a video camera. Okay, I
might I might have that wrong though, Um, and generally
you're gonna use color unless uh they said things like
(16:15):
latent fingerprints sometimes or show up better in black and white. Yes,
but we mentioned video. Since uh I said that word, yeah,
I think, um, it's become a lot more prevalent since
the advent of the video camera, let's say so, and
especially nowadays. You know the uh SLRs that shoot great
(16:36):
high deaf video. I've seen she can have all in
one package here. You don't have to have a couple
of cameras you have to tote around. So SLR a
brand name. No, okay, it's uh single lens reflex. I
believe that's a guess, all right, Josh. Videotape You know
a lot about photography, don't you. My dad's a big
(16:56):
shutter bug. I grew up with it. Videotape is used
a lot nowadays, and that can do a lot of
things that regular SLR photography cannot, Like show you you
can literally walk a jury through a crime scene and
show relationships to uh, you know, the body or the
(17:16):
uh the weapons. Like a picture is one thing. It's
worth a thousand words at least, But twenty four frames
per second that's worth right, I would say, yes. So
videos has used a lot of times, and they say
if there's video that they actually video before they take
the still photographs and the c s. I guys are
(17:36):
out there going come on, you're gonna draw a picture too. Well,
that's what they used to do originally, they would draw.
I was that with that one. Yeah, they would sketch
the crime scene. But of course, I mean, it doesn't
get a lot more subjective than sketches. So when photography
came along, people see he's done it pretty quick. When
the video camera came along, people were like, oh, this
(17:59):
is just is good, if not better, let's accompany the two.
But you need both. Uh. They they use infrared films
sometimes if it's dark and you need to get a
blood stain, that's when you're you're super fancy. I think
what else? Oh, I'll tell you. The thing I thought
was cool was the if you video blood spatter on
(18:22):
a wall. Let's say someone's brains are blown out over
a wall, you could potentially you could potentially photograph that,
put a yard stick in there as as a as
a frame of reference, and then years later or days later,
you can uh make a slide. You know, if it's
just if if if it's a slide, then you can
project that onto the wall, even onto that wall actual size,
(18:47):
so you can kind of recreate it as it was
before it got all cleaned up, projected right there on
the wall. It was really kind of like Princess Leiah. Uh. Yeah,
I guess so when when R two D two Uh
is that what you're talking about, or when archie Chi
was projecting her as a hologram. Yeah, although nothing like that. Um,
(19:08):
you want to talk about Wegi. Yeah, Wegi's one cool cat.
What's this deal? Wegi is uh the I guess pseudonym
of a guy named Arthur Fellig And he was big
from the twenties to you, I think the fifties. He
was an independent photographer photojournalist and uh he had a
special knack for uh sniffing out crime scenes, so much
(19:33):
so that someone once complimented him that he had the
sense of a Weigi board to predict when a crime
was gonna occur, so we would be in the right
place at the right time to like really get all
the photography he wanted out of it, right, how do
you do that? Well? He lived in a shack behind
the police station in Manhattan, and he had a police scanner.
Um and yeah, he basically didn't have a life, so
(19:55):
he just sat around listening to the police scanner and
he would just head on over. He also had a
pretty extensive network of informants, um, cops, robbers, bar keeps,
you know, prostitutes whoever. I wonder if they based uh
An l A confidential was that Danny DeVito was the
Was he the photographer? Now? I think this guy was
(20:16):
way more put together than Danny DeVito's character was. Yeah.
He um, although it would make sense because Weigi, which
he adopted that name, but he spelled it phonetically W
E G E. Right. Um. He did travel to l
A and uh he created a spread called Naked City
and it became the the um movie, The Naked City. Right.
(20:41):
But he was just this famous crime scene photographer. One
of the things that he became famous for was not
just the crime scene any smoke. Could you know, shoot
a dead body, and that was something um, but he
would often turn and just start taking photos like close
ups of the crowd in their prairie in ecstasy, you know,
(21:02):
like with these crazy like some would be laughing and
others would be smiling and some would be crying, and
it was just like it would capture the range of emotion.
And he has one very famous photograph called Their First
Murder that was taken in Williamsburg, which is hipster central
now in Brooklyn Um and they it's just this group
of people of all ages. They all seem to be white,
(21:23):
but they're all just in this weird pose, like almost
writhing in ecstasy, um on the scene of a murder,
like before the cops have even got there. Like that
crowd that crowds around. Oh yeah, look at him, like
Ray Ray Bradberry wrote about them, the crowd. They would
be there on the scene when an accident occurred. Interesting,
it's kind of like that. But anyway, we Gie had
(21:44):
some pretty good stuff well, and that that kind of
brings up a point that crime scene photographs have been viewed.
And this is once from back in the day. I
don't think they new ones as art, but in uh,
in Hollywood, in l A. They dug up in two
thousand one a bot well, I say a box. It's
probably more than one box. A trove, a trove, a
(22:04):
treasure trove if you will, of old forensic photos, and
some of them were some of the most infamous crimes
and murders in the in the history, and black Dahlia
comes to mind. I don't know if that was in there,
but yeah, I wonder if it was in there. I'm
sure it was probably And uh, some of these negatives
were decomposing and deteriorating at this point, so they said,
(22:25):
you know, like we should preserve these because it's historical record,
and some of these are really great photographs. And so, uh,
years later they actually took it on tour in art galleries.
What was it called. I think it was called I
know Wegi did that, didn't he? Yeah, we Gi had
one in New York called the Wegi Murder is My Business?
(22:47):
He I read a quote from him. There's a pretty
cool book Chuck called um Shots in the Dark, based
on like a true TV documentary, I think, but it's
it's a lot of crimes, the photography, but it's an
explanation about crime scene photography too. But there's a quote
from from Ouiji where like gangsters in the forties and fifties,
like the big Ones, they reveled in their notoriety, but
(23:10):
it was the young punks who tried to cover up
and pretend they weren't, you know, criminals. And he would
always say to him, like, you just wait until you
make it big, you punk, then I'll take your picture.
So he's a tough guy. Really Yeah, no, I think
he's dead. He was working in the twenties to the fifties. Well,
I mean he knows how old he was. He's immortal.
(23:30):
He could be like really old. So crime scene photography,
I don't have anything else. I don't either, pretty straightforward.
If you want to see wegi's their first murder, it's
pretty interesting. Um, you should type in crime scene photography
in the search bar how stuff works dot com. This
concludes are Um dexter Lovin series Valentine Week series of
(23:51):
crime and documentation. Indeed um And since I said search bar,
that means chuck. Of course, it's time for listener mail. Yeah,
we're doing a shout out and now I say we
never do them, but we're kind of doing them more.
The only reason I'm doing this is because this, uh,
this lady has been writing me since last summer August.
(24:16):
I think, how do you really make them wait her
birthday shout out? No, she broke me in August for
for the stud's birthday, which is now. So I thought,
you know, persistance pays off. Sarah So her boyfriend, his
name is Graham Baker, and he is turning, I believe, tomorrow,
and she says she's collecting birthday greetings and he's such
(24:38):
a super fan that she thought, I think. He actually
said if I ever received anything from Josh and Chuck
would probably lose my mind. So hopefully he's going crazy
right now. And she said, here's some information about him
that you should read. He's turns twenty five on February eighth.
He's doing his Masters in Religious Studies at McMaster University
(24:58):
in Canada, Ontario, Canada, and it's going to complete his
thesis this summer. You need some encouragement, she says, So
keep on plugging away there, Graham. He's originally from Edmonton.
Josh calls Calgary as home and is in Hamiltons until summer.
That's a lot of information, she says, I live in Calgary.
Oh there's more. Is this social security number in there? Now? Uh?
(25:21):
They both listened to stuff Mom never told you and
stuff you should know on their road trips. Nice He
lived in Prague for four months to study abroad. Very cool.
He really likes Star Trek, he's really funny. And his
two favorite bands yes, Henry Clay People, Nope, the band No,
those are my two favorite bands. Um, Jimmy Cliff now
(25:43):
Wilco in the National Todd run gren Man, Todd run
gren So Graham, happy birthday, dude, and tell Sarah to
quit emailing us. This has been going on for months.
I think you can reasonably block her now. Yeah she's gone.
But um yeah, Happy birthday, Doude and thanks for listening.
Good luck with that religious studies. Happy birthday, Graham and Sarah.
(26:03):
That was very kind of you. So um, if you
have a birthday request, birthday shoutout request, don't send it.
You can send us something else though, And if you do,
go ahead and email us at stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(26:25):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House staff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(00:20):
Snap Snap snap. That was my camera impression. You could
you get your little iPhone? You could do you know
the little sound if you want to. I guess I could.
Is it this? That's your iPhone camera? My own personal rendition?
Did I introduce this yet? I have not? I'm Josh Clark.
You did? Oh? I did? You didn't say this is
stuff you should know? This is stuff you should know?
(00:42):
The podcast? Right, that's right. I have you noticed I've
started to differentiate between the podcast and the nothing else?
Oh yeah, here, let's see what we got there? You go? Yeah, So, Chuck,
had you been you know, in the act of vandalism, murder,
theft um, or had you done it gotten up and
(01:04):
left some sort of scene behind that picture would have
constituted crime scene photography. That is not my intro. Uh.
Did you notice in this article again named Alphonse Bertillon, right,
He was a nineteenth century French photographer who was credited
with um creating the concept of crime scene photography for
(01:28):
forensic police investigation. He's also credited with creating something that
any smoking gun fan will appreciate. This guy for mug shots,
like mug shots. Mug shots. Um, he created mug shots,
I should say for the purpose that they're used today
cataloging and criminal This guy with this face, with these
(01:51):
tattoos has done this crime right, or has been questioned
for this crime or whatever. It's it's a way of
documenting what a person looks like, so there's no mistaken identity.
That kind of thing. Uh. And when um Bertillon came
up with this, it was it was kind of a
lifesaver for people suspected of being criminals, or for criminals
because in France at the time, UM, you may be
(02:13):
branded with a hot iron. That's how they identified repeat offenders. Yeah,
so that was kind of a safe But Bertillon was
also very much interested in eugenics, which was the idea
that you could create a fitter, better human race by
basically sterilizing or killing people who didn't fit the idea
(02:36):
of fitness, right, epileptics, criminals, that kind of thing, uh,
And part of eugenics was based on um phrenology or
the shape of the skull, the shape of the face characteristics.
And Bertillon came up with eleven character characteristics that you
could measure drawn on ethnic lines, largely very much so
um but using calipers and other instruments, and he came
(02:58):
up with this uniform measure meant set. That's the other
reason he started doing mug shots right, And it actually
worked for a while until uh in the early turn
of the century, the last century, not this past one,
the one before UH Leavenworth Prison, a guy was using
this bertignon um measurement. They have a standard procedure by
(03:22):
them to book somebody in named William West. And this
guy who was doing the measurements, that was his job,
so he knew everybody in the prisons measurements by heart
pretty much. He was like, I have measured your face before,
and this William West is like, no, I promise you
I have not been here before. And he's like, I
don't know. Let me look. So he looks it up
(03:43):
and sees that yes, he has indeed come up with
the same exact measurements for these eleven different distinct characteristics
which Bertillon calculated to be one in about four million,
the chances of two people having the same characteristics. And
not only that, this Leavenworth forensics guy, UM finds that
(04:04):
they're attributed or cataloged with a guy by the name
of William West. Here's the thing. The guy he was
booking processing wasn't lying. The other William West was still
in prison in Leavenworth with the same eleven characteristics. So
as of that guy's processing, there were two William West
with identical facial characteristics in Leavenworth at the same time.
(04:28):
So was that the beginning of the end of mugshots
being used in that way pretty much, because from what
I understand with the characteristics, it was sort of like
he was using this proof like just look at the guy,
just look at him right, look at the face. Well,
not not only that, by studying, by creating a catalog
of people along these eleven characteristics, like how far apart
(04:49):
your eyes were, like how protruding your eyebrow, your eyebrow ridge?
Is that kind of thing? Um, you would conceivably and
we're very much doing something along the same lines with
d N today. Um, we're conceivably saying, well, this person
with this you know, pronounced eyebrow ridge is um, you know,
very much predisposed to acts of murder and violence because
(05:12):
if you, as you've seen all these other people that
we've cataloged, had this protruding eyebrow ridge and that common
characteristic shows that you're a murderer. Not to nab a criminal, no,
but it's the same point that we're at with these
DNA data bases that we've spoken about. To Chuck, let's
get back to crime scene photography, shall we. Yes, Bertillon
was the first guy to really do that, and he um,
(05:33):
he was the first guy to I mean, there's been
forensic photography, they said, since pretty much the camera's been around.
But he was the first guy to say, you know what,
let's do some different angles, and let's get some real
close ups, and let's survey the whole scene, and now
we have sort of a picture of what the whole
crime scene looks like and methodical. He was the first
(05:53):
to really apply a method to it. Before um, it
kind of grew out of newspapers printing crime scene photos
like The Guy in Road to Perdition. Um. Jude Law. Yeah,
I enjoyed that it was a good movie, but they
would they would go for the art or the shock
value of it, not necessarily the evidentiary value. So yeah,
(06:13):
it's very sensationalistic. U. Crime Scene photography is obviously very
important because evidence is transitory. Um. You clean up a
crime scene, you remove the body, lift the fingerprints, you
do all that stuff. So you need to get it
while the egg is still in the pan. As they
say that, I think you just say that so before
(06:35):
everyone else comes in and does their thing, um, the
crime scene photographer. There's a lot of pressure on on
these men and women to go in first because they've
got their c s. I guys outside saying all right,
come on, let's get this over with so we can
start analyzing it. Right. But they gotta be first because
you don't want to disrupt the scene. Yeah, and you
(06:55):
have to take your time, and you have to do
it right, and there's standard procedures that you have to
come up with very much. Um. But yeah, it's kind
of a high pressure job. It's it's a very important job.
You remember when we were talking about, UM, blood pattern
analysis just a couple of days ago, it seems it
seems like just no time at all, UM, But you
were talking about how maybe some police departments have people
(07:18):
pulling double duty with blood pattern analysis. Uh, not necessarily
so with crime scene photography. Uh, this isn't so. This
is not as much in art as a science, even
though it's something that grew out of an art um.
This this position is very valuable, so much so that
the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has its own crime scene
(07:39):
photography and videography department, and they dispatched them independently of
the police. Interesting, so there'll be two on the scene
because they found that documenting a crime scene is so
important to closing a case that they just they have
their own peeps doing it, their own, their own homies. Alright,
(07:59):
so let's talk about the classifications of forensic photos. There's
uh three of them, and at first it sounds like
no dub. But it's a little more interesting than that.
You've got your overview, you've got your mid range, you
got your close up. You think overview, you think, yeah,
they just take the big wide shot. They take a
lot more than that. They take pictures of the outside
of the buildings. They take a pictures entrances and exits.
(08:21):
They take pictures of uh, let's say it's there's a
crowd of folks standing around that police tape. You know
in the movies they always return to the scene of
the crime. You can pick them out of that crowd.
So they take pictures of the crowd. Not only that,
if the police are canvassing the crowd and some people
wander off or whatever, you can use that to go
find those people who may be potential witnesses. Uh. They
(08:42):
will take pictures of uh, not just the room, but
every angle of the room, the corners of the room, um,
the different rooms in Like let's say the murder occurred
in a bedroom. They're not just gonna stick to the bedroom.
They're gonna take pictures of all the rooms in the
house because they may say, uh, look at the picture.
The phone was off the hook in the other room,
(09:03):
so let's go lift fingerprints off the phone handle, or
trace the last call that was made something like that
coming from upstairs. It's inside the house. So that's the overview.
That's the overview, right, and that that pretty much is like, Okay,
here's the boring part, and then the oh my god,
(09:23):
now we're at the mid mid range. Right. Yeah, that's
when you use zoom in a bit on some of
the gruesome aspects of the crime. I've told you before.
I think I've mentioned it that I've seen like some
some crime scene photography that's really like oh, Dian the Woods, No,
thank you, Yeah, not for you know, Kurt Cobain. People
are always trying to find that photo his his wouldn't
(09:44):
the crime scene but his death scene. Or was it
that's right Courtney or who's that investigative turnalist that tried
depending on her I know there's a documentary. Yeah it
was that guy, Nick somethmer other Nick Cage, Nick Cave,
Nick Love, No, none of those people, Nick and Jessica. Yes,
that's what it was. Uh So the mid range shots
(10:06):
are pieces of evidence, um, like the murder weapon if
it's there, Um, but you're not you know, you're gonna
do some different variations. You're gonna zoom in on the
murder weapon obviously, but you also want to show it
in relation to where it is on the scene, like
it was laying uh you know, on the floor three
ft from the body. Yes, and now you can take
it away now right. Um, After the mid range we
(10:28):
come to the close up, and the close up is
going to be like maybe the murder instrument, um, a
tattoo on the victim's body, UM scar serial number. If
somebody used like a DVD player to beat somebody else
to death with it, you got to catalog the murder
weapon that kind of thing. Good point, um, So that
(10:49):
this is what the close ups useful for. Uh. And
then when you're taking it a close up photo, you
take one with like an instrument, like a rule or
something like that to provide scae all. Yeah, and then
you also take a duplicate photo of the same photo
without the measuring device. So the defense can't be like, oh,
well that ruler was actually covering up, you know, in
(11:11):
controvertible evidence that my client was not guilty, covering up
the name of the killer. Yeah, so it's important to
take two, you're right. Uh. They also have to be
really detailed with the photolog um has all the details.
Nowadays with digital photography, you have you know, you can
have the sequence of photo number, the date and time,
(11:31):
all that like already stamped on. But back in the day,
they would you know, use a log and a book
to record all this. Um. The filters that they use, Like, hey,
I used to daylight filter out here because I had
to but it's you know, it can't be tainted. So
you gotta let people know that that was a filter use.
You gotta be honest, You gotta be very honest, Chuck.
We also mentioned that you, um, there's a standard operating
(11:54):
procedure that you have to come up with. One of
the big one of the big aspects that lens readents
to crime scene photography is that sensationalism has been pulled
completely out of it has no place in it whatsoever. Um.
And one of the ways that you ensure that you
your photographers aren't being sensational or can't even be accused
(12:15):
of being sensational, is by coming up with the standard
operating procedure and method that you are are going to
employ when taking photographs. Right, So you have to have
things like maximum depth of field, which is the amount
of a photograph that's crisp and clearing in focus. Right.
You can't be all already and do one of those
like a portrait things where the background is blurry might
(12:36):
look neat if you're telling the cadaver to make love
to the camera, you're you're you're on the wrong path
with your crime scene photography. Yeah, the last thing you
want is for your boss to say, boy, these are
really sensational. Yes, because why you might say, well, thanks,
that's not what you're looking for, not at all. You
don't want art school calling you. So other technical specs
that should make up this UM photo taking procedure right are, UM,
(13:02):
you want to make sure that the photos as sharp
sharp as possible, UM, and that none of the devices
that you're using to measure are blocking anything. You don't
want to get creative with how you take the photo.
You don't want to cover up anything, leave anything out.
You can't let anything be blurry. That's important, that kind
of thing, right, And that's just part of this larger
(13:22):
standard standard operating procedure. Correct. Yeah, and that's for for
the picture taken itself, But the procedure also includes afterward. UM,
you have to have a standard chain of custody UM
image security because you know, Dexter leads a crime scene
with the camera and what's he gonna do with it? Right?
Or if he hands it to UM? What's the one guy? Yeah,
(13:46):
the funny comic relief. Yeah, have you seen his trucks?
I couldn't believe it he hands it to UM. I
don't want to get any emails, Chuck, we'll look it up.
He hands it to Macusa macause, and um, Macusa should
sign something that says, I took custody of this flash drive,
(14:07):
um from Dexter Morgan, and my name is MARCUSA exactly,
and then he'll make some vague sexual joke and everyone
will laugh at home. You have to preserve that original
digital image. So let's say you want to blow it
up and change the contrast a bit to to highlight something.
That's all great, that's all groovy, but you have to
(14:29):
note that you've done that, and you have to have
the original in its original form and format as whatever.
If it's a jpeg, you can't make it a gift
or a gift, certainly not an animated gift that's grousing
would be weird. Uh. There are a lot of times
there's image security software to make sure everything stays like
it should. You have to store it in uh, you know,
(14:51):
like on a hard drive. You have to backups of it, right,
just gotta be really, really really detailed. It's not like
your vacation photos. No, anytime you do anything to manipulate
that photo, you should log it and be again, you
have to be just be completely honest. You shouldn't have
any dog in the fight. No, of course not. Your
just your job is to document the scene and and
(15:12):
extract or prevent any emotion from coming into it as
much as possible. Yeah, exactly right. Let's talk about the kit,
which isn't super exciting. But you're gonna have your camera,
maybe a couple. Yeah, if you're into that, you're gonna
have a variety of lenses that will work for different
crime scenes. You're gonna have some filters if you need them.
(15:33):
You want your wide angle lens, you want your mid range.
You want if you want a zoom in on something
and you don't want to get down on the floor,
you might want a zoom lens. Yeah, be a good
IDEA light meter make sure everything looks great. So, Chuck,
what is the um? I noticed? The great card? Was
the great card? I saw it works with the light meter. Yeah.
I think you use that to to to set your meter.
(15:54):
Is that right? Like you use the like that's your
like your meter understands this is the g card. It's
it's the zero value. I think so. I think it's
sort of like white balancing a video camera. Okay, I
might I might have that wrong though, Um, and generally
you're gonna use color unless uh they said things like
(16:15):
latent fingerprints sometimes or show up better in black and white. Yes,
but we mentioned video. Since uh I said that word, yeah,
I think, um, it's become a lot more prevalent since
the advent of the video camera, let's say so, and
especially nowadays. You know the uh SLRs that shoot great
(16:36):
high deaf video. I've seen she can have all in
one package here. You don't have to have a couple
of cameras you have to tote around. So SLR a
brand name. No, okay, it's uh single lens reflex. I
believe that's a guess, all right, Josh. Videotape You know
a lot about photography, don't you. My dad's a big
(16:56):
shutter bug. I grew up with it. Videotape is used
a lot nowadays, and that can do a lot of
things that regular SLR photography cannot, Like show you you
can literally walk a jury through a crime scene and
show relationships to uh, you know, the body or the
(17:16):
uh the weapons. Like a picture is one thing. It's
worth a thousand words at least, But twenty four frames
per second that's worth right, I would say, yes. So
videos has used a lot of times, and they say
if there's video that they actually video before they take
the still photographs and the c s. I guys are
(17:36):
out there going come on, you're gonna draw a picture too. Well,
that's what they used to do originally, they would draw.
I was that with that one. Yeah, they would sketch
the crime scene. But of course, I mean, it doesn't
get a lot more subjective than sketches. So when photography
came along, people see he's done it pretty quick. When
the video camera came along, people were like, oh, this
(17:59):
is just is good, if not better, let's accompany the two.
But you need both. Uh. They they use infrared films
sometimes if it's dark and you need to get a
blood stain, that's when you're you're super fancy. I think
what else? Oh, I'll tell you. The thing I thought
was cool was the if you video blood spatter on
(18:22):
a wall. Let's say someone's brains are blown out over
a wall, you could potentially you could potentially photograph that,
put a yard stick in there as as a as
a frame of reference, and then years later or days later,
you can uh make a slide. You know, if it's
just if if if it's a slide, then you can
project that onto the wall, even onto that wall actual size,
(18:47):
so you can kind of recreate it as it was
before it got all cleaned up, projected right there on
the wall. It was really kind of like Princess Leiah. Uh. Yeah,
I guess so when when R two D two Uh
is that what you're talking about, or when archie Chi
was projecting her as a hologram. Yeah, although nothing like that. Um,
(19:08):
you want to talk about Wegi. Yeah, Wegi's one cool cat.
What's this deal? Wegi is uh the I guess pseudonym
of a guy named Arthur Fellig And he was big
from the twenties to you, I think the fifties. He
was an independent photographer photojournalist and uh he had a
special knack for uh sniffing out crime scenes, so much
(19:33):
so that someone once complimented him that he had the
sense of a Weigi board to predict when a crime
was gonna occur, so we would be in the right
place at the right time to like really get all
the photography he wanted out of it, right, how do
you do that? Well? He lived in a shack behind
the police station in Manhattan, and he had a police scanner.
Um and yeah, he basically didn't have a life, so
(19:55):
he just sat around listening to the police scanner and
he would just head on over. He also had a
pretty extensive network of informants, um, cops, robbers, bar keeps,
you know, prostitutes whoever. I wonder if they based uh
An l A confidential was that Danny DeVito was the
Was he the photographer? Now? I think this guy was
(20:16):
way more put together than Danny DeVito's character was. Yeah.
He um, although it would make sense because Weigi, which
he adopted that name, but he spelled it phonetically W
E G E. Right. Um. He did travel to l
A and uh he created a spread called Naked City
and it became the the um movie, The Naked City. Right.
(20:41):
But he was just this famous crime scene photographer. One
of the things that he became famous for was not
just the crime scene any smoke. Could you know, shoot
a dead body, and that was something um, but he
would often turn and just start taking photos like close
ups of the crowd in their prairie in ecstasy, you know,
(21:02):
like with these crazy like some would be laughing and
others would be smiling and some would be crying, and
it was just like it would capture the range of emotion.
And he has one very famous photograph called Their First
Murder that was taken in Williamsburg, which is hipster central
now in Brooklyn Um and they it's just this group
of people of all ages. They all seem to be white,
(21:23):
but they're all just in this weird pose, like almost
writhing in ecstasy, um on the scene of a murder,
like before the cops have even got there. Like that
crowd that crowds around. Oh yeah, look at him, like
Ray Ray Bradberry wrote about them, the crowd. They would
be there on the scene when an accident occurred. Interesting,
it's kind of like that. But anyway, we Gie had
(21:44):
some pretty good stuff well, and that that kind of
brings up a point that crime scene photographs have been viewed.
And this is once from back in the day. I
don't think they new ones as art, but in uh,
in Hollywood, in l A. They dug up in two
thousand one a bot well, I say a box. It's
probably more than one box. A trove, a trove, a
(22:04):
treasure trove if you will, of old forensic photos, and
some of them were some of the most infamous crimes
and murders in the in the history, and black Dahlia
comes to mind. I don't know if that was in there,
but yeah, I wonder if it was in there. I'm
sure it was probably And uh, some of these negatives
were decomposing and deteriorating at this point, so they said,
(22:25):
you know, like we should preserve these because it's historical record,
and some of these are really great photographs. And so, uh,
years later they actually took it on tour in art galleries.
What was it called. I think it was called I
know Wegi did that, didn't he? Yeah, we Gi had
one in New York called the Wegi Murder is My Business?
(22:47):
He I read a quote from him. There's a pretty
cool book Chuck called um Shots in the Dark, based
on like a true TV documentary, I think, but it's
it's a lot of crimes, the photography, but it's an
explanation about crime scene photography too. But there's a quote
from from Ouiji where like gangsters in the forties and fifties,
like the big Ones, they reveled in their notoriety, but
(23:10):
it was the young punks who tried to cover up
and pretend they weren't, you know, criminals. And he would
always say to him, like, you just wait until you
make it big, you punk, then I'll take your picture.
So he's a tough guy. Really Yeah, no, I think
he's dead. He was working in the twenties to the fifties. Well,
I mean he knows how old he was. He's immortal.
(23:30):
He could be like really old. So crime scene photography,
I don't have anything else. I don't either, pretty straightforward.
If you want to see wegi's their first murder, it's
pretty interesting. Um, you should type in crime scene photography
in the search bar how stuff works dot com. This
concludes are Um dexter Lovin series Valentine Week series of
(23:51):
crime and documentation. Indeed um And since I said search bar,
that means chuck. Of course, it's time for listener mail. Yeah,
we're doing a shout out and now I say we
never do them, but we're kind of doing them more.
The only reason I'm doing this is because this, uh,
this lady has been writing me since last summer August.
(24:16):
I think, how do you really make them wait her
birthday shout out? No, she broke me in August for
for the stud's birthday, which is now. So I thought,
you know, persistance pays off. Sarah So her boyfriend, his
name is Graham Baker, and he is turning, I believe, tomorrow,
and she says she's collecting birthday greetings and he's such
(24:38):
a super fan that she thought, I think. He actually
said if I ever received anything from Josh and Chuck
would probably lose my mind. So hopefully he's going crazy
right now. And she said, here's some information about him
that you should read. He's turns twenty five on February eighth.
He's doing his Masters in Religious Studies at McMaster University
(24:58):
in Canada, Ontario, Canada, and it's going to complete his
thesis this summer. You need some encouragement, she says, So
keep on plugging away there, Graham. He's originally from Edmonton.
Josh calls Calgary as home and is in Hamiltons until summer.
That's a lot of information, she says, I live in Calgary.
Oh there's more. Is this social security number in there? Now? Uh?
(25:21):
They both listened to stuff Mom never told you and
stuff you should know on their road trips. Nice He
lived in Prague for four months to study abroad. Very cool.
He really likes Star Trek, he's really funny. And his
two favorite bands yes, Henry Clay People, Nope, the band No,
those are my two favorite bands. Um, Jimmy Cliff now
(25:43):
Wilco in the National Todd run gren Man, Todd run
gren So Graham, happy birthday, dude, and tell Sarah to
quit emailing us. This has been going on for months.
I think you can reasonably block her now. Yeah she's gone.
But um yeah, Happy birthday, Doude and thanks for listening.
Good luck with that religious studies. Happy birthday, Graham and Sarah.
(26:03):
That was very kind of you. So um, if you
have a birthday request, birthday shoutout request, don't send it.
You can send us something else though, And if you do,
go ahead and email us at stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
(26:25):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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