What I’m read­ing: Blood Trail, by C.J. Box; Royal Flush, by Rhys Bowen

I promised to share a recap of the sec­ond foren­sics work­shop I attended at Pikes Peak Writ­ers Con­fer­ence. Tom Adair (who’s going to be my guest tomor­row) set up a crime scene for us. Only ‘catch’ – the year was 1875, and we didn’t have all the fancy tools that mod­ern day crime scene inves­ti­ga­tors use. Except for the most impor­tant tool of all—our brains.

In 1875, a lot of infor­ma­tion about foren­sics existed, but there weren’t many prac­ti­tion­ers. There was some crude fin­ger­print­ing (I reported on that work­shop ear­lier; the post is at my old blog, here) as well as rudi­men­tary tests for blood.

This was another hands-on work­shop. The crime scene was a moun­tain cabin, with the vic­tim sit­ting slumped over a small table, with a gun by his hand.

We were turned loose, but first, we had to learn how to make a bindle, because today’s evidence-collection envelopes weren’t in use yet.

Con­tinue read­ing →