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How Blood Pattern Analysis Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast and Happy Valentine's Day. I'm Josh. That was
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I'm Josh Clark. Um, this is
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Speaker 1: Stuff you should know the podcast the Love Edition. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: let's talk about Valentine's Day and love. Do you want
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Speaker 1: to hear a possibly um true Valentine's Day fact so
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Speaker 1: you know where we get the concept of sending Valentine's
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Speaker 1: Day cards Hallmark. No, it was even earlier than that.
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Speaker 1: A little guy by the name of St. Valentine. Okay,
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Speaker 1: again this is uncorroborated, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
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Speaker 1: Back in the day, St. Valentine used to hang out
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Speaker 1: with the Pagan I believe Greeks maybe uh Romans, one
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Speaker 1: of the two and um who had a custom of
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Speaker 1: hooking up like picking a partner and you know that
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Speaker 1: was who you're gonna be with for the rest of
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Speaker 1: the year. Not married, all right, but like all the benefits,
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Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And um. They to consummate
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Speaker 1: that choice. They would you know, go off and hook
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Speaker 1: up like that day February same Valentine comes along and goes,
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Speaker 1: this is an importance to my god and um, soon
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Speaker 1: to be your god. So let's let's figure something else out.
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Speaker 1: How about you guys, keep picking people that you want to,
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Speaker 1: you know, be friendly with, stop the fornication, and instead
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Speaker 1: just send notes of affection to one another. Those became
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Speaker 1: as far as I know, the Valentine's Day card. I'm
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Speaker 1: sure that sounds sounds good to me, does it all right? Um?
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Speaker 1: One of the one of the great symbols of Valentine's Day, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: is the heart, which is almost invariably colored red. It's
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Speaker 1: a very cute iconography, but if you really think about it,
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Speaker 1: what you're seeing is the organ colored by our life blood.
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Speaker 1: What happens when something happens to that organ or that
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Speaker 1: life blood and it goes from inside that cute little
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Speaker 1: heart to being sprayed all over the wall at a
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Speaker 1: high speed velocity, A bunch of things happen. A lot
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Speaker 1: of tell tale symbols are left behind after the person
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Speaker 1: falls forward, killed by the love of their life. On
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Speaker 1: Valentine's Day, no less but but bud spatter, Bud spatter. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: we should say probably right now, it's not splatter. Blood spatter, which,
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Speaker 1: strangely enough, is is a an appropriate interchangeable term or
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Speaker 1: phrase for blood pattern analysis can also be called blood
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Speaker 1: spatter analysis. To you see that, Yes, it's interchangeable, or
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Speaker 1: it can be called that stuffed dexter? Does it? Could
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Speaker 1: you like Dexter? Don't you? Yeah? So do you? Okay?
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Speaker 1: So I know that I have a lot of bad
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Speaker 1: karma coming against me. Um, because let me explain why
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Speaker 1: it wasn't just a blanket statement. Um, because of the
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Speaker 1: three times now that I've ruined um six ft under
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Speaker 1: for people who haven't seen the whole thing. But I
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Speaker 1: have not seen season five. So if you're gonna talk
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Speaker 1: about Dexter, don't give me any clues as to what
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Speaker 1: goes on season five aside from the um off camera
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Speaker 1: breakup of the marriage between Michael Hall and Jennifer Carpenter.
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Speaker 1: That was very sad, but Julia Styles has nothing to
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Speaker 1: do with it. She even released a statement she said,
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Speaker 1: really she felt like she needed to Yeah, interesting, which
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Speaker 1: is not her style usually. No, she's pretty lucky. So chuck, um,
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Speaker 1: do you want to talk about dex Uh? Yeah, Well,
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Speaker 1: I mean, he's a Nina. What I couldn't find out
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Speaker 1: is he's on the show. He is a crime scene
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Speaker 1: photographer slash spatter analyst, and I couldn't find if that's
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Speaker 1: really a thing. So, Mike, Mike, I'm guessing. I'm positing
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Speaker 1: that maybe in some smaller municipalities they may do double
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Speaker 1: duty like that, But I bet in Miami they probably
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Speaker 1: have a dedicated photographer, dedicated analysts. Uh yeah, Actually, UM,
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Speaker 1: from this article, I believe it says that a lot
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Speaker 1: of people, um, a lot of people who become blood
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Speaker 1: pattern analysts UM, start out as cops or detectives or
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Speaker 1: whatever and kind of um find that they have a
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Speaker 1: pension for reading blood and they start taking courses and
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Speaker 1: workshops and become certified. So I imagine, yeah, it's possible,
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Speaker 1: especially in smaller areas, that people are pulling double or
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Speaker 1: triple duty like that. Yeah, you're probably not gonna in
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Speaker 1: some like tiny county, you're not gonna have a full
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Speaker 1: time crime scene photographer, or maybe it's some local that's
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Speaker 1: not on the But you know, we'll get to all
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Speaker 1: that because this is a two parter. Well one reason
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Speaker 1: chuck that um it's not um just an across the
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Speaker 1: board filled position or even um available position at every
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Speaker 1: every UM police department is because, as it's put in
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Speaker 1: the article, it's as much art as science right now.
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Speaker 1: It takes a lot of um interpretation and you can't
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Speaker 1: just you know, hand the stuff over to the prosecutor
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Speaker 1: and they're just like bam, case closed. There's a blood
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Speaker 1: pattern analysis. Yeah, look all the blood on the wall.
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Speaker 1: He did it. But it is used to corroborate other
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Speaker 1: evidence because as we said, it does tell a story
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Speaker 1: when um, the person who you love shoot you through
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Speaker 1: the heart and spattered your blood all over the wall
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Speaker 1: on Valentine's Day, killing you dead. Yeah. Yes, you can
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Speaker 1: tell a lot of things, UM. For instance, this list
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Speaker 1: that I'm about to the type and velocity of the
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Speaker 1: weapon you always hear about. You know this is a
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Speaker 1: blunt force thing or knife, stab, wound, gunshot. The number
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Speaker 1: of blows that this person uh could withstand before dying
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Speaker 1: and even after death. Yeah, I mean think about a
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Speaker 1: passion killing, rage killing. Uh, the handedness of the assailant
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Speaker 1: because everyone knows, you know, if I was going to
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Speaker 1: punch you in the face, to do with my right
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Speaker 1: hand hit you on your left cheek, that's how it works. Uh,
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Speaker 1: position of the victim, and like whether or not they
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Speaker 1: were moved or they flailed around on the floor for
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Speaker 1: a little while trying to trying to live, pull themselves
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Speaker 1: to safety. Perhaps um, the wound that was inflicted first,
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Speaker 1: like this was to kill wound, and all this other
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Speaker 1: stuff happened because it was just a sicko type of injury.
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Speaker 1: How long ago the body has been there, and whether
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Speaker 1: it was an immediate death or whether they bled out
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Speaker 1: over the course of hours or whether they Yeah, if
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Speaker 1: it was an immediate death in the blood just kind
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Speaker 1: of pulled where they fell, or if they're smears from
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Speaker 1: them crawling or something like that, which would indicate that
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Speaker 1: death was delayed or being dragged. Maybe there's nobody. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think that I took from this. It wasn't explicitly said,
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Speaker 1: but there's UM. You can, especially with an old crime scene, UM,
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Speaker 1: learn a lot about something where there's no other evidence
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Speaker 1: just from the blood, like UM, skeletonized blood. Yeah, blood
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Speaker 1: can actually where there was once a blood droplet, it
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Speaker 1: can skeletonize and flick away and there will be no drop,
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Speaker 1: but there will be an outline ring around where the
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Speaker 1: drop was. Right. Um. You can also uh tell from
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Speaker 1: the amount of clotting that's taken place. Apparently, once clotting starts,
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Speaker 1: you know that, um, it's been at least fifteen minutes,
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Speaker 1: which probably isn't that helpful, but it's been at least
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Speaker 1: fifteen minutes since the blood exited the body. So like
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Speaker 1: we didn't come up on the person died more than
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Speaker 1: fifteen minutes ago, we can say that, um. And then
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Speaker 1: but if some stuffs more clotted than others, you can
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Speaker 1: tell that, um, the attack took place over a period
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Speaker 1: of time. Sure, and we talked about in crimes can
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Speaker 1: clean up obviously, how it can harden, brain can harden
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Speaker 1: on walls. So it's not just blood. They're looking at
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Speaker 1: all sorts of bone fragments and pieces of whatever that's
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Speaker 1: in you that is no longer in you. But as
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Speaker 1: we'll see, just the presence of of say brain and
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Speaker 1: skull fragments UM indicates a head wound. It does you're
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Speaker 1: all on your way to being certified. UM. And it
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Speaker 1: also usually indicates you know, probably what type of weapons
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Speaker 1: we'll see later. Right. Uh. The cool thing about blood, though, Josh,
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Speaker 1: is that it's very predictable. It's very cohesive, has a
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Speaker 1: lot of surface tensions, so the molecules like buying really tight,
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Speaker 1: so it's always a little round sphere until it hits something.
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Speaker 1: And when it hits something, it's really predictable what happens,
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Speaker 1: like you can read it and pretty much be able
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Speaker 1: to tell things that will get into like angle and
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Speaker 1: velocity and stuff like that with some certainty, so much
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Speaker 1: that they use in court. Yes, they do to put
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Speaker 1: people in the pokey sometimes unfairly. We will see that too.
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Speaker 1: Should we talk about the types of spatter? This is
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Speaker 1: my favorite part. The three types of spatter hit it?
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Speaker 1: Then okay, well there's low velocity, medium velocity, and high velocity, right,
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Speaker 1: and that sounds pretty stupid, but there's um the different
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Speaker 1: characteristics of each type of velocity group. Right. Um. So
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Speaker 1: you know when when blood moves, like you said, it
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Speaker 1: follows like predictable patterns. Um. Gravity, force, surface tension keeps
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Speaker 1: it together. Um. And for example, say how high up
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Speaker 1: a blood drop drips from is going to determine how
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Speaker 1: spread out that drop is, sure, because it has more
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Speaker 1: time to accelerate and a greater force when it hits
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Speaker 1: the ground. Then if it's you know, an inch or
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Speaker 1: two off of the ground. So that's a pretty good
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Speaker 1: example of a low spatter velocity of blood drip, right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Like I've been stabbed and I'm laying on my couch
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Speaker 1: with my arm dangling off and it's just dripping off
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Speaker 1: my fingertip twelve inches to the carpet below. That's great.
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Speaker 1: The the force that's acting on this low velocity blood
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Speaker 1: spatter is gravity, nothing else, right. Um. They usually come
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Speaker 1: from stab wounds, like you said. Uh. And then some
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Speaker 1: of the properties of a of a low velocity blood spatter, Um,
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Speaker 1: the force of impact is less than five ft per second,
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Speaker 1: not much. That's not much. Um, that's like a blood drop, right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: between usually between four and eight millimeters. That's about the
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Speaker 1: size you're gonna get with a low veloci And like
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Speaker 1: you said, um, it's it's you've been stabbed and you're
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Speaker 1: laying there. So most of the low velocity blood spatters,
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Speaker 1: uh come about after an attack, after the injury has
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Speaker 1: been sustained. Right, It's not sprayed all over the wall. Right.
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Speaker 1: So stabbing is a pretty good Usually it's stabbing is
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Speaker 1: low velocity or vice versa. Um, and uh. One type
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Speaker 1: of low velocity blood spatter from stabbing is called a
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Speaker 1: passive spatter. That's after you've been stabbed and you're walking
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Speaker 1: around and you're basically leaving a dripping blood trail. Ye,
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Speaker 1: should we at this point say that this might be
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Speaker 1: a little gruesome? It's too late. I think it's a
10:57
Speaker 1: little late. A right, I guess we could go to
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Speaker 1: the trouble went back and inserting it. But I predict,
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Speaker 1: hold on, I predict we will not. We will not.
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Speaker 1: So let's just say that now you can turn it
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Speaker 1: off at this point if you have already, if you're
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Speaker 1: a little creeped out by blood, which I am, Are
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Speaker 1: you really? Yeah? I mean not you picked these? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: But I mean it doesn't mean we shouldn't cover it.
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Speaker 1: I'm not like, I don't have a true phobia, but
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Speaker 1: I mean, who likes seeing large amounts of blood and
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Speaker 1: that bright, bright red white surfaces? It's have you ever
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Speaker 1: passed out at the side of blood? No? No No, it's
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Speaker 1: not that bad. I had a roommate in college named
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Speaker 1: John Johnson real name, who was shucking oysters down in
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Speaker 1: Florida when we were down at the beach once and uh,
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Speaker 1: he shucked the meat of the palm of his hand
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Speaker 1: and looked at it, and none of us knew that
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Speaker 1: he was afraid of his own blood and just fell
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Speaker 1: right over. And he was a big boy, so he
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Speaker 1: made quite a clamor he he came to and you know,
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Speaker 1: it was okay after that, but he fainted dead away
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Speaker 1: at the sight of his own blood. Well, I'm I
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Speaker 1: I mean, I've never seen something really, really, really gruesome.
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Speaker 1: So have you never seen pictures? Yeah? I don't like
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Speaker 1: that stuff. I don't either, but um, yeah, I'm not
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Speaker 1: into it, but people are and we'll get to that too.
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Speaker 1: Medium velocity is next, and that has a force from
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Speaker 1: five to one ft per second, diameter no more than
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Speaker 1: formula millimeters usually, and that can be caused by a
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Speaker 1: blunt object or I love this line, like a baseball
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Speaker 1: bat or an intense beating with a fist. You've gotta
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Speaker 1: be a tough guy, dude. If you're If you can
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Speaker 1: have the same impact as a baseball bat with your fist,
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Speaker 1: then you're either doing something right or wrong, or you
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Speaker 1: are you're using breath knuckles. Yeah, that's true. So that
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Speaker 1: could also be from a stabbing. Actually, um, and in
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Speaker 1: this case, if you damage an artery, something can happen
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Speaker 1: called projected blood, and that means you're laying there and
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Speaker 1: as long as your heart's beating, it's really pumping that
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Speaker 1: blood out and it can project in a very distinctive pattern. Evidently. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I mean like if you if you ever see somebody
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Speaker 1: who's um carotid artery has been punctured and they have
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Speaker 1: their hand there, it's just like spewing from between their fingers.
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Speaker 1: It's projected blood. That's medium velocity, which can be compared
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Speaker 1: to a like, um, a good squirt gun. What are
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Speaker 1: those ones called supersuckers, like that kind of spray, um,
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Speaker 1: And it's not just the heart that's projecting it. And
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Speaker 1: that's a that's a good example of media velocity, the
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Speaker 1: heart pumping the blood and projecting it out of the body. Right. Um.
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Speaker 1: Another medium velocity blood spatter is let's say, um, you're
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Speaker 1: beating somebody with a lead pipe when you're drawing back
13:38
Speaker 1: again to exactly that's what I thought of too. I
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Speaker 1: thought about that, Um, when you're drawing back for another blow,
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Speaker 1: you're you're whipping the blood off of the lead pipe
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Speaker 1: after that first blow. So that's medium medium velocity, which
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Speaker 1: you said is about uh five percent. Yeah, okay, So
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Speaker 1: then you have high velocity, which is pretty much a
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Speaker 1: gunshot wound, and that's more than a hundred feet per second.
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Speaker 1: That's when blood is really hauling. You've got tiny little
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Speaker 1: sprays on the wall or wherever, and that's the one
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Speaker 1: where you're gonna find like tissue and bone usually along
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Speaker 1: with the blood. Chances are um less than one millimeter
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Speaker 1: in diameter, and you can either have you can have
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Speaker 1: front spatters, back spatters or both. If the bullet goes
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Speaker 1: through you, you're gonna have both. Yeah, and then exit one. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I think about it like anytime you see somebody get shot,
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Speaker 1: like the blood almost doesn't spatter, like you'll just start
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Speaker 1: soaking the shirt or something like that and don't look behind. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you look behind and all of a sudden, there's a
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Speaker 1: huge hole because of cavitatione full metal jacket comes to mind.
14:48
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. So you have seen grewsome things in the movie.
14:55
Speaker 1: What is your major mouth function? Uh? And my favorite
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Speaker 1: thing in this on this page was the bit about
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Speaker 1: internal muzzle staining and stippling. Sick stuff, but pretty awesome too.
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Speaker 1: Yeah if basically and well, I guess it could happen
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Speaker 1: in any kind of gunshot that's close. But I think
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Speaker 1: of an execution style murder, like when the mobster says,
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Speaker 1: we need to whack Jimmy two ft. I guess two
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Speaker 1: ft would be normal. But yeah, he's got he's the
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Speaker 1: most nondescript gangster of all time exactly which one again? Um,
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Speaker 1: So they would put the gun like up to his head,
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Speaker 1: and in that case, the skin, if there's still a body,
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Speaker 1: can have burns from the gunpowder, and the inside of
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Speaker 1: the muzzle, because of the cooling of the explosive gas used,
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Speaker 1: can actually suck blood back inside of the gun. Yeah,
15:44
Speaker 1: the spray that fine myth. So if you're lucky enough
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Speaker 1: to get ahold of that gun, they can swab the
15:48
Speaker 1: inside and like this is Jimmy two feets blood on
15:51
Speaker 1: the inside of your muzzle here, buddy, that's how you
15:53
Speaker 1: just throw it in the East river. Yeah, or use
15:55
Speaker 1: the old pillow method. Don't don't be cheap, right, Wow,
15:59
Speaker 1: I just gave advice to murderers. Yeah, that's weird. I
16:03
Speaker 1: guess we did. I've never done that before. Uh. The
16:06
Speaker 1: other thing, I'm sure you have it. The other thing
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Speaker 1: that they can look for is, uh, you got to
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Speaker 1: use brass knuckles is a void and avoid is where
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Speaker 1: let's say I were to kill somebody and the blood
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Speaker 1: is spraying on me and the wall behind me. That
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Speaker 1: will be uh, you're gonna leave a handsome silhouette. Yeah,
16:25
Speaker 1: not an outline of a body like a cartoon. But
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Speaker 1: there will be avoid there where they said, you know,
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Speaker 1: something or somebody got in the way of the blood spatter.
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Speaker 1: Don't find me that shirt, which is now in a trash.
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Speaker 1: Can find me that last chance garage hat covered in blood,
16:40
Speaker 1: that'd be bad news. I love that hat, So Chuck,
16:43
Speaker 1: you've seen Dexter. We talked about this, right, see them all? Yeah,
16:47
Speaker 1: I have to except for season five, right, oh Dexter.
16:52
Speaker 1: I thought you meant like all crime. Oh no, no,
16:54
Speaker 1: I've seen each episode. Sorry, Um, well, surely you've seen
16:58
Speaker 1: then at least I know for a fact. And at
17:00
Speaker 1: least one episode he's messing with like these red strings
17:04
Speaker 1: in the room. That's when the art department really gets involved. Yeah,
17:08
Speaker 1: so this you can you can imagine. Check this is
17:10
Speaker 1: a very painstaking process, each each of these lines, not
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Speaker 1: just for the art department, but this happens in real life.
17:17
Speaker 1: It's it's a method of figuring out the angle of um,
17:22
Speaker 1: the path of blood. Yeah, I thought this might be outdated,
17:25
Speaker 1: but they still use it sometimes they do. Um. Well,
17:28
Speaker 1: let's there was something that the article I thought left out,
17:31
Speaker 1: and it was the importance of determining the angle. It
17:35
Speaker 1: just went into how we figure out angles. Um. But
17:39
Speaker 1: there's a lot of import in figuring out what angle
17:43
Speaker 1: these this blood spray travel traveled, right, Yeah, because it
17:48
Speaker 1: will tell you a lot of times. You know that
17:50
Speaker 1: the person who fired the weapon was probably taller than
17:53
Speaker 1: six ft because the gun was at a certain level,
17:55
Speaker 1: and so was it a man? Was it likely a man?
17:58
Speaker 1: Was it likely a woman based on the height? Right? Um,
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Speaker 1: the if if it's a downward angle, then that might
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Speaker 1: corroborate the idea that this person was killed execution style,
18:08
Speaker 1: which juries like to hear about if that's going on,
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Speaker 1: because that's like get on your knees type of thing. Usually, Yeah,
18:12
Speaker 1: that's pretty cold blooded. Um. If somebody's pleading self defense
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Speaker 1: and said they were on the floor, an upward angle
18:19
Speaker 1: would would corroborate that and might you know, get them
18:22
Speaker 1: off in their self defense plea. Um. There's a lot
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Speaker 1: of reasons why figuring out the angle is very important, right, agreed,
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Speaker 1: And it's also probably the most scientific of um. Blood
18:34
Speaker 1: pattern analysis math heavy, triggeronometry heavy. Yeah, we tried, we
18:39
Speaker 1: should say, we tried to find a math heavy and
18:41
Speaker 1: I made the mistake of emailing our editorial department to
18:44
Speaker 1: get someone to describe it. And I thought, we're all
18:48
Speaker 1: half hearted attempt That's why we're writers. So we don't
18:52
Speaker 1: have to do math, especially not triggering out we do
18:54
Speaker 1: now though I think I have this lift, but it's
18:56
Speaker 1: really not that hard. Actually, once I reread anytime. Let's
18:59
Speaker 1: talk about the strings for first, So it is you do? Uh?
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Speaker 1: You do? They do use these strings, elastic strings. Each
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Speaker 1: one represents a drop of blood. So if you have
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Speaker 1: a lot of drops of blood, you're gonna have a
19:10
Speaker 1: lot of strings. It's gonna take a while, right, um.
19:14
Speaker 1: But you you create a you you find a level,
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Speaker 1: right like you create a level point. You start running
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Speaker 1: strings through the level point from the blood to you know,
19:26
Speaker 1: somewhere else in space, the wall or ceiling, and then
19:29
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, after you start doing a few
19:31
Speaker 1: of these strings, you're gonna find that they all come
19:33
Speaker 1: together at a certain point. And that point is the
19:36
Speaker 1: area of convergence a k a. What was originally a
19:40
Speaker 1: person's head, right, and that's where all the blood came from.
19:44
Speaker 1: So you're gonna find where where, where they on the ground,
19:47
Speaker 1: where they up high. Um, basically you're creating in real
19:51
Speaker 1: life a three dimensional model of the path this blood
19:55
Speaker 1: took right and where the person was standing, where they
19:59
Speaker 1: were in relationship to the wall, all that stuff. You're
20:01
Speaker 1: probably going to figure out, um, how the person was
20:04
Speaker 1: attacked from what side, that kind of thing. So that's
20:06
Speaker 1: it's it's very important and that's the old school, really
20:10
Speaker 1: methodical way to do it, right. Yeah, you're gonna explain
20:12
Speaker 1: the trigonomic This is for college boy blood pattern analysts.
20:17
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, because I'll explain the way I
20:21
Speaker 1: would do it short, okay, which I think is actually
20:25
Speaker 1: how the um how this this article describes it. Well,
20:29
Speaker 1: we'll see how Chuck would do it. Okay. So, um,
20:32
Speaker 1: when blood hits when when blood hits a surface, whether
20:37
Speaker 1: it's drywall or the floor or the ceiling or something
20:40
Speaker 1: like that, if it if it falls or travels uh
20:44
Speaker 1: straight up and down, it's it's that's a ninety degree angle. Yeah,
20:49
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a little roundrop you get a round drop.
20:51
Speaker 1: But the the stronger the angle right, the more severe
20:56
Speaker 1: the angle, the drop starts to elongate. It's like you
21:00
Speaker 1: know when you skip a stone. It's kind of like that,
21:03
Speaker 1: or when you spill any liquid, And that's another way
21:06
Speaker 1: to put it. So as it um, as it elongates,
21:09
Speaker 1: it gets longer and thinner. And what you can actually
21:13
Speaker 1: do is take the measurements of each one of these drops, right,
21:18
Speaker 1: and you take let me see if I got this chuck,
21:23
Speaker 1: you take the width right, so obviously we were writers.
21:28
Speaker 1: Anytime this comes up, you take the width and you
21:31
Speaker 1: divide it by the length, and that gives you a number. Yes,
21:35
Speaker 1: this is trigonometry by the way um and you deter
21:39
Speaker 1: you take that number and you use a calculator and
21:43
Speaker 1: you use the arc sign function. Don't ask us to
21:45
Speaker 1: really explain how to come even in the even in
21:48
Speaker 1: the article like I couldn't find it. And arc sign
21:52
Speaker 1: is the converse of sign or co sign one of
21:56
Speaker 1: those um And basically what you're finding is the angle
21:59
Speaker 1: of a right triangle by taking the opposite side and
22:04
Speaker 1: dividing it by the hypothenuse, and that will give you
22:08
Speaker 1: once you figure out the arc sign of that number
22:11
Speaker 1: the angle. And that's the college boy way of figuring
22:15
Speaker 1: out the angle that blood traveled from the area of
22:19
Speaker 1: convergence exactly. So a quick example, if you have a
22:22
Speaker 1: two millimeter wide blood stain that's four millimeters long, you
22:26
Speaker 1: divide that and you get point five, and the arc
22:28
Speaker 1: sign of that is thirty. And we figured out the
22:31
Speaker 1: arc sign of five is thirty. Point five is thirty
22:33
Speaker 1: by using that calculator, and thirty would be your angle.
22:36
Speaker 1: That means a thirty degree angle is is what you're
22:39
Speaker 1: looking at, right, So this is how Chuck would do it.
22:42
Speaker 1: Chuck would get a computer program called No More Strings.
22:47
Speaker 1: I guess they couldn't use no strings attached. That's what
22:49
Speaker 1: I would have called it. Maybe you can make a
22:51
Speaker 1: competing program maybe so, uh, no More Strings is a
22:55
Speaker 1: program that actually creates a three dimensional model and you
22:57
Speaker 1: plug in all your numbers and it does it for
22:59
Speaker 1: you with uh computer animation. And that's I want to
23:03
Speaker 1: say modern. It is modern, but they do still use
23:05
Speaker 1: a string method um and a lot of times they
23:08
Speaker 1: say that will be more convincing to a jury if
23:10
Speaker 1: they can look at animation. Then hear some nerd uh
23:15
Speaker 1: explain it? In front of them while they're falling asleep exactly. No,
23:18
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's very much the case. That's
23:20
Speaker 1: probably why that software is probably more used than either
23:23
Speaker 1: of the other two methods these days. Yeah, I would
23:26
Speaker 1: call it the jury Swayer program. That's what I would
23:29
Speaker 1: call it. I would call it the widow Maker. Alright. Uh,
23:35
Speaker 1: a little history, Yeah, we usually cover that first, but
23:38
Speaker 1: we didn't. I think this, U this is a fine article.
23:41
Speaker 1: I like the way it was paced and then laid out. Yeah,
23:43
Speaker 1: very detailed. It's been around actually since the eight nineties.
23:47
Speaker 1: They've been you know, analyzing blood stains and spatter, but
23:51
Speaker 1: they didn't really start using it until much later. The
23:56
Speaker 1: the first guy I love the name of this book,
23:59
Speaker 1: the first guy from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Poland.
24:02
Speaker 1: His name was Dr Eduard Pietrowski, wrote a book called
24:06
Speaker 1: concerning the Origin, shape, Direction, and Distribution of the blood
24:10
Speaker 1: Stains following head wounds caused by blows and imagine that
24:14
Speaker 1: was also his uh how we got the ladies alright,
24:17
Speaker 1: telling me wrote that, but showing his book to the ladies,
24:21
Speaker 1: and uh, it would be I think probably about fifty
24:24
Speaker 1: years later that they actually started using these interpretations in court.
24:28
Speaker 1: That guy laid the groundwork for how to do it
24:31
Speaker 1: at least for a beating. Yeah, for Paul Kirk. Yeah,
24:34
Speaker 1: and Paul Kirk was a physician UM in Ohio. Right. Yeah,
24:39
Speaker 1: there's a case of Samuel Shepard being prosecuted for murder
24:45
Speaker 1: and Dr kirk um figured out from blood spatter analysis
24:51
Speaker 1: where UM Samuel Shepard was when he attacked the victim. Allegedly, Well,
24:57
Speaker 1: he was prosecuted so or convicted, so that's the fact.
25:01
Speaker 1: And then it also showed that UM sam Shephard or
25:04
Speaker 1: that the victim was attacked with by a left handed person.
25:08
Speaker 1: But I'm assuming Sam Shepard was one the case bamp.
25:13
Speaker 1: Blood spatter analysis is on the map. I wonder what
25:16
Speaker 1: the jury thought about that first, because it means now
25:19
Speaker 1: it's so all over the place, you know, all about
25:21
Speaker 1: the stuff. But the first time someone like recreated a
25:24
Speaker 1: scene and said he was this tall and left handed,
25:26
Speaker 1: were they like, Wow, that's amazing or what are you
25:29
Speaker 1: talking about? I wonder probably why it's amazing, Just like
25:33
Speaker 1: once today, have you heard of the c S I effect? Yeah,
25:36
Speaker 1: we talked about it, did we. Yeah, it was a
25:39
Speaker 1: long time ago. It was between episode zero and one.
25:43
Speaker 1: But explain it because we have new listeners. Oh well,
25:46
Speaker 1: welcome new listen hey, new listeners, listen up. The c
25:49
Speaker 1: s I effect is basically juries watching things like c
25:53
Speaker 1: s I dexter all this um television ized um blood
25:58
Speaker 1: spatter analysis or forensic science and expecting that so if
26:03
Speaker 1: a prosecutor fails to deliver, that means that the case
26:06
Speaker 1: isn't all that great. Or conversely, if the prosecutor of
26:10
Speaker 1: the defense can deliver some whiz bang, no more strings,
26:14
Speaker 1: three D graphics of somebody getting shot or not getting shot,
26:18
Speaker 1: the jury is swayed because you know, that's how you
26:20
Speaker 1: weren't that's how you win a case. So, um, there's
26:23
Speaker 1: a there's an expectation that a case has to have
26:26
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. That's the c s I effect.
26:29
Speaker 1: Someone going that's not how they do it on TV,
26:32
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, or hey, that's exactly how they do it
26:34
Speaker 1: on TV probably has the reverse effect to You could
26:37
Speaker 1: also just as easily call it the Dancing with the
26:39
Speaker 1: Stars effect the American idol effect, like, well, those are
26:43
Speaker 1: different effects, but they have the same effect. Bleeding, deadening,
26:48
Speaker 1: combing down. Uh, there was a third gentleman Josh and
26:52
Speaker 1: the history of blood spatter analysis Dr Herbert McDonald, And
26:57
Speaker 1: he came around in the early set. He wasn't born
26:59
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, because I'd be pretty young to
27:01
Speaker 1: be studying this guy thinks the house or blood spatter.
27:04
Speaker 1: My brother worked on that. He came into prominence with
27:08
Speaker 1: blood spatter in nineteen seventy one and wrote a book
27:10
Speaker 1: about it, probably more updated version than the Polish Gentleman.
27:15
Speaker 1: And he started training officers in that and got together
27:19
Speaker 1: at a convention in nineteen eighty three and said to
27:23
Speaker 1: his fellow guys like, yeah, we should start a group.
27:29
Speaker 1: We just started an organization. Imagine get pretty loaded out
27:34
Speaker 1: of blood spatter I convention. And so they did. They
27:37
Speaker 1: started the International Association of blood Stained Pattern Analysis Analyst.
27:43
Speaker 1: That's a great chuck. I hope I don't get in
27:45
Speaker 1: trouble for that. I don't think you will. Yeah, he
27:47
Speaker 1: was a great guy. He didn't try to murderers earlier.
27:51
Speaker 1: Chamberlain case. Should we go ahead and hit this one? Yeah?
27:54
Speaker 1: You're a fan of Seinfeld. Are you familiar with the
27:57
Speaker 1: maybe a dink I wake out baby? Yeah? Yeah? Wow.
28:00
Speaker 1: That was Elaine doing her best Meryl Streep who actually
28:04
Speaker 1: said the ding I ate my baby, who was doing
28:07
Speaker 1: her best. Lyndy Chamberlaine, who in real life said a
28:10
Speaker 1: dingo ate my baby. Um, and is what the original
28:14
Speaker 1: line was, and I think Elaine changed it to eight.
28:18
Speaker 1: That's much more severe either way either way. In nineteen
28:21
Speaker 1: eighty in Australia, the Chamberlain family, Richard and Lyndy and
28:26
Speaker 1: their two kids, Zaria and Reagan, were camping Air's Rock
28:32
Speaker 1: another kid they had third there too. Actually they did
28:34
Speaker 1: it never gets any press, okay, it's like I want
28:36
Speaker 1: to stay out of this. Um. Well, they were camping
28:40
Speaker 1: with their three kids at Air's Rock and apparently, uh Lynda,
28:44
Speaker 1: the mom noticed a dingo near her kid's tent and
28:47
Speaker 1: went over and saw the dingo. I guess it was
28:49
Speaker 1: nighttime running off with something. She said, she couldn't see what,
28:53
Speaker 1: but when she looked at the inside the tent, she
28:56
Speaker 1: saw that the four week old or ten week old
28:58
Speaker 1: Azaria was missing and that there was blood. So there
29:02
Speaker 1: was a huge search of this park and they found
29:04
Speaker 1: a dingo, layer found the baby's clothes and now bloody
29:10
Speaker 1: and UM basically didn't buy the mom's story or the
29:16
Speaker 1: parents story that it was a dingo. They think that
29:19
Speaker 1: they thought pretty quickly off the bat that there was
29:22
Speaker 1: something fishy, something kinky, as you would say, um, and
29:26
Speaker 1: they started investigating her and kind of under the assumption
29:30
Speaker 1: that this that they framed a dingo, they'd actually murdered
29:33
Speaker 1: their baby. Yeah. That A couple of the things that
29:35
Speaker 1: happened was they found um. When they found the little jumper,
29:39
Speaker 1: it was not torn that much. It was bloody, but
29:43
Speaker 1: the snaps were closed and it looked as it had
29:46
Speaker 1: been pulled off of a body. Um. The keep key
29:50
Speaker 1: thing that happened was is the mom said, Lindy said,
29:52
Speaker 1: you know, there was a jacket, she had a jacket on,
29:54
Speaker 1: and they didn't find any jacket at all. And Uh.
29:58
Speaker 1: The other thing that happened was the Yeah, there was
30:00
Speaker 1: a witness, not a witness, but someone nearby camping that
30:03
Speaker 1: obviously when all the bruhaha started, she came over there
30:06
Speaker 1: and she saw the cops pick up the jumper and
30:10
Speaker 1: just fold it and take it away. And even she,
30:14
Speaker 1: I think at the time, thought you probably shouldn't be
30:16
Speaker 1: handling evidence like that. It's not the way to do it.
30:19
Speaker 1: And they didn't photo document the scene right now, big mistake.
30:25
Speaker 1: They basically mishandled all the evidence in the thing. They
30:28
Speaker 1: were hit cops from Central Australia handling, handling like a
30:31
Speaker 1: huge murder case or a huge death case. Yeah, so
30:34
Speaker 1: they muddled the whole thing to the point where there
30:36
Speaker 1: was just basically a lot of speculation. Uh. They had
30:39
Speaker 1: one expert testify that from the blood stain on the
30:42
Speaker 1: jumper it looked like a throat was cut, and that's
30:45
Speaker 1: pretty much what sealed her fate to be convicted. Well,
30:47
Speaker 1: what also sealed her fate, um is that she remained
30:50
Speaker 1: very cool and unemotional throughout this trial, and the jury
30:56
Speaker 1: hated her. They did not like her. They didn't understand
30:59
Speaker 1: why a woman could remain collected her baby was dead,
31:03
Speaker 1: let alone when she's being tried for it, you know,
31:06
Speaker 1: if she hadn't really killed the baby. So in addition
31:08
Speaker 1: to just blotched, botched handling, a blood pattern analysis or no,
31:13
Speaker 1: no real blood pattern analysis. Um, it was you know,
31:17
Speaker 1: her demeanor that helped convict her as well. I want
31:20
Speaker 1: to see that movie. I haven't seen it. I haven't either,
31:22
Speaker 1: I just know about it for some reason. Yeah, Well
31:25
Speaker 1: she got an Academy award nomination, but all she has
31:28
Speaker 1: to do a show up and she gets an Academy
31:29
Speaker 1: work on manation. Not necessarily true, Let's get real. No
31:34
Speaker 1: you bout this point out a stinker of Meryl streeps.
31:37
Speaker 1: I'm just saying she's played the same character a few times.
31:40
Speaker 1: Oh please, Okay, we won't go down that road. Um.
31:44
Speaker 1: What happened to the Chamberlain's well, she was convicted of murder,
31:47
Speaker 1: and he was convicted right to as well of being
31:50
Speaker 1: an accessory or some a accessory to murder. Right yes,
31:55
Speaker 1: And she was in jail, sent to prison for life.
31:58
Speaker 1: And then three years later her a guy was hiking
32:02
Speaker 1: in a similar area, felt it was death. Oh my god.
32:05
Speaker 1: And when they went and found his body, he was
32:08
Speaker 1: near a dingo layer, several dingo layers, and they found
32:11
Speaker 1: the missing jacket just by chance, because this guy had
32:15
Speaker 1: fallen to his death. They did that, and I don't,
32:18
Speaker 1: as far as I know, Richard Chamberlayne did not push
32:20
Speaker 1: him to his death so they could find the planted jacket.
32:24
Speaker 1: So they actually said, no, this clears you, guys. We
32:28
Speaker 1: found the jacket years later, covered with blood near dingo layers. Torn.
32:33
Speaker 1: Sorry you got here's one point three She got one
32:38
Speaker 1: point three mill Australian it pounds Australian dollars Australian units
32:44
Speaker 1: of money, austrillion dollars dollars and apparently that was only
32:48
Speaker 1: about a third of their legal fees. So it's not
32:52
Speaker 1: the happiest ending. Although she did end up out of
32:54
Speaker 1: jail and exonerated. She got to meet Meryl Streep. I imagine,
32:58
Speaker 1: so I wonder if she met Leah Louis Dreyfuss. Probably not,
33:03
Speaker 1: probably not so. Um, that's blood pattern analysis. There's a
33:09
Speaker 1: lot of really cool graphics and illustrations. Did you see those?
33:13
Speaker 1: And by graphics we don't mean awful awful pictures. There's
33:16
Speaker 1: some pictures of blood and if you read the captions
33:18
Speaker 1: you're like, um, but no, it's not like anything that
33:22
Speaker 1: the average person couldn't handle. Um. But now there's some
33:25
Speaker 1: cool illustrations of how you figure out areas of convergence.
33:29
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff really puts the punch into trigonometry.
33:34
Speaker 1: That's what how stuff works. Does absolutely type in blood,
33:38
Speaker 1: just blood, it'll bring up a bunch of cool stuff.
33:40
Speaker 1: But if you really want to do a good search,
33:42
Speaker 1: do blood pattern in the search bar. The bloody bleeding
33:47
Speaker 1: gushing search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
33:50
Speaker 1: since I said bloody bleedy blood what did I say
33:54
Speaker 1: bloody bleeding search part? Since I said that, it means
33:56
Speaker 1: it's time for the listener mail. Josh, I gonna call
34:01
Speaker 1: this uh mlingling monk Housers. Jerry either laughed at that
34:07
Speaker 1: or she blue snot because she's sick. This is from Brooks,
34:11
Speaker 1: and Brooks says, Hi, guys and Jerry, I've been loving
34:13
Speaker 1: your podcasts for the last few weeks, new new listener.
34:17
Speaker 1: If loving our podcast is wrong, brook doesn't want to
34:20
Speaker 1: be right while he's been driving forty five minutes to
34:23
Speaker 1: a different hospital for his eer rotation. He's a fourth
34:27
Speaker 1: year med student. During the monk Housen podcast, you mentioned
34:30
Speaker 1: m lingering, which made me think of one of the
34:32
Speaker 1: patients we saw in the e R last week. And
34:34
Speaker 1: he says that this doesn't violate any hippo oath because
34:38
Speaker 1: he doesn't have any like details. At ma'am. I don't
34:41
Speaker 1: know if I believe him, but we'll see. Young guy
34:44
Speaker 1: came in complaining of sudden onset flank pain classic for
34:48
Speaker 1: kidney stones. We asked him for a urine sample to
34:51
Speaker 1: check for microscopic blood. Our first clue that something was
34:54
Speaker 1: up should have been when he asked if we needed
34:56
Speaker 1: to watch him supply the sample. That's only roots sen
35:00
Speaker 1: procedure and drug testing, not medical testing. When we got
35:03
Speaker 1: the sample from him, it was totally bloody and we
35:06
Speaker 1: knew it was contaminating, so we asked him for a
35:10
Speaker 1: catheterized specimen, and I was totally shocked when he said, Okay,
35:14
Speaker 1: not many people think the catheter. I think he was shocked. Yeah,
35:18
Speaker 1: I think he was shocked by the size of the
35:20
Speaker 1: tube used to get the sample. He nearly jumped off
35:23
Speaker 1: the table during the process, but during his moving an
35:27
Speaker 1: empty blood vial shook out of his pocket. What we
35:30
Speaker 1: concluded was that he had stolen a vial of his
35:32
Speaker 1: own blood from a lab earlier in the day brought
35:35
Speaker 1: it to the e R with a goal of convincing
35:37
Speaker 1: us he had a kidney stone his secondary gain aside
35:41
Speaker 1: from a lingering painkillers. Yeah, my boss was not amused,
35:47
Speaker 1: though I was. I just thought you'd enjoy hearing about
35:50
Speaker 1: a good solid case of lingering from j D of Scrubs,
35:54
Speaker 1: from Brooks of Josh in predemption. It's a good one. Brooks.
35:58
Speaker 1: We appreciate thanks for sending that in. That's awesome. Good
36:02
Speaker 1: luck med student, fourth year, fourth year. Good luck in
36:06
Speaker 1: the real world. We're pulling for you. Keep sending us
36:10
Speaker 1: cool stories. My mom was an ear nurse for decades
36:14
Speaker 1: and she always had the best stories ever. Yeah. Um,
36:17
Speaker 1: if you have a good story about probably not too
36:22
Speaker 1: many blood spatter stories. That a good Valentine's Day story.
36:26
Speaker 1: We want to hear it. Wrap it up sending in
36:28
Speaker 1: an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
36:38
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
36:41
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
36:44
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
36:46
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36:50
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