Forensic Science

Considered the world's leading forensic anthropologist, Clyde Snow travels internationally to unlock secrets of the dead. The 73-year-old Oklahoman has identified thousands of victims of disasters, accidents and violent crimes. In many cases, he's discovered how individuals died and aided law enforcement officials in bringing their killers to justice. "It's challenging work, and a lot of these cases turn into interesting detective stories," Snow said.

The National Park Service on Monday rejected a forensic scientist's request to exhume the body of 19th century explorer Meriwether Lewis. Scientist James Starrs had sought to prove that Lewis was murdered and did not commit suicide in 1809. Jerry Belson, director of the National Park Service's southeast region, said in a letter to Starrs that the exhumation would be inconsistent with policies barring the disturbance of burial sites in national parklands unless threatened with destruction.

Every article pertaining to the Randy Kraft case states that it will be the most expensive case in California history. The British have established DNA "genetic fingerprinting" as a workable and expedient means of establishing the facts in at least one case where the same type of evidence--that is, a direct physical connection to the victims in question--was needed. Using this method of detection, it was conclusively proved who the rapist--murderer was in two cases in England. Can someone tell me why we have not yet accepted this method in our forensic science?

A scientific report released Tuesday revealed serious flaws in FBI testimony involving evidence on the chemical composition of bullets presented in hundreds of criminal cases. The report stopped short of condemning the forensic method outright, but it proposed changes in how the bureau portrayed bullet-lead evidence that would significantly undercut the technique's usefulness in a criminal trial, forensic science experts said.

Jeanne Boylan, free-lance forensic artist, never travels in a straight line. Like a child's connect-the-dots puzzle, her life zigs and zags--from trauma to trauma, crime to crime: * New Year's Eve in a roach-filled motel on Sepulveda Boulevard in Manhattan Beach, called in after the slaying of Police Officer Martin Ganz. * Dec. 28 in the San Fernando Valley, on case of the serial child molester, still at large. * Dec. 23 in Antioch, Calif.

Patricia Cornwell's name comes with more than a whiff of myth and expectation. Almost every woman writing thrillers with extreme violence gets compared to Cornwell's bestselling work featuring forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. Interviews focus less on the books and more on Cornwell's Armani suits, personal security concerns or her obsession with solving the Jack the Ripper murders.

Despite promising to seek an experienced crime lab scientist, the FBI has hired the former head of a government nuclear weapons laboratory with no background in forensic science to direct its troubled laboratory. The new director is Donald M. Kerr Jr., 58, a physicist-engineer who headed the government's Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons research is conducted, from 1979 to 1985.

The Los Angeles Police Department has a logjam of more than 5,000 rape kits that have not undergone forensic analysis because of a lack of DNA-testing resources, a leading advocate for rape victims told a state commission Wednesday. "Every day, there are citizens in our state ... who are being sexually assaulted and otherwise victimized when they don't have to be.

An FBI forensics expert testified Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court that hair fibers found in the house where U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena was murdered matched hair samples taken from defendant Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros' head after his arrest. Matta is one of four men being tried in Camarena's abduction and murder. Matta, 45, contends that he was not at the house in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the agent was interrogated and killed in February, 1985.

The FBI is no longer analyzing gunshot residue in its investigations, a blow to the once-highly regarded evidence used to suggest that a suspected criminal had fired a weapon. Lawyers, scientists and law enforcement officials across the country said that they were astonished by the decision and that it could sound the death knell for the evidence. It also could become a weapon for defense lawyers in pending cases and in efforts to overturn convictions.