Their lives in crime labs, from makeshift to high-tech

star ledger ^ | July 05, 2009 | Chris Megerian

[Coleus]

When Andy Nardelli and Frances Gdowski started at the State Police Crime Laboratory in 1969, it was a shoestring operation run out of a converted office building in West Trenton. Workers didn't use gloves, smoked in the lab and even ate lunch on the same table where they tested drugs, they said. When scientists testified in court, they brought the evidence -- sometimes cocaine or heroin worth tens of thousands of dollars -- with them in their own cars. In arson cases, investigators would simply smell the evidence to determine what chemicals were used in the fire.

"The word forensic' didn't even exist then," Nardelli said. Times have changed. In the past four decades, Nardelli, 62, and Gdowski, 61, helped lead the lab, which is now in Hamilton, into an era of DNA testing and high-tech analysis.

As the top two officials at the state's largest laboratory -- Gdowski became director in 1995, with Nardelli as her assistant -- they played a critical yet largely unseen role in the state's justice system. Down through the years, they worked on some of New Jersey's most famous cases: the murder of Megan Kanka, the John List trial and the shooting of State Police trooper Philip Lamonaco.

They handled every type of case New Jersey could throw at them, analyzing all forms of biological, chemical, physical and drug evidence. Now both have retired, leaving behind lengthy careers and piles of casework. Gdowski left at the beginning of this year; Nardelli's last day was Tuesday, making his career exactly 40 years long.

"Between the two of them, they covered every discipline," said Howard Baum, who has overseen all five of the State Police's labs since last year. "They showed me the ropes." Nardelli and Gdowski were urged by their fathers --

[Cacique]

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