Interesting quote by Marc Klaas....
YVETTE URREA
Staff WriterSABRE SPRINGS ---- As the two-week mark of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam's disappearance approached, police said Thursday that they were not any closer to making an arrest in the case.
Meanwhile, a friend of neighbor David Westerfield, who has been interviewed by police but never named as a suspect, told reporters outside Westerfield's home that he believes the negative attention on his friend is unfair.
Don Boomer/Staff Photographer |
Damon and Brenda van Dam hold a recent photograph of their daughter, Danielle, during a press conference in front of their Sabre Springs home on Thursday.
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Wes Hill, a 35-year-old Utah resident who said he has known Westerfield for decades, said his visit Thursday to Westerfield's house was his first since Danielle's disappearance. He said he believes his friend had nothing to do with the girl's disappearance.
"There's no doubt in my mind," Hill said. "He's just a sweetheart."
Danielle's parents, Damon and Brenda van Dam, conducted a media conference Thursday to announce that the volunteer search effort, located at what is now called the Danielle Recovery Center at the Doubletree Golf Resort at 14455 Penasquitos Drive, would move Monday to the ReMax Building at Pomerado and Poway roads and would be under new leadership.
The center was originally led by the Texas-based Laura Recovery Center Foundation, but its leaders have trained local volunteers so they can take over, officials said. Retired policewoman Diane Halfman, a friend of the van Dams, will direct the center.
The current center will remain open through the weekend at the Doubletree Golf Resort, and leaders hope to get more volunteers for a massive search effort this weekend.
As they spoke Thursday morning, the van Dams displayed a portrait of Danielle taken before Christmas. Danielle was last seen when her father put her to bed about 10 p.m. Feb. 1. She was discovered missing from the Mountain Pass home the next morning, and police have said that she was abducted.
The van Dams were joined Thursday morning by Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly Hannah Klaas, was kidnapped from her Petaluma home in 1993 and later found murdered.
Damon van Dam thanked the police for their efforts to find out what happened to Danielle. He said the family has not heard more from the police other than that fingerprints were taken in their home Wednesday.
Brenda van Dam said it has become more difficult for her to cope with her daughter's disappearance especially because the focus of suspicion remains so close to their home.
"I don't think any of you know what we're going through, and you wouldn't want to walk a day in my shoes ... and I wouldn't wish it on anyone," she said.
"Brenda's getting a little angrier every day," her husband said.
"Somebody knows where my baby is, and it's not me. I just want to go and say, 'Tell me where my baby is,' " Brenda van Dam said.
She added that she will not do so because she does not want to do anything to compromise or interfere with the case.
Klaas told reporters that while he had come to provide support to the van Dams, they have been giving him hope.
"If Danielle made it through that first night ... she's out there," Klaas said.
Brenda van Dam then turned her head and buried her face in her husband's shoulder.
On Wednesday night, detectives went to Westerfield's home ---- two doors down from the van Dams' home ---- and served their second search warrant on the property and took away several boxes of material.
Westerfield, 49, a self-employed engineer, has been questioned several times by detectives. Detectives also have impounded his vehicle, which was later returned, and a motor home.
Westerfield told reporters in the first days that he was cooperating with police. Several days later, he stopped talking with reporters, retained a lawyer, and has mostly remained at home.
The Danielle Recovery Center can be reached at (858) 485-4185.
Contact staff writer Yvette Urrea at (760) 901-4076 or yurrea@nctimes.com.
2/15/02
So, in short..experts are discarded, when their conclusions do not "match" the end result needed by prosecution? Or did they save the "best" guy for later, only if needed. What do you think?
Posted originally by MizSterious!!
Where the Bugs Are: Forensic Entomology
Creepy critters help to lead investigators to the criminal's door
article
By Ricki LewisCourtesy of Richard W. Merritt
Strong Stomachs Required: Forensic entomologists routinely encounter grim scenes in their line of work.
To watch the X-Files' Dana Scully probe corpses, you'd think that every physician and scientist is expert in reading clues in maggot patterns. Not so. The American Board of Forensic Entomology (ABFE) lists just eight members; a total of 63 professionals practice this science worldwide. Forensic entomology is the study of arthropods, used to solve matters of legal interest, most often of a criminal nature. "It's mostly a repeated tale of human tragedy combined with some remarkable insect ecology," says Jeffrey Wells, assistant professor, department of justice sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Use of forensic entomology is spotty, compared to routine procedures such as ballistics or blood spatter, hair, and fiber analyses. "It depends on the area and the police force. Here in British Columbia it is pretty routine," explains Gail S. Anderson, an associate professor, school of criminology, at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. "If the police are used to using an entomologist, we just become part of the investigation, usually in cases in which time of death is in question."
Interest in the field is rising, but positions are still scarce. And police are learning to do part of the forensic entomologist's job. "I regularly train police all over Canada and other countries, as do all my colleagues," adds Anderson. Jeff Tomberlin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Coastal Plain Experiment Station in Tifton, Ga., agrees. "I rarely go to crime scenes, but I often give presentations to police on how to collect evidence."
William Rodriguez, chief deputy medical officer for special investigations, Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, Washington, D.C., says forensic entomology has "come into its own.... As a science, [it] has developed into a field that is widely recognized in the courts and in other areas of forensic science."
Rodriguez says that law enforcement agents are routinely taught to collect insect specimens at a crime scene. "Insects are the most accurate way to estimate the time since death. [They] are one of the first things collected at the scene and at the morgue."
Use of forensic entomology is recorded as early as the mid-1300s, during a murder investigation in China. In 1855, a French physician named Bergeret determined that the insects in and around a baby's corpse, found behind the plaster mantle in a house, placed the time of death back several years, thus implicating the former, and not current, homeowners.1
Requirements: A PhD and a Strong Stomach
Training for forensic entomology is eclectic. "Certification requires a doctorate in medical entomology with research and case investigation experience in forensics," says attorney Robert Hall , an ABFE diplomat and associate vice provost, University of Missouri, Columbia. Solid backgrounds in insect taxonomy and natural history, as well as comprehension of accepted standards of crime scene investigation and evidence handling, are important too, says Wells. Training in ecology is crucial, as a rotting corpse is in essence an ecosystem, with the diners' comings and goings a classic example of succession.
Other requirements are harder to define. "Forensic entomology is a field that is for the strong of stomach and weak of nose. It takes time to get used to it," says Tomberlin.
Usually, the road leading to a forensic entomology career arises from a scientist's dual interest in insects and cadavers. For Richard W. Merritt , an entomology professor, Michigan State University, East Lansing, this meant taking entomology courses as an undergraduate while driving an ambulance at night. "In 1968 I had a case in which an elderly woman's legs had ulcerated, and fly larvae infested her extremities. I collected and identified the flies at the scene and at the suggestion of my professor, published an article on the situation. I went on to work on cases with the police during graduate school for entomology." For Tomberlin, a favorite course in entomology coincided with working at a funeral home. His first week on the job, in 1992, a call came to pick up a body that had been in the woods a few days. "This was Georgia in May, so it was hot. I volunteered to go with the funeral director to collect the body. There wasn't much left of him, but it really fascinated me. And so the seed was planted," he recalls.
Neal Haskell , a professor of forensic science and biology at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Ind., credits his career to boyhood experiences down on the farm in northwest Indiana. "My first memory of becoming interested in maggots on dead things was when I was 5 years old. I have a vivid recollection of a calf that had died at the end of May. It was one huge, writhing mass of maggots, going snap, crackle, and pop." After college, he joined the Marines, where he learned about guns, and continued that interest in the late 1960s as a firearms instructor at a local county sheriff's department. In 1981, local detectives familiar with his interest in insects asked him to examine an infested, bloated body blackened from decay. It was Haskell's first autopsy, and he was hooked.
Haskell honed his skills on dead pigs and visits to the "Body Farm," otherwise known as the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Facility in Knoxville, where 40 or so corpses in various conditions provide a laboratory for forensic scientists. Returning to school, he earned the first Ph.D. in forensic entomology in the country, from Purdue University in 1991.
Soon, cases began arriving from the medical examiner's office in Indianapolis. Haskell's advice to would-be forensic entomologists: "To be the best basketball player, you shoot a lot of baskets. To be the best forensic entomologist, you dissect a lot of pigs--I did 1,250. But, I had to be a top-notch entomologist first." A pig's organs are about the same size as a human's, hence porkers have long been a staple in physiology research. They also make good practice models in forensics.
M. Lee Goff , an entomology professor, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, recalls using a pig more experimentally. "A woman's body was found in a wooded area, wrapped in layers of blankets. I could account for 10 and one-half days of insect activity, but she had been missing for 13 days," he recalls. Could the tight wrappings have slowed insect activity? The defense attorney asked Goff to find out. "So I took a dead 50-pound pig. I duplicated the wrappings, and let it stay in my backyard. The neighbors weren't too happy. It took two and one-half days for the flies to penetrate; two and one-half plus 10 and one-half days put the suspect in the company of the victim."
Tools and Clues in Forensic Entomology
Only a few types of insects eat rotting human flesh. "A couple of dozen species are likely to colonize a corpse during the full decay, but at any one time, only half a dozen or so are likely to be present," explains Felix Sperling, associate professor of insect systematics, University of Alberta. The two main players are the carrion feeders or blowflies (Calliphoridae), and the flesh flies (Sarcophagidae). The occasional beetle participates too, and bloodsuckers such as mosquitoes and lice can carry evidence away.
Courtesy of M. Lee Goff
Culture of Sarcophagidae, or flesh flies, in the laboratory
One of the toughest challenges for forensic entomologists is to distinguish the three larval stages, or instars, of important species. Whereas blowfly larvae tend to look alike, beetle larvae are very diverse, ranging from white to brown, skinny to fat, and hairless to hairy. Investigators look to mouth parts, spiracles, and genitalia to identify species, but even the best forensic entomologist must sometimes rear a maggot to adulthood on beef liver to see what it is. The pupae, or cocoons, are valuable too, although police often ignore blowfly pupae, which look like rat excrement, according to Haskell.2
Forensic entomologists must be alert to the unusual. Merritt recalls a case in which a car containing a dead woman was found upside down at the bottom of the Muskegon River in western Michigan. The husband claimed that he hadn't seen his wife in weeks, but black fly larvae and pupae indicated otherwise. The cold water had delayed decay so that normal entomological analysis wasn't possible. Says Merritt: "Based on the identification of the cocoon and known life cycle of the black fly species on the windshield in late June, the car had to have gone into the river long before June, as the husband claimed. The man was convicted of murder, based in part on the life cycle of an aquatic insect."
By comparing species found on a body with those in the area, forensic entomologists can also determine if a body was moved. The lack of insects can tell a story too. In one case, the body of a dead woman lying on a bed near an open window was mysteriously insect-free. When a prosecutor pointed out this enigma, the accused boyfriend admitted to having killed her earlier and placing her near an open window to suggest entry of a stranger.
Ecology is part of crime scene analysis. Relates Merritt, "Factors that affect the rate of decomposition in water, for example, include temperature, bacterial content, salinity, and algal blooms. A corpse submerged in a highly eutrophic, shallow lake will decompose much more rapidly than a corpse in a cooler, deeper lake with a lower bacterial count."
Forensic entomologists use data to estimate the time elapsed since insect activity began--called the postmortem interval, or PMI--that could be the time of death. This is done in either of two ways. Says Wells: "The accumulated degree model, commonly used in agriculture, assumes that within a certain range, maggot development is a linear function of temperature, measured as the degrees above a critical temperature where development stops. Alternatively, some people chop the temperature/time curve thought to have occurred at the scene into short intervals, such as six hours. The average temperature during that time is then used to estimate the growth based on a lab model at a similar constant temperature."
DNA Fingerprinting of Maggot Gut Contents
As in other areas of forensic science, DNA fingerprinting is a powerful tool when used on insects. "DNA technology is used to help identify insect species, instead of using the general morphological characteristics, and to recover human blood meals from the gut contents of insects," explains Jason Byrd, an assistant professor of criminal justice and biology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.
Sperling's group established this subspecialty in 1994, using the mitochondrial gene for cytochrome oxidase.3,4 "MtDNA is particularly durable, even in dried and degraded material, and we wanted to use sequences that could help to understand the phylogeny of the flies," he says. "The rates of divergence are about right to give good differences between species, but not so much that homologies are uncertain between species." The researchers use phylogenetic analysis software to align DNA sequences to derive likely evolutionary relationships, adds Wells, who did postdoctoral work in Sperling's lab.
Forensic entomology can be the stuff of nightmares. Some forensic entomologists won't speak of the worst horrors; others will. One who did was Goff. "A 16-month-old child was found abandoned by the edge of a lake. She had feces in her diaper, and flies had been initially attracted to that. The eggs hatched, and when they'd consumed the feces, they moved on to the child. When we found her she was close to death, dehydrated, starving, and being eaten alive." From the stages of the maggots and the body temperature, Goff estimated that she had suffered for about 27 hours. The mother was convicted of attempted murder, and an aunt adopted the child, who recovered.
For those fascinated by arthropods and mystery solving, forensic entomology can be rewarding. "All death investigations are interesting to a degree, and all have unique characteristics," says Hall. "Probably the most satisfying aspect is to participate in finding out the truth regarding a particular death." Goff adds another limitation: "I'm rarely asked to be a dinner speaker."
Ricki Lewis (rickilewis@nasw.org) is a contributing editor for The Scientist
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References
1. web.missouri.edu/~agwww/entomology
2. www.forensic-entomology.com/info.htm
3. F.A.H. Sperling et al., "A DNA-based approach to the identification of insect species used for postmortem interval estimation," Journal of Forensic Sciences, 39: 418-27, 1994.
4. J.D. Wells, F.A.H. Sperling, "DNA-based identification of forensically important Chrysomyinae (Diptera: Calliphoridae), Forensic Science International, 3065:1-6, August 2001.
Source: http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2001/sep/lewis_p10_010903.html
And now I'm making myself laugh, because what's a more appropriate source of inspiration for a Bug Man song parody than the Beatles?
I would think such testimony would make Goff a laughingstock in his field....