CRIME SCENE ANALYSIS

Devyani Taparia

Prof. Ramyyata Tewari

Forensic Psychology

22120106
 Murder of the Laughing Dead Body

The crime scene begins with the perpetrator robbing the house, and hastily looking through

the victim's house. She starts to throw things around like the scarf, and the jewellry box, and

proceeds to have a glass of water. On the other side of the house, the victim is seen working

on his laptop when he rushes into the room with the perpetrator. Upon this, he gets stabbed in

the neck with a knife and the perpetrator runs outside the crime scene.

A witness who comes across the dead body of the victim then calls upon the police. But he is

nowhere to be found in the later half and no testimony of the same was taken. When the

investigating team arrives, they secure the scene with the “crime scene do not cross” tape

around the room. One of the many mistakes made by the team was that the witness was not

separated or looked for, for further inquiry. After thoroughly scanning the crime scene, the

sketch artist proceeds to sketch the crime scene. Photographs of the crime scene were taken.

The investigating team now searches for shreds of evidence. They took the fingerprints of the

victim's hands and secured them in paper bags labelled – biological evidence. UV and the

blue light lamp were used by the forensic team to look for fingerprints with fluorescent

materials. When exposed to these lights, bodily fluids, and blood samples become much

easier to spot. They proceeded to collect fingerprints from possible evidence such as the

laptop, jewellry box, glass with water, and many more. They took blood samples from the

victim’s body using Q-tips. All the evidence was then secured and put in a box which was to

be sent to the forensic lab for further investigation. The list of evidence collected was:

fingerprints, glass, laptop, blood spatter, jewellry box, scarf (found on the table), tissue box,

paper cups, two red pens, murder weapon i.e., knife.

A few mistakes or errors made by the team were as follows. The perpetrator had thrown a

scarf which was never taken into custody as evidence. During the very beginning of scanning
the crime scene, one detective was seen not wearing gloves, and tampering was done by

moving the furniture of the crime scene. However, for the rest of the search, all detectives

were wearing facemasks and gloves. Evidence such as the glass and laptop were not properly

secured. A sanitizer bottle was left behind. No outline of the body was made to understand the

placement of the victim. The body was left unsealed and a lot of the evidence remained

unsealed when procuring. No DNA samples were taken from the victim's body, and the hair

samples were also missed out on. The biggest mistake that could jeopardize the whole case

was letting go of the witness. No clothing samples from the dead body were taken. The

biological evidence was found to be sealed in a paper bag that did not have any biohazard

stickers. All these points are very important for offender profiling.

Overall, I observed that the forensic team took its time to collect evidence and tried to label

them all. Although a few errors that were made can compromise the whole crime scene which

is almost irreparable. If the pointers were kept in mind during the investigation, it would have

been a smoother process. The actual crime scenario happened very hastily which could have

been the motive behind the robbery and murder but for this scenario, it seemed very unclear

and unrealistic. This activity helped me understand how offender profiling is carried out and

the process of collecting and securing evidence. The different types of tools and techniques

required for doing the same. The seven S’s of crime scene investigation enhanced our

understanding concerning the particular crime scene.