Our guest expert today is Dr. Denene Lofland. Dr. Lofland received her PhD in pathology from the Medical College of Virginia, and she’s a trained clinical microbiologist. She has served as the Director of Clinical Laboratory Sciences at Wright State University, and has worked in biotech/drug research and development for many years.

Denene has worked on drug development programs for the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).  She contributed to the FDA approval of gemifloxacin (Factive), an antibiotic for the treatment of bacterial pneumonia, a drug that is now on the market and prescribed by physicians worldwide. She recently served as Manager of North Carolina Operations for a company that conducts high-level research and development in areas such as anti-bioterrorism.

She also supervised several projects, including government-sponsored research which required her to maintain a secret security clearance. Denene has published several articles in scientific journals and recently contributed to the thirteenth edition of Bailey and Scott’s Diagnostic Microbiology. She currently works as a professor at a medical school.

Microscopic Murder

What’s so interesting about microbiology?

Microorganisms were here before man walked the Earth, and they’ll be here after we’re gone. Actually, you would find it difficult to survive without them. Some bacteria, called commensals, live in and on our bodies to our benefit, protecting  us from invading pathogens (disease causing germs), and they produce vitamins.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the bad bugs. They’re responsible for more deaths than cancer, heart attacks, and war. They can disfigure, eat flesh, paralyze, or just make you feel so bad you’ll wish you were dead.

There are four major types of pathogenic microorganisms: bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. They can cause damage directly, or they can release toxins that do the dirty work for them.

HIV virus

E.coli bacteria

Aspergillus (fungi)

Loa loa (parasite) in eye

So, how can your antagonists use microorganisms to kill? They’ll need a fundamental knowledge of microbiology, such as information that’s taught in a basic college course. Next, the bad guy will need a source of bacteria. Microbiology labs all over the world contain bugs of all types.

Biological safety hood for the safe handling of bacteria

Most of these laboratories are locked, so a little B & E would be in order. Or, maybe your antagonist has a connection with a person who has control of the bug of interest. If so, the evil-doer could make what’s known in the trade as a V.I.P. trip. He’d fly to the friend’s lab, place the bug in a plastic vial, hide the vial in his pocket (V.I.P.), and get back on the plane for the trip home.

Once the antagonist has the bug, he has to keep it alive and reproducing. Bacteria are grown on agar plates (food for bugs) in an incubator. In general, bacteria double in number every 20 minutes. So, if you start with just a few bugs, let’s say 10, and allow them to grow overnight…well, you do the math.

Once the killer has enough of the bug, then it’s time to deliver it to the intended victim.

Picking up bacteria from agar plate. The brownish-red material is the agar. The grayish coloring at the top of the agar is E.coli bacteria.

Now for a true story. It wasn’t murder, just an unfortunate accident that involved a woman, some green beans, and a home canning jar. Canning jars have lids designed to exhibit a slight indentation in their centers when food is fresh. If the indentation inverts (pops up), the vegetables may be contaminated, and should be discarded.

A woman was preparing dinner for her family and decided to serve some of her home-canned green beans that evening. She picked up a jar of beans, but thought the pop-up didn’t look quite right. So, to satisfy her curiosity, she opened the jar, touched her finger to the bean juice, and tasted it. It tasted fine to her, so she cooked the beans, and served the steaming hot dish to her family. The next day, the woman died, but her family survived. The beans contained botulism toxin, produced by the bacteria, Clostridium botulinum. C. botulinum lives naturally in the soil.

Botulism toxin is one of the most powerful neurotoxins known to man. About 10 ounces could kill everyone on Earth. It works by paralyzing its victim.

Oh, why didn’t the other members of the woman’s family die? The toxin is inactivated by heat.

* Per request, we’ve re-posted today’s article. I hope it helps with your research.

Nick Christie, a 62-year-old Florida tourist, is not confined in Gitmo. He’s not in a secret CIA prison. He’s not being held by terrorists. He was, however, at the time the photo above was taken, being tortured. At least that’s what Christie’s wife claims. And clearly the man was bound, gagged, and in a lot of distress. And yes, that is pepper spray running down the center of Christie’s nude body.

So who held and tortured Nick Christie? Who stripped him of all his clothing and then restrained him to a chair? And who, after the man was clearly in no position to harm anyone, including himself, would cast aside common sense and excessively douse Christie with an exaggerated amount of pepper spray? Oddly, strangely, and shockingly, it was sheriff’s deputies who placed Nick Christie in the position you see in the photo above. And shortly after the photo was taken, Nick Christie died. A Florida medical examiner in charge of Christie’s autopsy ruled his death a homicide.

But no deputy was charged with Christie’s death. In fact, not a single deputy was even disciplined, which means an internal Lee County, Florida investigation found that jail officers acted properly and that the techniques they used when dealing with Christie were proper.

Sure, Christie was drunk and disorderly when arrested. And I’m the first to say drunks are a pain in the tush to contend with, especially when they’re non-compliant. And yes, I’m sure he’d become a real problem for jail staff. I’ve worked in a jail so I know and understand how trying and troubling it can be when prisoners are loud, abusive, destructive, and combative. Deputies absolutely must maintain control in order to, well, maintain control. And there are times when pepper spray must be used. Tasers and other devices as well. And one such device is a restraint chair, which, by the way, was used to help control Christie.

One thing Lee County jail deputies didn’t take into account was that Christie had a pretty serious medical history, a history of both mental and physical troubles. He was taking medication for depression, and he suffered from COPD and emphysema. Obviously, the man experienced trouble taking a normal breath of air, in the best of conditions.

Well, when Christie began whatever it was he did inside the jail that caused deputies to feel the need to restrain him, staff members did indeed place Christie in a restraint chair. They stripped him naked and strapped him to the device you’ll see in a photo below. I took this picture a couple of years ago to show one of the tools that’s available to help maintain control of out-of-control prisoners. However, once the prisoner is “attached” to the chair the threat he presented to himself and others is over. He can no longer do harm to anyone.

But in Christie’s case, according to news reports, deputies also sprayed the helpless man with copious amounts of pepper spray while he was restrained in the “the chair.” They also placed a spit hood over the lower half of his face, even while he begged them to take it off because he couldn’t breathe. But deputies left the hood in place and continued to pepper spray him—8 to 10 times, depending on whose story you hear. They also “fogged” Christie’s cell with pepper spray. So much of it was used in the foggings that it began to affect inmates in other areas of the jail.

The purpose of pepper spray, by the way, is to temporarily incapacitate someone until officers can restrain them. It is not intended to be used to make someone stop yelling, talking, spitting, singing, arguing, name-calling, etc. There is no other intended use for pepper spray. None. The spray should never be used as a means to punish someone. And I say this as a former police defensive tactics instructor who was certified to train officers in the use of pepper spray and in the use of force.

The same is true for a restraint chair. The device is not to be used for punishment, or for long periods of time. Speaking of the chair…

Prison and jail officers often encounter extremely violent inmates who are a serious threat to themselves, staff, and other inmates. In these situations, normal restraining devices—handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons—are simply not enough to properly subdue the unruly prisoner. One effective means to safely restrain and transport combative prisoners is to utilize a restraint chair.

Restraint chairs completely immobilize the prisoner’s torso and limbs. Special attachments can also limit head movement. Once the inmate is securely fastened to the chair he can be wheeled (the chair is designed to tilt back on two rear wheels similar to a furniture dolly) to desired destinations, such as the medical department, court hearings, segregation and other areas, such as the special housing unit (SHU).

Again, under no circumstances should restraint chairs be used as a means of punishment. Also, prisoners should not be left seated in a restraint chair for more than two hours.

I’m guessing the civil trial regarding the wrongful death of Nick Christie will be more than interesting, especially since a jail deputy, Monshay Gibbs, has already testified under oath that she believed the way Christie was treated was excessive. Gibbs also said she heard Christie pleading with staff members to take off the mask because he couldn’t breathe.

Of course, the fact that Christie was received into the ER with pepper spray still coating his chest is a pretty damning picture as well. By the way, once someone is sprayed with pepper spray, it is the responsibility and duty of officials to seek treatment and relief for the effects of the spray on their prisoner. To leave someone exposed to the spray for a long period of time is…well, what do you think? Is it torture? Take another look at the photo.

Torture, or no?

Fox News photo

*By the way, since I was not present during the incarceration and restraint of Mr. Christie I can only offer a report based on news stories, videos, and, well, the photo above. I cannot say one way or another if there was any wrongdoing on the part of any official or by Mr. Christie. That will be for the courts to decide.

A typical Tuesday in November. I trudge from the subway station to the medical examiner’s office. No one plows the sidewalks but there are enough med students and hospital workers from next door to tamp the snow down. When I reach the trace evidence department it is still dark; my boss has not yet arrived so I take care of the most important thing, which is to get the coffee started. Then I head back downstairs for the ‘viewing’, at which all the cases currently waiting to be autopsied are wheeled out and the deskman reads their history. This is so the pathologists can observe, suggest and decide who is going to do which autopsy. Exactly how they work that out, I’ve never quite determined. One doctor has been around so long that he sometimes pokes a body, testing for lividity or some such, without putting on a latex glove first. Not a big deal. If you’re hyper about germs you don’t get into this line of work. So far I’ve been exposed to opened-up victims with HIV, Hepatitis A, B, and C, spinal meningitis and tuberculosis.

I have a plan for the day, a set of tasks I’d like to accomplish, but that is always dependent upon what the morning brings. If a homicide victim arrives, all plans go out the window and the case is worked until there’s nothing more you can do on it.

For those dead of unnatural causes, I come in. If the victim died from a gunshot, I will swab their hands for gunshot residue. If they’ve been beaten, bludgeoned, strangled or stabbed, I will scrape their fingernails for foreign skin and fibers. If they’ve hung themselves, I will mark and remove the ligature. If they were run over by a car, I will look for paint and glass fragments. If it’s a homicide I will collect hair samples, including pubic hairs if there’s signs of sexual assault. I’ll get someone to help me remove the clothing if it hasn’t already been cut off by EMS. Then the deceased goes back into the hall for their next appointment, with the pathologist, and I go upstairs to get my coffee. But they have not seen the last of me, because now I move on to their clothing.

I pop in and out of the autopsy room to see if there are holes in their clothing that correspond with bullet holes or stab wounds in the body, and I note that. If the holes don’t correspond, then the person just needed some new clothes. The area doesn’t smell good. One of the photographers insists that one of the deiners always puts an extra cut in the bowel so that it will smell worse, because he doesn’t like white people, but the photographer is an alcoholic so I take this with a grain of salt.

Then the clothes are examined for gunshot residue, hairs and fibers, and semen. I cut out a piece of the bloody cloth and save it in a manila envelope in case some attorney asks why we didn’t check to make sure the blood on the victim’s shirt belonged to the victim (well, gee, because he had five stab wounds so we kind of assumed the dark red stains on his shirt might well be related).

I break for lunch and, if I’m lucky, sit down for the first time in about five hours. After lunch, provided all the victims and clothing are taken care of, I will work in the lab. It had chairs but it also has my boss. I will take test tubes of blood from the day’s autopsies and drop the blood on pieces of sterile cloth to be frozen and retained for future DNA testing. I will analyze the gunshot residue swabs for barium and antimony, two components used in primer caps, and identify the fibers and compare them to samples from the victim’s and suspect’s clothing.

I might have to go to a scene; the victim might still be there or the crime may be several days old and the officers just want me to examine the blood spatter pattern on the wall. Part of all of the day (and I don’t get to choose which part) might be spent sitting at the courthouse waiting to testify. I may have something to say that will put the suspect in jail for life or I may just be there to say yes, this is the victim’s clothing. Either way I have to sit there as long as they tell me to, out in the hallway with a crowd of people. I don’t dare strike up a conversation with any one of them because they may also be there to testify in that case. So I read a book and avoid eye contact for one or two or eight hours.

Then I grab a cup for the road and head back to the subway station, already planning out what I’d like to get accomplished the next day. Provided there isn’t another homicide.

It’s not as glamorous as it looks on TV. But I wouldn’t trade it for a corner office with a view of Public Square.

Lisa Black’s fourth book Defensive Wounds was released by Harper Collins on September 27. Forensic scientist Theresa MacLean battles a serial killer operating at an attorney’s convention. Lisa is a full time latent print examiner and CSI for a police department in Florida.

Sure, anybody can pick up a bullet casing and toss it into a plastic bag. But what about the tricky, hard to find evidence? What do the pros use to collect that stuff?

Self-saturating foam swabs are ideal for the collection of trace DNA, such as shed skin cells. The investigator breaks the isopropanol-filled handle by giving it a squeeze, which causes the foam tip to become saturated with the 91% isopropanol solution. The foam tip is then wiped across the target surface to collect the DNA evidence.

Cuticle sticks for retrieving evidence from the cuticles and other hard-to-reach places.

Swab Shields provide a physical barrier that protects against evidence contamination, mixing with other samples, and they prevent transferring your sample to another surface.

Trace evidence tape is a great tool for locating and picking up items such as, hair, glass particles, and fibers. Simply touch the “sticky side” of the tape to a surface and then lift. Any item on that surface will cling to the tape. To remove the item/evidence place the tape in water (the adhesive is water soluble), then pour the water through a filter. Your evidence can then be retrieved from the filter.

Tacky MatTM is used to collect trace evidence from the bottom of shoes. Have your suspect step on one and you’ve just collected samples from places he’s walked. The Mat can also be placed at the entrance of a crime scene to remove items from the bottoms of officer’s shoes to prevent contaminating the scene with foreign material.

Hand sifters are used to screen out dirt and debris, leaving behind bone fragments and/or other small evidence (shirt buttons, teeth, etc.).

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Registration is open for the 2011 Writers’ Police Academy!