Forensic Science Crimes

Forensics for Dummies takes you inside the world of crime-scene investigation to give you the lowdown on this exciting field. Written by a doctor and former Law & Order consultant, this guide will have you solving crimes along with your favorite TV shows in no time.

A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.

The most remarkable weapon in the fight against crime, forensic science turns bullet trajectories, bodily fluids, and the very structure of our DNA into damning witnesses of our every act. Packed with examples from real-life cases, this Beginner Guide covers all major areas of forensic science, including drugs, trace evidence, and crime scene investigation. Pathology, anthropology, and the laws that govern this evidence all come under the scalpel as Jay Siegel tracks the journey of evidence from crime scene to courtroom

In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Jim Fraser introduces the concept of forensic science and explains how it is used in the investigation of crime.

In this groundbreaking book, renowned psychiatrist Michael H. Stone explores the concept and reality of evil from a new perspective. In an in-depth discussion of the personality traits and behaviors that constitute evil across a wide spectrum, Dr. Stone takes a clarifying scientific approach to a topic that for centuries has been inadequately explained by religious doctrines.

Serial killers: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are often the first names that spring to mind. Many people assume serial killers are primarily an American phenomenon that came about in the latter part of the 20th century. But such assumptions are far from the truth. Serial killers have been around for a very long time and can be found in every corner of the globe - and they're not just limited to the male gender either. Some of these predators have been caught and brought to justice whereas others have never been found, let alone identified.

Blue Magic, the latest designer drug linked to a rash of overdoses, might explain the needle mark on the arm of a young woman found dead in her Kansas City apartment. But when star reporter Rich Azadian digs deeper, the clues point to a far more explosive story: MaryLee Stock was a special protege of evangelical megapastor and power broker Cobalt Becker, who is poised to deliver his followers and the presidency to a firebrand right-wing senator in the next election.

Human sacrifice still goes on uncomfortably close to home - cases have been found in the U.S., Europe, and the United Kingdom. In other parts of the world, such as South America, ritual killing is almost commonplace. Human Sacrifice investigates the terrifying current spate of human sacrifices and ritual killings. Jimmy Lee Shreeve draws on police reports and interviews with the victims' families to paint a horrifying picture of ritual sacrifice at home and abroad.

As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?

Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller fans, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.

"That's not my fingerprint, your honor", said the defendant, after FBI experts reported a "100-percent identification". They were wrong. It is shocking how often they are. Autopsy of a Crime Lab is the first book to catalog the sources of error and the faulty science behind a range of well-known forensic evidence, from fingerprints and firearms to forensic algorithms. In this devastating forensic takedown, noted legal expert Brandon L. Garrett poses the questions that should be asked in courtrooms every day....

Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books; indeed, she employed it more than any other murder method, with the poison itself often being a central part of the novel. Her choice of deadly substances was far from random—the characteristics of each often provide vital clues to the discovery of the murderer. Christie's extensive chemical knowledge provides the backdrop for A Is for Arsenic, in which Kathryn Harkup investigates the poisons used by the murderer in fourteen classic Agatha Christie mysteries.

Lurking beneath the progressive activism and sex positivity in the 1970 to '80s, a dark undercurrent of violence rippled across the American landscape. With reported cases of sexual assault and homicide on the rise, the FBI created a specialized team - the “Mindhunters”, better known as the Behavioral Science Unit - to track down the country's most dangerous criminals. And yet narrowing down a seemingly infinite list of potential suspects seemed daunting at best and impossible at worst - until Dr. Ann Wolbert Burgess stepped on the scene.

The plea of insanity in criminal cases can be traced back at least to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which dates from 1755-1759 BC. It is a complicated defence, and its origins in modern law lie with the 'M'Naghten Rules' of 1843. Clearly a plea of insanity in murder cases is of critical importance when the death penalty is still applied, and even today it may still be the difference between a life sentence in a high-security prison, or an indeterminate one in a secure psychiatric hospital.

Charged with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. Maintaining his innocence, he read everything on criminal law available in the prison library and persuaded a new lawyer to petition for the then-innovative DNA testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.

At the heart of countless crimes lie the mysteries of the human mind. In this eye-opening book, Dr. Cheryl Paradis draws back the curtain on the fascinating world of forensic psychology, and revisits the most notorious and puzzling cases she has handled in her multifaceted career. Her riveting, sometimes shocking stories reveal the crucial and often surprising role forensic psychology plays in the pursuit of justice - in which the accused may truly believe their own bizarre lies, creating a world that pushes them into committing horrific, violent crimes.

In only 90 seconds, a fire in The Station nightclub in Rhode Island left 100 people dead or dying and injured hundreds more. It would take years to find out why - and who was really at fault. Best-selling author and three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Scott James investigates all the central figures, including the band’s manager and lead singer, the fire inspector, the maker of the acoustical foam, as well as the brothers.

Step past the flashing lights into the true scene of the crime with this frank, unflinching, and unforgettable account of life as a crime scene investigator. Whether explaining rigor mortis or the art of fingerprinting a stiff corpse on the side of the road, Dana Kollmann details her true, unvarnished experiences as a CSI for the Baltimore County Police Department.

In his book To Catch a Predator, Chris Hansen, the on-air correspondent for one of Dateline's most successful series, looks deeper into the world of child predators. The book expands beyond the Dateline series to include more commentary from psychological and criminal experts about the origins and methods of child predators, and includes substantive advice for both parents and children on how to protect kids who use the Internet.

Groundbreaking scientific analysis that breaks the JFK assassination wide open! Did a shot from the "grassy knoll" kill President Kennedy? If so, was Oswald part of a conspiracy or an innocent patsy? Why have scientific experts who examined the evidence failed to put such questions to rest? In 2001, scientist Dr. Donald Byron Thomas published a peer-reviewed article that revived the debate over the finding by the House Select Committee on Assassinations that there had indeed been a shot from the grassy knoll, caught on a police dictabelt recording.