"The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death": an exploration of a collection of eighteen miniature crime scene models that were built in the 1940's and 50's by a progressive criminologist Frances Glessner Lee (1878 – 1962). The models, which were based on actual homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, were created to train detectives to assess visual evidence. This seven-year project culminated in an exhibition and a book The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (The Monacelli Press, 2004). [Image Gallery]
posted by Fizz on Nov 27, 2011 - 29 comments

"When legal teams need to prove or disprove the authorship of key texts, they call in the forensic linguists. Scholars in the field have tackled the disputed origins of some prestigious works, from Shakespearean sonnets to the Federalist Papers."

Decoding Your E-Mail Personality Ben Zimmer, of Language Log discusses the Facebook case and forensic linguistics in the NY Times. [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam on Aug 2, 2011 - 13 comments

When forensic sculptor Frank Bender, Esquire's Man of the Month in April 2004, died this week the world mourned one of the foremost skull-to-face recreationists. What fewer people knew was that his passing created an opening in The Vidocq Society a members-only crime-solving organization he co-founded in 1990, dedicated to working on long-unsolved murders. Membership is limited to 82 members, one for each year of Inspector Vidocq's life. The organization does have a newsletter available online and guests and associates sometimes tag along to their monthly luncheons, Cuisine & Crime Solving.
posted by jessamyn on Jul 31, 2011 - 18 comments

When a thief stole a backpack and a GPS unit from Amanda Enayati's car, he picked the wrong target to mess with. [more inside]
posted by acb on Sep 21, 2010 - 222 comments

DNA’s Dirty Little Secret: A forensic tool renowned for exonerating the innocent may actually be putting them in prison.
posted by homunculus on Mar 6, 2010 - 40 comments

For the first time in the Indian state of Maharashtra, life sentences were meted out based on the findings of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature(BEOS) profiling. [more inside]
posted by Gyan on Jul 21, 2008 - 53 comments

One day while crossing an empty field, fifteen-year-old Tim Masters happened to see a dead body. Twenty years later, he remains in prison, serving time for a crime that he almost certainly did not commit. A haunting, bizarre tale of a murder investigation gone wrong.
posted by william_boot on Jul 14, 2007 - 37 comments

Police find skeleton in Oddfellows lodge. Turns out, they'd already found it, 6 years before (your guess is as good as mine why no one did anything then). Even more interesting, it's not the only one that's been found and subsequently investigated by the police around the country. Makes you wonder about those Oddfellows.
posted by tommasz on Oct 31, 2003 - 26 comments