Archive for October 2010
THE MYTH OF CSI
Click here to see my opinion piece in The Boston Globe about the myth and reality of our nation’s CSI labs. Cited by The Atlantic as one of its “5 Best Wednesday Columns” here.
Read More“THIS MAN IS MAD!”
I gave a talk last night to Dr. Tali Walters’ class on forensic psychology at Tufts University. Dr. Walters is an eminent forensic psychologist who has interviewed some of the most notorious serial killers of our time. She asked me to describe Joseph Vacher, the villain in my book, talk about his crimes and see…
Read MoreThe Myth of CSI
The Controversy about whether the state’s chief medical examiner falsified his credentials puts one more crack in our national myth about crime scene investigations. That myth, created by the CSI shows that have been a staple of TV for the past decade, portray crime labs as models of ultra-modern efficiency, where dedicated investigators use stateof-the-art…
Read MoreFIVE CRIME-RELATED HOT-BUTTON ISSUES IN THE 1890s THAT ARE STILL HOT TODAY
The forensic pioneers in The Killer of Little Shepherds confronted issues that could easily have jumped from today’s headlines: 1) CONFESSIONS BY TORTURE: The first generation of modern criminologists, in the 1880’s and 90’s studied interrogation techniques, and found that torture was useless. Hans Gross, the great Austrian criminologist, wrote that people subjected to torture…
Read MoreMORE CSI CONTROVERSY
My hometown newspaper The Boston Globe reports on a controversy over possible resume-fudging at the state medical examiner’s office. Sadly, this isn’t first first allegation of wrongdoing at the state lab. Last year Ulysses Rodriguez Charles was freed and awarded $3.25 million in damages after spending 18 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of…
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