Terrific, edge of your seat, read

by BRudman

This is a seamless, taut and wonderfully disturbing thriller that only Bill Diehl could have conceived. Unfinished at the time of Bill's death, Ken Atchity and Michael Simpson have remained faithful to Bill's vision and delivered one of the finest Diehl novels yet. Those of you who have followed Bill's work, from Sharkey's Machine to Primal Fear to Eureka, will not be disappointed. Others who read this first will be driven to go back and enjoy Bill's nine prior novels.

Hardboil Vintage Read Reviews Sharky's Machine

http://vinpulp.blogspot.com


Sharky's Machine By William Diehl
Dell 18292, Copyright 1978

William Diehl waited until the resilient age of 50 to start his first novel. The story behind that, is he was a seated juror on a trial and was so bored with it, he grabbed a notepad and starting writing. Well if true, we have to thank his local jury commissioners office, because what came out was “Sharky’s Machine,” a novel that holds nothing back and throws just about everything at the reader.

She lay beside the table. Her face was gone. Part of her shoulder was blown away. The right side of her head had been destroyed. She was a soggy, limp bundle laying partly against the wall in front of the door, blood pumping from her head, her neck, her shoulder. A splash of blood on the wall dripped down to the body.
Sharky clenched his teeth, felt bile sour in his throat, cried out, "No. Goddamnmit, no!"

Kicked out of the narcotics department after a bloody shootout in the streets of Atlanta, Sharky gets thrown down into the lowly Vice Squad. But he’s a good hard street cop and along with fellow beaten down Vice misfits, (the “Machine”) they quickly stumble upon a high-class prostitution ring. The operation seems to be shaking down wealthy “johns,” so they set up surveillance involving everything from shadowing people to wire-taps. A hooker named Domino becomes the "person of interest" in the corrupt scheme and Sharky obsessively makes her the focus of the investigation. Just when we get comfortable with the violence, sex, and pace in the story, Diehl takes it to another level. You have an U.S. Senator making plans for a Presidential run linked to the call-girl, a shady millionaire called DeLaroza who is connected to the Senator and Domino, and one of the most ruthless paid killers I have come across in any novel. Murders start occurring and once Sharky learns that Domino’s life is in danger, the "Machine" decides to hush up the investigation from their superiors and go it alone.

This turns out bigger than a standard street cop novel. Millions of dollars of stolen gold from WWII is tied to DeLaroza, and he needs people silenced. The U.S. Senators’ bid for the White House is in jeopardy and he needs Delaroza’s help. And our crazed hitman just keeps on coming. Of course Sharky falls for Domino, and the sex scenes of her with customers and Sharky listening in on the wire, are vicariously erotic. (Definitely “adults only” stuff) The novel succeeds in capturing the acrid street pulse of the late 1970s, using violence on high-volume, plenty of foul mouth language, and mysterious characters thriving on sleaze and power. Diehl creates a dirty, rash, and cold atmosphere, which makes the private scenes between Sharky and Domino, that much more endearing. And it is these brief pockets of tenderness that balances out the extreme raw edge that dominates the novel. But don’t get me wrong, this novel was written to get your attention.

For starting late, William Diehl authored a handful of excellent novels and fans of his work will differ on which is their favorite. But for me, “Sharky’s Machine” will always be on top.

This novel is an erupting force that spits at you.....

Real Life CSI: Crime Scene Cleaners

Bill Credits Writer Sydney Sheldon With Jump-Starting his Career as a Novelist

By The Times-Union

Judy Wells, May 17, 1998

Author William Diehl, who spoke at the Library Guild luncheon May 7, provided a ray of sunshine in the darkness. The St. Simon's Island resident credits writer Sydney Sheldon with jump-starting his career as a novelist.

According to Bill, Sheldon liked his first novel, Sharkey's Machine, so much he helped promote the book. Not only did he talk it up to others in the industry, encourage friends to buy it and send the publisher a glowing endorsement, but Sheldon also went around Los Angeles personally buying up dozens of copies, thus catapulting it onto the local Best Sellers list.

The two men have never met, although Bill says he has thanked Sheldon often and profusely in writing. He also feels morally duty bound to return the favor. Although unsolicited manuscripts are chucked, Bill reads the first 50 pages of every new novel publishers sent to him for comment.

''If it hooks me I finish it,'' he said, and despite ever-impending deadlines of his own, takes the time to write a complimentary blurb for the cover.

Look for Bill Diehl's newest novel around Christmas. From the plot line he passed along, it will be a corker.

Computer Forensics: The New Fingerprinting

After 31 years and 100,000 man-hours of conventional research, the famous case of the BTK killer was cracked with 15 minutes of work by a modern digital detective. The new breed of gumshoe is trained to study bytes the way old-school G-men studied fingerprints. And it's paying off.


by Brad Reagan

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology

The night Cindy M.* disappeared, she ate dinner with her parents and older brother in the family's two-story suburban Pittsburgh home, then went to her room and promised to come back for apple-walnut pie. The pretty 13-year-old with dark blond hair and blue-green eyes never returned. When her parents checked her room, they found neither a note nor a sign of forced entry. It was New Year's Day, 2002, and their daughter was simply gone.

Pittsburgh police spent almost two days interviewing Cindy's friends and family, while neighbors scoured nearby fields and gullies, but everyone came up empty. When FBI special agent Denise Holtz took over the case, late on Jan. 2, the investigation had barely moved beyond square one.

This is what Holtz knew: Cindy was a shy child who wrote poetry and frequently made the honor roll. She was rarely in trouble. She could have run away, but she left her coat hanging in the closet on one of the coldest nights of the year. Only one tidbit seemed promising: Friends said Cindy frequented Internet chat rooms.

A six-year veteran of the Crimes Against Children Task Force, Holtz suspected the answer to Cindy's disappearance was hidden within the girl's upstairs computer. She also knew that it might already be too late. If Cindy had fallen into the hands of a killer, the statistics were grim: 74 percent of abducted children who are murdered are dead within 3 hours.

* Not her real name

When Andy Spruill, a computer forensics examiner at Guidance Software, looks into a hard drive, he sees everything about its owner. "It's like looking into his mind," he says. Here's how he and other computer sleuths find their clues.

Step 1

• Computer drives that may contain evidence are attached to a write-blocking device that allows examiners to read from them without changing the contents.

Step 2

• Software, such as Guidance's EnCase, creates a forensic image of the hard drive--which Spruill compares to a "digital evidence bag."

Step 3

• The forensics software analyzes the image, uncovering hidden and deleted files as well as partially deleted "file remnants," and displays them in a hierarchical format.

Results

Photos, Microsoft Office documents, e-mails and MP3 files can hide incriminating meta-data, and the Internet cache stores records of a suspect's Web travels that can be recovered even after they are deleted.

"We knew that time was ticking and we couldn't sleep until we found her," Holtz says. She turned to FBI forensic examiner Tony Pallone, one of the bureau's computer specialists, and asked him to drop all other projects until he found something in the machine that could lead them to the missing girl.

Pallone made a forensic image of Cindy's computer hard drive and settled in for a long night. He then ran a program that analyzed the image--yielding thousands upon thousands of numbers and letters scrambled together, amounting to little more than gibberish to the untrained eye.

From Cindy's personal Web page, Pallone knew she called herself "goddessofall" and listed among her interests witchcraft, hypnosis and mythology, so he searched the data for snippets of those words hoping to discover other clues amid the jumble of characters. He found some troubling information: "File residue" logs showing the computer's recent activities revealed that Cindy visited chat rooms dedicated to sadomasochism. Potentially worse, Pallone deduced from the gibberish that she chatted frequently with someone going by the ominous screen name of "dcsadist." Pallone searched the Internet for references to anyone using that name but nothing surfaced.

By the evening of Jan. 3, Cindy's parents began to lose hope that she would be found alive. "You know the statistics," the girl's mother later told Newark, N.J.'s Star-Ledger. "It's a one-in-a-million shot to see your child again."

PALLONE is an examiner in the Pittsburgh FBI office's computer forensics lab. The operation is a small-scale version of the FBI's 10 multiagency Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories (RCFLs); two more are slated to open this year. The FBI provides the RCFL startup costs--about $3 million per lab--and state and local agencies contribute staffers certified in computer forensics. As cases come in, examiners pitch in on those with the highest priority, regardless of which agency owns jurisdiction.

All told, 200-plus examiners at RCFLs and other FBI teams across the country analyzed more than 1400 terabytes of data in 2005--equal to a stack of paper 47,000 miles high. This new breed of gumshoe, trained to study bytes the way old-school G-men studied fingerprints, snares a predictable cast of hackers and insider traders but also a surprising number of violent criminals.

Computer forensics is not only crucial to law enforcement, it is critical to the business world, where digital evidence-gathering tools are used for everything from fraud investigations to employee monitoring. And government computer investigators buy much of their software from the same commercial vendors that supply big business. The dominant player in the field is Pasadena, Calif.-based Guidance Software, makers of EnCase, a widely used suite of programs that can dig deep into the memory of everything from computer hard drives to MP3 players. The next generation should even be able to search cellphones. Through its consulting arm, the company also trains more than 3500 law enforcement officers each year.

"A computer is no different than a tape recorder--it records everything you do," says Andy Spruill, who oversees the consulting division and works as a lead investigator with the Westminster, Calif., police department's computer forensics unit. "Right now [computer forensics] is still a specialty, with few people having the skills and resources to do it," he says. "Think about where DNA was 10 years ago. Most cops didn't even know about it. Now most patrol officers carry DNA swabs. That is where [computer forensics] is going to go, to the patrol level."

"It is unusual today to have a case that doesn't involve computers," explains Mary Beth Buchanan, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. She adds that computers are not just a source of evidence, but a source of better evidence. "Through the use of computers, people store information they might not otherwise. They might not even know it is being stored," Buchanan says. "The value [of the evidence] is also greater because that information is stored in an organized manner and the computer leaves footprints of an individual's every action."

In 2003 Kansas State University English professor Thomas Murray's computer turned into a witness against him. For more than a year, local police suspected Murray in his ex-wife's stabbing death, but it was not until examiners in the Kansas City, Mo., RCFL searched his office computer that they found damning evidence. In the months before his wife's death, Murray had used such Internet search terms as "how to kill someone quietly and quickly" and "murder for hire." A jury rejected Murray's defense that he was researching script ideas for a television show such as CSI and sentenced him to life in prison.

The new breed of gumshoe is trained to study bytes the way old-school G-men studied fingerprints.

Digital evidence helped the FBI find Dennis Rader, aka the BTK killer (left), and Scott William Tyree (right). (Photographs by AP/World Wide Photo [Rader], Matt Freed [Tyree])

The most famous case cracked using the skills of computer forensics investigators is last year's capture of the serial killer known as BTK, short for "Bind, Torture and Kill."

Responsible for 10 murders around Wichita, Kan., between 1974 and 1991, BTK taunted police with letters that boasted of his deeds but yielded few clues to his identity. He resurfaced in 2004 with a letter to a local newspaper hinting that he might be plotting more murders.

In February 2005, Wichita television station KSAS received a translucent, purple floppy disk accompanied by a 3 x 5 index card with a message from BTK: "Any Communications will have a # assigned from now on, encase [sic] one is lost or not found."

The BTK task force enlisted the expertise of Randy Stone, a 39-year-old Desert Storm vet who started in the Wichita police department's Forensic Computer Crime Unit in 1998. When Stone checked the disk, it contained only one file, named "Test A.rtf." The text of the file instructed investigators to read the index card. No clues there.

Stone checked the disk properties to see the previous user: someone named Dennis. Then he checked to see where the disk was last used: Wichita's Christ Lutheran Church. On the church Web site's list of officers, there was one Dennis, a man named Dennis Rader.

The police used DNA evidence to link Rader to the crime scenes and in August 2005 he was given 10 consecutive life sentences. After more than 31 years and 100,000 man-hours, Stone's digital detective work cracked the BTK case within 15 minutes of receiving the disk.

"On a scale of one to 10, it was about a three in terms of computer forensics," Stone says. "As simple as that was, the sad thing is 95 percent of law enforcement in the U.S. could not have done something like that."

Late on Jan. 3, 2002, as Pallone toiled away in his lab, investigators looking for Cindy finally caught a break. An anonymous Tampa man contacted the FBI and said he might know something about the girl he'd seen in a missing child photo on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Web site. The tipster said he met a man in a bondage group online claiming to have captured a teenager. "I think I got one," the man wrote the tipster in a message, showing video of a girl chained to a wall, crying. The tipster thought the man lived in northern Virginia and used the screen name "master for teen slave girls."

Pallone's co-worker, Tim Huff, arrived at the office around 8 am, just as the tipster gave up the screen name. Of his six years as a field agent, Huff has spent five working in computer forensics. "I like putting bad guys in jail, that's why I got into the bureau," Huff says. "I got into computer forensics because I like solving puzzles."

Four others in the lab were pulled onto the case to join Pallone in searching chat groups and elsewhere around the Web for anyone using that screen name. Even with the new information, they were still searching 90 minutes later.

Maybe, Huff thought, the name was not "master for teen slave girls," as the original agent wrote it down, but some derivative using Web shorthand. Team members began to search for variations on the name and, within minutes, one of the examiners found a Yahoo Chat profile for a suspect using the handle "master4teen_slavegirls." In his profile, the man listed other online aliases, including "dcsadist."

It was a huge breakthrough--they quickly matched the information from the girl's computer with the tipster's information, making it a near certainty this was the guy holding Cindy. But the profile didn't say where he lived.

Holtz tried to contact Yahoo to get the Internet protocol (IP) address of the profile, but it was 6:30 am at the Yahoo corporate offices on the West Coast and she couldn't get anyone on the phone. Eventually, an agent in Sacramento, Calif., was reached, who called a contact at Yahoo. Minutes later, Holtz faxed a letter to Yahoo asking for the IP address, citing Section 212 of the Patriot Act.

Prior to the Patriot Act, which was passed in October 2001, many corporations required search warrants or subpoenas before granting government requests for customer information, mainly to shield themselves from lawsuits. But Section 212 releases companies from civil liability in cases where someone is at risk of "immediate danger of death or serious physical injury." This case was one of the first times the provision was used.

Cyber sleuths: FBI computer forensic examiners Tim Huff (left) and Tony Pallone unlock the secrets inside hundreds of computers each year. (Photograph by Brian Berman)

Around 11 am, Yahoo faxed the Pittsburgh lab the IP address. A quick search identified Verizon as the service provider. Thirty minutes later, Verizon told Holtz the name and address of the customer registered to the account, a 38-year-old Herndon, Va., man named Scott William Tyree.

With Tyree's address confirmed, Holtz contacted the Washington, D.C., field office, which dispatched a team of agents to Tyree's home. Cindy had been missing for almost three days; now Holtz, Huff and the rest of the Pittsburgh office could only wait nervously for word of her fate.

At Tyree's suburban townhouse, agents burst through the front door with guns drawn. The house appeared to be empty until they found Cindy in an upstairs bedroom, collared and chained to a bolt in the floor. The chain was just long enough to allow her to go to the bathroom. Tyree, it turned out, had reported to work at a nearby office of Computer Associates, but not before warning Cindy that he would hurt her if she tried to escape.

By 3:30 pm, the investigators at the Pittsburgh RCFL received word: Cindy was safe. Holtz, a six-year veteran of the bureau, didn't try to hold back her tears. Still sniffling, she walked to a nearby conference room to give Cindy's family the good news.

Tyree was picked up less than an hour later at his office. He had no criminal record and exhibited few previous signs of being a sexual predator. He was twice divorced and maintained a good relationship with his only child, a 12-year-old girl who lived with her mother in California. Tyree's daughter had reportedly stayed with him for most of December during school break, returning home on New Year's Day--the same day Cindy disappeared.

In subsequent interviews, investigators determined Cindy was like many teenagers who get involved in dangerous role-playing on the Web and draw the attention of predators like Tyree. On New Year's Day, she sneaked out of the house and met Tyree a few blocks away. By the time Cindy realized the true intentions of her captor, it was too late to escape. She now speaks to student groups about the dangers of the Internet.

Buchanan, the lead prosecutor, says further evidence obtained from Tyree's computer by Huff and his staff was instrumental in building her case and forcing Tyree to plead guilty. In March 2003, he was sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison.

More than three years later, Huff says it remains one of his most rewarding cases. "There is very little that I have experienced that makes you feel as good as knowing you made a child safe," he says.

 

The Thrill Of It All: Interview With Bill Diehl

For best-selling novelist Bill Diehl, promoting each new thriller is almost as rewarding as writing it



By Ann Hyman

Times-Union staff writer, October 17, 1997


There are authors who consider the business of selling books once they are in print to be not their job, to be vaguely demeaning.

Bill Diehl is not one of those authors.

The best-selling writer of Sharky's Machine, Chameleon, Primal Fear and a handful of other thrillers for the thinking thriller reader, loves selling his books, sees it as part of the job.

And Diehl likes meeting his readers.

''They're always kind. They're not going to be there if they don't like your work,'' he said.

Diehl was in Jacksonville last week as part of a promotion tour for Reign in Hell (Ballantine, $25), out just two weeks ago and already climbing on The New York Times, the Publishers Weekly and The Wall Street Journal best-sellers lists.

Intense promotion of Reign in Hell began at a publication party at Beachview Books in St. Simons, Ga., the author's home since 1983, and continues until Thanksgiving.

'Tis the season for book promotions. More books are sold in September, October and November than any other time of the year. Publishers and libraries and booksellers sponsor book events across the country. There are fairs, festivals, read-ins, author tours, signings, lectures, luncheons.

''I'm doing the Rocky Mountain Book Fair in Denver around the first of November and the Miami Book Fair two weeks later,'' he said last Friday.

Getting there is not half the fun for the author.

''I don't like to travel at all,'' he admitted. ''Part of it is I don't like to fly and I particularly don't like to fly those little two-engine airplanes.''

The fun begins for Diehl once he is face-to-face with his readers.

Nancy Thomason is owner of Beachview Books in St. Simons.

She talked about Diehl and his readers at the publication party that launched Reign in Hell.

''He stayed an extra hour and a half because of the line. He took time to talk to everyone,'' Thomason said. ''He is an incredibly generous person with his time.''

But, aren't all authors glad to stick around and sign books as long as readers are lined up to buy?

''Absolutely not,'' she said with a wry twist.

Thomason has lived in St. Simons for more than 20 years, so she's watched Diehl's popularity balloon.

''But he's just very down to earth, a basic type person. He's never let his fame go to his head,'' she said.

Diehl, 73, wrote his first novel, Sharky's Machine, when he was 50.

Giving up his profession of journalist and photographer at 50 was a big gamble, but it paid off. Sharky was a big book, a big movie, and life has not been the same for Diehl since.

Reign in Hell is Diehl's eighth novel.

Chicago lawyer Martin Vain, the hero of Primal Fear and Show of Evil, is back in Reign, battling terrorists, armed-to-the-teeth right-wing militia and a snake-handling preacher with a dark vision of America and a dangerous way with words.

Diehl said researching the book took a long time.

''All of my books are fairly topical,'' he said. ''I don't want to just write thrillers, I want to write books that have some kind of significance, books that have something to say. I began tracking the militia groups three or four years ago, on the Internet, through newspapers.''

He described an anonymous meeting with a militia informant at a picnic table in a park in Brunswick, Ga. The man sat with his back to him. Diehl said, ''I never saw him. All I know is that he was white, had dark hair, was about my size.''

Their conversation, almost word for word, became a chapter in Reign in Hell.

Diehl also read scores of hate pamphlets published by various militia and white supremacy groups. He watched hours of surveillance tapes shown to him by a friend who is a former agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms bureau. He saw militia members making hand grenades, chopping off shotguns.

He found a congregation of snake handlers in Enigma, Ga., to get an authentic view of that intense, seldom-seen religious expression.

He is confident that Reign in Hell treats snake handlers and the militia fairly and tells the truth of the militia agenda.

''The Oklahoma City bombing is what really triggered the book,'' Diehl said. ''It is what made it viable. Prior to that event, people would not have accepted it. I think now, probably, what I'm predicting is an apocalypse of some kind and I think that's possible.''

The Oklahoma City bombing proved what zealots will do in pursuit of their cause.

''And I'm always afraid of zealots,'' the author said.

Reign in Hell is Diehl's favorite of his novels.

''It says a lot about things I feel strongly about, not only about the militia movement, but about developers and polluters and so forth,'' he said.

When his schedule of events promoting the new book wind up, around Thanksgiving, he will take the rest of the year off.

''I'll start a new book in January,'' he said.

He doesn't know yet the subject.

But, Nazi money in Swiss banks interests him. So, maybe Zurich is next stop for Bill Diehl.

''Maybe,'' he said. ''Maybe not.''

The Real CSI: Death Detective Dysfunction

A.C. Thompson, Mosi Secret, Lowell Bergman and Sandra Bartlett

In detective novels and television crime dramas like CSI the nation's morgues are staffed by highly trained medical professionals equipped with the most sophisticated tools of 21st-century science. Operating at the nexus of medicine and criminal justice, these death detectives thoroughly investigate each and every suspicious fatality.

Read More

Savannah News Press - Primal Fear

Bill Diehl Primal Fear

Cover Atlanta Magazine, July 1984

Fingerprints to DNA

In the bedroom, a man in his fifties lies dead on the floor next to a bed with a broken glass bottle nearby; reddish-brown stains on the walls, a red stain on the carpet and the bathroom window smashed. What's been going on - accident or foul play?  Roger Beckmann explores the role of forensic science in solving crime.

ORDER YOUR COPY OF SEVEN WAYS TO DIE!

This is the sort of puzzle that could confront a crime scene investigator (CSI) from the police force. Crime scene investigators, often referred to as 'scientific police', are one part of the forensic team whose skills are essential in modern police investigation. 

 

In the fictitious scene just described, police must determine whether or not a crime has occurred. The man may have died of natural causes, the stains could be from spilt red wine, and a cricket ball may have smashed the bathroom window weeks ago - or even after the death.

 

To put the pieces together, a team effort is required. Police officers will interview neighbours and gather information about the dead person. A doctor, or forensic pathologist, may be called to examine the body. The police forensic team must look for clues as to what occurred, and try to reconstruct a possible sequence of events.

 

The science of crime

Every day, many crimes are committed in Australia. Science has become an essential tool for solving these crimes.

Originally, the word 'forensic' meant anything relating to a law court. But today it refers to a whole new subject. Forensics or forensic science means using science to solve crime. But what exactly does a forensic scientist do?

At the scene of the crime, the crime scene investigators will thoroughly examine the area. They will take detailed notes and photographs, look for fingerprints, palm prints and sole prints; marks of tools and weapons; marks from shoes; fibres from clothing or material; fragments of paint and glass and body fluids.

Detecting fingerprints using a monochromatic light. Source: Australian Federal Police

Increasingly, CSIs are using specialised techniques, on site, to determine which areas to concentrate their investigation on. For example, they may use luminol, which detects traces of blood by reacting with the iron in the haemoglobin molecules that are within red blood cells. Luminol glows when it comes into contact with blood. Sometimes it reveals small traces of blood that would normally be invisible.

The presence of blood, however, does not mean it is from a human, or even that it had anything to do with a crime. After all, people do occasionally cut themselves, which could leave a tiny drop of blood on the carpet.

Is it like the TV shows?

Forensic scientists are quick to point out that TV dramas about forensic science are inaccurate.

The most common misconception is that most forensic work is involved with murders. Instead, it is involved with house burglaries, drug offences, fires, and vehicle accidents.

Secondly, it is not the forensic experts' job to confirm what police investigators would like to hear. Forensic science, like any form of science, involves having an open mind and being impartial. The crime scene investigator or the lab scientist cannot afford to hang on to pet theories or preferred suspects. He or she must work to uncover facts that can be used as evidence. Quite often, these facts may serve to rule out many of the suspects that the police have.

Analysis of objects determine if they were used in a crime. Source: Australian Federal Police

Finally, TV dramas tend to roll all forensic work into one person's responsibilities. In real life, forensic scientists are specialists. No single person possesses all the knowledge and expertise of every field of forensics. Solving crimes is very much teamwork, and modern teams are large.

Answers from the dead

Pathology is the study of disease, and cause of death. A forensic pathologist specialises in examining dead bodies to determine how and when death occurred.

As well as examining the body, either on site or through photos taken at the scene, the forensic pathologist may also use x-ray imaging and will usually conduct an autopsy or post-mortem. A post-mortem is a careful dissection of the corpse, which comes from the Latin language meaning after-death. The pathologist will also take samples of body tissues, like blood, liver or hair, for further analysis.

One of the first tasks with a body on site is to establish the time of death. The pathologist starts with temperature. The normal temperature inside a human body is 37^oC. A pathologist will take the temperature inside the body, as well as the temperature in the place where the body was found. The rate at which body temperature falls after death depends on the external temperature, the clothing worn, the size of the body, and its percentage of fat.

After 12 hours, most dead bodies are the same temperature as their surroundings, therefore other methods are required for determining the time of death. There are many gradual changes that take place after death. These occur in a particular sequence, concluding with total decomposition. Skilled pathologists can usually use these changes to assess, roughly, when death occurred.

After the dead body has been examined at the scene, it is wrapped for transport. This is done very carefully because small details - like fragments of skin, hair or blood caught under a victim's fingernails during a struggle - may provide crucial evidence, linking a suspect to the crime. The remnants of explosive material from a gunshot may also be present on the skin, for example, near a bullet hole. Such residues, and a bullet wound itself can give information about the type of bullet used, as well as the distance and direction from which it was fired.

At the autopsy, pathologists start with carefully looking at the body and its clothing. They then examine the skin - looking for cuts, scratches, stabs, wounds or injection needle marks - and the nails.

Secrets from within

Although a body does not always show marks on the outside, there is often evidence inside that will be revealed during the autopsy. For example, a large blood clot within a major artery or vein, or even in the heart itself, may be a cause of natural death, which would rule out foul play.

Samples of a person's stomach contents can reveal the last food eaten. Blood analysis will show the existence of any poisons, illegal drugs or medicines. Urine in the bladder may also be analysed.

Print precision

Analysis of fingerprints is probably the most well known use of forensic science. Each fingertip has a pattern of fine skin ridges that are slightly different for every person - even identical twins.

Everywhere we go, we leave a telltale sign of our presence. Source: Australian Federal Police

A fingerprint is composed of grease and dried sweat left behind by the tips of the fingers. The palms of the hand also leave identifiable prints, as do the soles of the feet.

Fingerprints can be detected on a vast range of different surfaces using a variety of techniques. The police keep a huge national database of prints taken from charged criminals. New prints are taken by a laser-scanning procedure, where the hand is placed on a flat glass plate, and its print is stored and compared to other prints electronically.

DNA Fingerprinting 

A new form of identification relies on DNA, which carries the genetic information of each person. Everyone's DNA is different (except for identical twins). DNA profiling or typing is sometimes called DNA fingerprinting because it allows police to identify an individual in the same way as fingerprints do. DNA can be extracted from any body fluid (blood, saliva, sweat, nasal mucus etc) or from fragments of a body (hair roots, torn skin or flesh).

DNA fingerprinting has become a powerful tool in helping solve crime. Source: Australian Federal Police

Forensic scientists do not look at the whole of a person's DNA sequence, but rather a sub-set of a DNA profile. DNA profiles are a very powerful means of determining whether two or more samples may or may not have come from the same person. If DNA profiles do not match, they came from different people. However, if they do match, there is still a very slight chance that they may have come from different people.

DNA is the same in every cell of the body, and stays the same throughout life. As such, DNA profiles taken at different times and places can be compared in order to determine whether or not they come from the same person. 

DNA analysis does not enable scientists to build up a picture of a person from their DNA. The only characteristic that the DNA tells us is the sex of the person. DNA profiling is only used to compare different DNA samples, and to determine whether or not they could be from the same person.

Correlation is not proof

As in all areas of science, evidence from forensic investigation does not mean proof. A correlation between two things does not mean that one causes the other.

Searching for evidence that may help solve the crime. Source: Australian Federal Police

For example, you might observe that most people involved in car crashes wear seat belts, but this doesn't mean that seat belts cause crashes. Your observation is correct, but you cannot use it as evidence for the cause of accidents. You need to make further observations - for example, of people in cars who are not involved in crashes.

Pieces of evidence may not always agree. A fibre found at a murder scene may match a male suspect's jacket, but other evidence, such as DNA found at the scene, may belong to someone else. There are a number of possibilities. The suspect may have:

• committed the murder;
• been present at the crime, without committing the offence;
• been present at the scene innocently or suspiciously before the crime occurred;
• arrived after the crime and left in fright; or,
• been nowhere near the scene and his jacket was used by someone else with or without his knowledge.

Therefore, all evidence must be taken together. Very rarely is one piece of evidence conclusive proof. 

 http://www.abc.net.au

This article originally appeared in the October/November 2001 edition of Helix.

The author would like to thank the Australian Federal Police Forensic Services, in particular Mr Karl Kent, for generous assistance with this article.

Bill Diehl Remembers Bob Wallace

A Novel Relationship

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By Karen Hill

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We had a local band that played every night at the YMCA. The last night before we all went off to the war, right in the middle of "One O'Clock Jump," the whole bridge fell off the bass he was playing. We left it in the corner there, kind of as a tribute. It may still be there. I hope so.

That's best-selling novelist Bill Diehl talking about his hometown friend, Bob Wallace. From Clearfield, Pa., both would go on to survive World War II and move to Atlanta. There, Wallace would become the longtime editor of the alumni magazine and many other publications. Diehl would shoot pictures for him for a decade, in the meandering path that would ultimately lead to fame and fortune through several best-selling thrillers.
Wallace has been dead for 28 years; Diehl still refers to him as "my best friend."

The time working for Tech, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, "was very valuable, very rewarding," Diehl says. "We never had an argument. Never had a fight. I still look back on that time with great fondness."

Wallace returned to Atlanta after the war to complete his industrial management degree at Georgia Tech. He stayed, working on Tech publications until his death.

Meanwhile, Diehl was working as a reporter for his hometown paper, The Clearfield Progress, in a town he describes as "so far up in the mountains you had to bail out of a plane to get out." Wallace called, with news that his father-in-law had found a job for Diehl at The Atlanta Constitution. The father-in-law had worked there years before, had read some of Diehl's work, had liked it. Diehl headed south.
But somehow, the Atlanta newspaper missed the memo. There was no job.

"I stood in the lobby, waiting for editor Ralph McGill to come out. When Mr. McGill came out, I told him what had happened. He asked if I had been in the war. I said yes, as a ball turret gunner in a B-24. He said that if I could survive that, I could certainly do a reporter's job," Diehl recalls. "I went to work that night."
Diehl wrote obituaries, then moved to the police beat. Always, writing was his first love, but when the Constitution and rival Atlanta Journal merged in 1950, confusion and layoffs in the reorganized photo department led to his second career: photography.

To make sure there were always pictures to go with his stories, he decided to take them himself.
"I bought a cheap little camera and started taking pictures. A few years later, Bob hired me and that really launched a photographic career," Diehl says.

"I was among the early photographers to use a 35-millimeter camera. Most of the others were using Liecas or 4x5s. What we were doing was kind of experimental.

"I shot every [Geogia Tech] football game for 11 years, then assignments for the alumni publications. We did some really experimental stuff that worked very well."

Some of Diehl's football pictures were printed in Sports Illustrated, rushed after the game to a Delta airplane that would deliver them to New York overnight.

Diehl remembers sitting backward in a moving roller coaster to take a picture of Tech football coach Bobby Dodd enjoying Disneyland while in Los Angeles to play Southern California. He also remembers taking pictures of silicone in the nose of rockets.

Diehl was billed in several Tech publications of the time as "chief photographer." Still, the work was just part-time.

In 1956, Diehl left the Constitution, turning almost exclusively to freelance photography in the next years.
Much of his work was for Georgia Tech; other assignments, including a portrait of Coca-Cola Company Chairman Robert Woodruff that appeared on the cover of Business Week magazine, came through contacts and friends from Tech.

"I also wrote speeches for Ivan Allen before he became mayor. I met John Portman," Diehl says. "I knew a lot of people because I took photos for them; I got to meet a lot of shakers and movers in the early days of Atlanta.

"Atlanta was a wonderful town then, with just half a million people. It was easy to get around, to meet people."

In 1960, Diehl became managing editor of Atlanta magazine. Soon, he and Wallace were freelancing for each other.

"I hired Bob to write articles for us. We also bought houses about a block apart. I became godfather for his oldest child," Diehl recalls.

They also shared a sharp sense of humor.

"Both of us have a caustic, barb-wire humor that comes from being in the service," he explains. "We were very sarcastic and would fire back at each other. Our relationship was built a lot on that."

Then, suddenly, Wallace died of a heart attack. He was 48.

"He had a bad heart, but no one realized it was as bad as it was," Diehl says. There seems to be an underlying regret of signs missed, history unremembered: "His father had died of the same thing, sitting in the doctor's office, waiting for an appointment."

The loss may have given impetus to Diehl's big career leap, on his 50th birthday.

"My wife threw a birthday party for me, and one of the gifts was an ice-cream typewriter from Baskin-Robbins. It was so neat that nobody would eat it," he says. "After the party, I went back to get a piece, but the typewriter was just a molten pile of ice cream. I thought, 'That's my career.'"
The next morning, he sold all his cameras. Soon, he began the nine-month effort of birthing "Sharky's Machine," a dark look at the world of an Atlanta vice cop.

"I haven't lifted a camera since."

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Karen Hill is an Atlanta freelance writer.