Posts Tagged ‘murder’
New Corpse-Detection System Finds Where the Bodies Are Buried
Before they go tearing up the ground in search of a body, authorities often want to be sure about what lies beneath. Typically, tests of soil around a suspected grave site involve extracting samples and shipping them to a lab for testing, which is expensive and time-consuming.
The new system, designed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, consists of a slender probe that can simply be stuck in the ground to pull in air samples. It can even detect bodies buried beneath concrete, as long as you drill a 1/8-inch hole for the probe.
The system involves a small aluminum pipette that can detect trace amounts of a chemical called ninhydrin-reactive nitrogen, which collects in air pockets around a grave site. It's the only known example of testing the chemical in its vapor phase, NIST says. As an added bonus, the system works at ambient temperatures instead of freezing cold, which could make it easy to transport.
Chemists Thomas J. Bruno and Tara M. Lovestead tested it on dead rats, burying some in 3 inches of soil and laying others on top of the soil. For comparison, they also tested boxes with no dead rats in them. The NRN compound was still detectable after nearly five months, the researchers say. A paper on their findings was published in the journal Forensic Science International.
As of now, testing of the air samples still must be done in a lab, but Bruno is working on a portable device that can test for NRN in the field.
One would hope the demand for such technology would be limited, but NIST says it could help law enforcement officials find out where bodies are clandestinely buried.
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Loaner NASA Rover Helps Solve Cold Murder Case in California
In 1991, a man named Bernardo Bass shot and killed his girlfriend Dawn Sanchez, but her body, the firearm used and Bass's car -- the last place Sanchez was seen -- were nowhere to be found. It didn't take a seasoned detective to finger Bass as a person of interest, but the case was dismissed the same year for lack of any hard evidence attaching Bass to the crime.
But the case was recently reopened when an informant told police Bass's car may have been dismantled and buried in an abandoned lot in nearby Alviso, Calif. But the lot was large and littered with other metallic debris that made a full excavation difficult and costly, especially for a very cold case. So the DA enlisted the help of the USGS, which in turn contacted NASA's Payload Directed Flight group to help with the search for Bass's car.
The NASA group was already working on various technologies and processing algorithms geared for underground surveying, specifically ground penetrating radar systems. NASA was also working with Senseta Inc., a Carnegie Mellon spin-off company that was building the rovers that would host those sensors.
Working together, USGS, NASA, and Senseta scientists and engineers deployed a Senseta MAX 5.0A rover to map the magnetic environment of the abandoned lot. After processing the data set, the USGS was able to pinpoint some specific places ripe for excavation. The ensuing dig turned up pieces of Bass's car that led to his eventually pleading no contest to charges of manslaughter nearly two decades after the crime was committed. Just another day at the office for America's space program.
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