 The
Perfect Crime?
Not at Pine Manor
by Michele M. Talbot, Professor of Biology
For the second time in two years, police tape blocks
entry to the Dane Science Building office of a Pine Manor College faculty
member. The body has been removed, but the bloodstains, fingerprints,
footprints, fibers, documents, telephone records, and weapons remain
as evidence. Two murders in two years...
...strangely coincident with the offering of IDS 222, Murder She Wrote:
Using Science to Solve Crime. Who could possibly have murdered the brilliant
Cruella DeManor, PhD, Professor of Egyptian History. Any one of the
four students in serious danger of failing her “killer” senior
seminar? Her estranged boyfriend? Gale Norris, her closest friend at
the College, whose sweater conceals deep scratches? One of her colleagues
from the Cairo Museum, with whom she has been collecting and collaborating
for the past five summers?
 
 
“Rigor mortis is consistent with the position of the body. Rigor
mortis indicates that the time of death was between 8 and 9 p.m. The
ambient temperature is 71 degrees F. How does that compare with the
internal body temperature registered at 11:30? Has the body been checked
for fiber evidence? Make sure you photograph the bloodstains on that
windowsill.” Students work collaboratively in pairs and teams to
collect every relevant piece of evidence and information. Solving this
crime will require two weeks of intensive investigation, crime scene
analysis, evidence collection, and three written reports. This is the
final project, the last of a dozen cases, reviewed and solved by the
32 students enrolled in IDS 222. It will not be easy, but the students
in this course are well trained in the latest techniques and technologies
available to the modern criminal investigator.
What kind of course begins with readings from Sherlock Holmes and Agatha
Christie, requires viewing of The Bone Collector, and includes topics
in forensic pathology, forensic anthropology and serology, blood stain
analysis, ballistics, voice and document examination, fingerprint and
DNA analysis, as well as psychological profiling and evidence collection?
Most certainly this is an interdisciplinary course, one that draws students
from many majors who apply facts and concepts from all of these disciplines
as they solve actual and fictional crimes.
The course was developed by Michele Talbot, Professor of Biology, in
the summer of 1999, after she attended two Chautauqua courses sponsored
by the National Science Foundation and funded by the NSF and a Pine
Manor College summer mini-sabbatical. Chautauqua short courses are an
annual series of forums in which scholars at the frontiers of various
sciences meet intensively for several days with undergraduate teachers
of science. These forums provide an opportunity for invited scholars
to communicate new knowledge, concepts, and techniques directly to college
teachers in ways that are beneficial to their teaching.
Professor Talbot incorporated materials from “Using Science to
Solve Crimes” and “Advanced Forensic Analysis” with a
longtime personal interest in forensics to create the Pine Manor course,
and she put this most popular course together long before the CBS TV
series.
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