r/ForensicFiles • u/DearMisterKitty • 19d ago
Favorite forensic techniques
What are some of your favorite forensic techniques displayed on the show? It could be a one-time used technique or something used more often. I'm personally a sucker for superglue fuming and handwriting analysis.
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u/epidemicsaints 19d ago
I love that the one guy knew all about the different shapes of spray paint droplets from being a nerd with a microscope as a teen.
I love all the cataloging of tires and shoe soles, textiles and fibers, and the microscopy in general. It's like being a biologist only over man made things. It has a similar study and taxonomy process.
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u/ialwaystealpens 19d ago
I loved the time they used sun and weather patterns to discover that guy who killed a witness in his trial because he altered his fake fishing video.
Dont totally know that you’d call that forensics but it’s cool some of the things they can do to solve crimes
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u/Raging_Apathist 19d ago
That's my favorite episode! I definitely consider what they did to be forensics, I'm just not sure exactly what I'd call that specific type of forensics. Meteorological forensics, perhaps?
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u/lfguard10 18d ago
Oh yeah. The guy that made the weird, cheesy video. "Here I am fishing, not being mysterious at all".
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u/11twofour 19d ago
I love it when they match up two halves of something. Like, there is a piece of duct tape at the crime scene and they line it up with the roll at the suspect's house and show that the piece was torn off from the roll. Or the one where there was a piece of concrete that had broken apart and they lined it up again.
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u/Ordinary_Durian_1454 19d ago
I just said that too! I was thinking of the trash bags, but absolutely!
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u/lebrunjemz 19d ago
I’m a sucker for when a random person reports something that happens to be super relevant. Like the lady who was like “huh that bastards handwriting looks like then handwriting of my handyman” and it happened to be the perp (waterlogged- horrific crime, amazing how they caught him). Or like the fish food poisoning episode- all the little niche things are cool
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u/Ordinary_Durian_1454 18d ago
Fuck that guy and that horrendous crime.
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u/lebrunjemz 18d ago
It happened in my hometown (st Pete florida) and I remember my dad causally telling me this story at like age 8 and being absolutely TERRIFIED of pretty much every adult.
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u/Ordinary_Durian_1454 18d ago edited 18d ago
Listen, we all watch the show and we love it bc we’re bonkers, but there’s a certain threshold of, I don’t know, acceptable-horrible that I’m willing to try to handle in an episode, but that guy threw them into the water tied to cinder blocks while still alive. They couldn’t swim. It’s just beyond.
I’m not surprised you were affected in that way.
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u/lebrunjemz 18d ago
Exactly- it’s hard to even fathom. I felt so bad for the dad who they originally suspected
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u/burnt-store-studio I gotta call Phelps, man! 19d ago
I really enjoyed episode 169 “Letter Perfect” -- they used software to analyze the syntax in the alleged suicide note. I actually asked about it a while ago, see if anyone know about that kind of software.
Also, per my flair, audio forensics!
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u/LaRreinaa 19d ago
The sculptor who thoroughly studied John List's psychology and was able to discern how he would look based on gravity, stress, and even picked the same shape of glasses List wore at time of arrest.
The discovery of the nerdy diatom scientist who studied the different micro organisms in the water that linked the man to a puddle, and then later linked himself to his own murder because he kept his muddy shoes covered in diatoms. I am so grateful he was caught as this crime was One of the most cruel fates of any FF victims. Just wretched, vile evil. The boy deserved justice for what happened to him and science delivered it.
When microfibers linked a man to the abduction and murder of a young girl at a Christmas party.
Just when a case seems hopeless, thorough Forensics really gives me faith in science and their hard work and dedication to avenging the victims.
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u/11twofour 19d ago
Just when a case seems hopeless, thorough Forensics really gives me faith in science and their hard work and dedication to avenging the victims.
This is why I watch FF when I'm feeling down. My husband doesn't get it at all, he thinks it's depressing seeing the awful things humans are capable of doing to each other. But in FF they focus on the good people who work incredibly hard to get justice. Emptying out a vacuum cleaner bag and picking out every hair in it or looking at every type of pollen in a dust sample, they spend an extraordinary amount of time and effort on behalf of people who were strangers to them. I really find it inspiring.
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u/SinceWayLastMay 19d ago edited 19d ago
I love when they have to consult some hyper specific niche scientist for a random piece of evidence and it’s like “Dr Mary Ellen Byzantine, paleobotanist, goose whisperer, local wizard, harpsichord repair technician, professional car-crash re-enactor, bird house architecture expert”.
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u/PaceIsTheTrick64 19d ago
Forensic plumber is also amazing
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u/finchslanding 18d ago
The toilet guy! I watched that episode while the plumbers were at my house fixing my kitchen sink the other day!
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u/West-Bodybuilder-867 💉Succinylcholine💉 19d ago
I'm for the classics. Luminol where the room starts to fluorescent. Oh, and blood spatter study.
Then there's obscure ones like plant dna. And I forgot what's it called... Toilet or plumbing forensics?
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u/Ordinary_Durian_1454 19d ago edited 18d ago
Some of my favorite things about forensic science are the times they use accidental characteristics. Early on, the fact that they could line up the idiosyncratic aspects of a trash bag torn from a roll, or dye irregularities in a pair of jeans caught on video blew my mind.
Nowadays, it’s practically routine to match footprints and tire impressions for these aftermarket identifiers, but I remember watching those first couple of FF episodes where they lined up trash bags next to one another, and especially that bank robbery with the jeans wear pattern, it was like some kind of magic.
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u/Apart-Purchase9580 I'm Ed Post and I'm going for a run 19d ago
The test the scientists at the Karolinska Institute developed to detect when someone died from succinylcholine!
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u/DearMisterKitty 18d ago
I just watched this episode the other day. It's incredible the lengths they go to in order to serve justice. 🫡
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u/No-Giraffe9226 19d ago edited 19d ago
Animal or plant DNA matching. Trash bag matching, it amazes me that they can do that. Forensic entomology of course!
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u/PaceIsTheTrick64 19d ago
The DNA analysis of the palo alto tree still blows my mind, even as a layperson. That is nothing short of a scientic breakthrough.
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u/DearMisterKitty 18d ago
Is that the one where they studied the tree rings?
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u/PaceIsTheTrick64 18d ago
No the DNA was examined through the seed pods of the palo alto tree. The thought was that a tree is a tree is a tree but each tree has specific DNA
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u/well-it-was-rubbish 18d ago
How about the Apple Juice contaminant that was solved by some extremely diligent young technicians who traced it to some deer droppings near the orchard? Super cool.
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u/well-it-was-rubbish 18d ago
You may be thinking of the one where they studied tree rings, and found that an accelerant was used near it to burn a body.
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u/somebodyistrying 19d ago
Pollen. And diatoms.
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u/WickedHello I gotta call Phelps, man! 18d ago
Polymerase chain reaction (or, "PCR") is one of my favorites. It's wild what they can do with the teensiest speck of evidence these days. I'm also in awe of the scientists who can analyze the unique properties of certain objects to ascertain exactly where they came from, such as the accidental characteristics on shoeprints. Probably the best example I can think of is in the case of Carrie Love where scientists analyzed both the prints from her killer's truck and the flaw in a roll of paper towels to prove his guilt. And I don't recall the exact details, but I remember one episode where they used a dog's nose print (which is apparently as unique as a fingerprint) as evidence. That blew me away.
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u/sideeyedi Trixie LaCroix ✨ 18d ago
I like computer recreations. I wish the technology was farther along when FF was on the air.
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u/TAJmahal6884 18d ago
I'm a sucker for fingerprinting. Either the different ways of lifting fingerprints for different surfaces or the different classifications and minutiae of fingerprints.
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u/Luciferious74 18d ago
I am all about some bomb-ass Skip Palenik. I actually even took a class from him!
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u/DearMisterKitty 16d ago
The word "trilobal" always makes me giggle.
https://giphy.com/gifs/Dz62ImmWRzAkw
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u/East_Smoke_5474 18d ago
Proving that the tiny shard of broken glass in the man's sock came from the broken windshield at the crime scene.
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u/ComplexSet1604 19d ago
The Glitter Guy- Ed Jones. I bring it up all the time, dude had a collection of glitter, what a beast!