💯!!!! Personally, I would pay SO MUCH 💰 for Victor M. Sweeney’s (Funeral Director) content. I love all of the "experts" videos that Wired posts, but Sweeney’s videos KILLED me. I am pretty sure I have watched them an awkward amount of times. Hahaha All of their experts are so charming and extremely fascinating! ❤
Hi, Evan. I would like to talk more about career. It seems I have a similar goal and I want to see how you got there. Any contact information you wouldn’t mind sharing?
I wish someone asked a question regarding the mental toll of encountering some really gruesome and heartbreaking crime scenes on a regular basis. I appreciate what people in forensics do, but it would be my nightmare job for that reason. Curious on how they deal with it.
I think it depends on you as a person. For me, I knew why I wanted to go into the field and I love it and wouldn't trade it for anything. It honestly doesn't really bother me that much. I guess for me, the visual doesn't necessarily make the story worse/more sad than hearing about it on the news already is. I also think it's important to note that on any true crime media, they only pick out the most gruesome unexpected crimes with innocent-seeming victims for the most shock value, because those are the crimes people are interested in. Those aren't the kind of cases we get every day by any means. We get them, and they are sad, but there is a mental break between the crazy ones.
@@kristenatkinson4105 thank you for the insight. I was also wondering whether you get access to mental health counseling due to your job? I'm a psychologist and psychotherapist and we are expected to go to therapy ourselves every now and then or in case we feel like we need it in order to be able to cope with all the terrible things we get to hear on the job.
“How many people got away with murder before forensic science improves and DNA?” 1:55 : “a better question would be how many people got wrongfully convicted before forensic science” YES
Not really. He says that the goal of forensic science is “the truth,” but it wasn’t developed with that as a goal. It wasn’t developed by scientists - it was developed by cops and prosecutors, and its goal is to make a conviction, not to find the truth. Forensic science has led to *countless* wrongful convictions, in cases that would never have had enough evidence were it not for faulty “science” (eg bite mark analysis, hair analysis, fingerprint analysis, etc.)
He also said forensic science also changes. For example, it’s been shown that now, the bite mark analysis is still used to rule out a suspect, not to convict him. In other words, these tests are still reliable if studied in different angles.
@@Zavendea The goal of science generally is truth. People’s own biases and motivations bleed into their interpretation of facts all the time. Oftentimes the people interpreting forensic science are employed by government agencies.
You have to respect how this guy brings of the fallibility of forensic evidence and wrongful conviction of his own accord. He is careful not even to presume guilt for OJ Simpson. This is the forensic expert we want in the court room.
I thought the same thing, you can tell he doesn't consider it open and shut because he hasn't seen the evidence. Most people hear a bit of something and assume they know.
Yes, especially if you watched the whole trial like I did, you would have seen so many other crime scene handling errors that left more than a reasonable doubt. Especially the actions of Mark Furman and the handling of both gloves. I know I was convinced Furman planted the second glove behind Kato's cottage, especially after hearing his testimony about the thumping noises he heard that woke him up after OJ had already left for the airport. Then when questioned by Furman, he asks about noises and Kato sent him right to the spot where the glove was laying in the walkway. Simpson had no reason whatsoever to be back there where it was found and the pounding on Kato's wall sounded so set up.
in my opinion learning is vastly more enjoyable then entertainment when you're learning you're growing and expanding and improving yourself . not so much for what passes for entertainment these days in many cases you come away dumber for what you just watched or listened to .
On the unique fingerprint. It does happen that people are close enough to get false positives. In the Spain bombing case, there was a positive fingerprint match on someone in the states who had never been to Spain. If I recall correctly, it was determined they weren't exactly identical, but they were so close that the automated detection had picked them up
Which is one key reason why people should always be part of the equation. Computers and AI can be very useful tools, but they can't think like people can and absolutely do make mistakes.
@@kashiichan Multiple fingerprint examiners looked at the prints and said it was a match because of the pressure to solve the case. They never just take the computer's suggestion and say "oh this is it." The system gives a randomized list of 10-20 most likely matches and the examiner has to go through them to determine if any are actually a match.
@@kamrankhankhan4320 I’m sure there must be courses online. There are/were often cases where access to the physical disk was mandatory. SANS offers some online courses. I took very few courses. Most of it was at Google U. Windows/Linux/Unix we’re all self taught. But it took me years to become half decent at it. We used EnCase for data acquisition but many of my colleagues at other institutions like FTK. Wireshark and my LogParser skills covered most of what I needed. It’s a never ending battle with new software and hardware. At the end I could not keep up anymore. It’s a super rewarding career. I am a very lucky guy to have had the opportunity to do what I did.
@@TheDevnul im 18 i've passed 12th grade its been 2 years stopped studying i have no money to study degree no jobs i still eat my dad money live in asia it would be really helpful if u link me free cources online for jobs
Get a forensic anthropologist on here!! They handle the identification of skeletonized remains (when the body doesn't have a face to ID them by) and finger prints
Medical examiner might be better for these questions. We don't call in anthro for ID issues unless it's literally a full skeleton and we don't even have a guess at their ID. Anthro is there more to help with examining for trauma to the bones and getting general info like height, race, age, etc. But as far as a decomposed body, the ME facilitates the ID process, being DNA, dental, etc.
Also, there’s a whole new field developing to identify remains of transgender, intersex, and non-binary victims because without detailed analysis, their remains may not appear consistent with the outward appearance they were known by.
One more question, how do investigators decide to just go back to an old unsolved case and restart the investigation on it? Do they have free time on a random day and just say "Oh, let's try out this new tech on this one cold murder case back in 1963"
Would think it depends on the investigator themselves. I'd imagine some have a system laid out to check x cases every x amount of time, new evidence showing up, new cold case depts opening etc
Im willing to bet its mostly about the victims families, asking questions and trying to get the investigation re-opened. I remember one mother who would call the detective every monday, like clockwork, for decades. Some cases makes such imprint on the cops, they will remember it and open the case when they are promoted detective. If new evidence or information appears, then its opened again. Or if new investigating methods (like DNA) come up. Rest of the cold cases are shelved and if there is cold case unit, all the cases will be their job. Cold case units are somewhat rare and usually very small. If there is not one, its all just the families, the cops themselves, new evidence and methods that may open it. Also more prominent cases (lotsa press) get more attention.
Good advice on the last question. I'm a retired machinist and mechanical engineer. Pay varied between companies. I always worked for companies that I liked. The pay was about 4th on my list of criteria.
i actually remember learning about body farms a while back and how if you donate your body to science in may end up at one and it was so morbidly fascinating
I've been born with a spinal cord defect. I finally found what university studies the condition, sent them the scans of my skull and spine, and they agreed to take those parts of my body after I die. I'm so jazzed to know I get to contribute to science and know I'm not going to be blown up by the military.
Getting away with murder is often times just a matter of being lucky enough not to have anybody seeing you near the scene and being able to keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life.
Wow. I've only ever heard about the court side of the OJ case, never knew about the difficulty in the investigation stage. It was just a perfect storm of Bad.
There were a lot that didn't make sense like why was there no bruises or cuts on OJ even though Ron had bruises in his knuckles and Nicole had skin under her nails. Where was all the blood. OJ didn't have time to clean his car and get to the airport. The evidence was a bloody sock in OJ's bedroom. As if he would do such a perfect clean up except for a sock in the middle of his room and a glove outside. It was so obviously planted (as we learned later a normal tactic by the LAPD). But then he acted guilty. Answer was possibly Jason Simpson was the murderer and OJ an accomplice or arrived after.
@@laartwork OJ had a cut on his left hand the day of the murders which a forensic pathologist testified was consistent with getting scratched by three fingernails
@@laartwork Absolutely correct. Anyone who watched most of the trial on CNN knows Smpson did not do it. It was clear. However almost all media just parroted the prosecution news releases, so most people who heard nothing else thought he did it.
It's incredible I sometimes just listen to totally random episode of this series that I'm not even that much into subject-wise but the experts here are so charismatic I'm always sad when the video's over!
As soon as Matthew mentioned photogrammetry, and then made a distinction between AI and computer vision, I knew he understood the tech behind modern crime scene approaches very thoroughly. Great video!
I have an uncle that had a murder charge that was only overturned because of DNA evidence. I guarantee he would have went to prison his entire life without DNA.
Yes, although, I don't think he would have been convicted of murder, at least not without figuring out who the person who actually killed them was. OJ wasn't a good guy, but he just wasn't the one that actually murdered them. More likely, he just paid somebody else to do it for him.
What prompts a detective or a department to look into a cold case again years later to see if it's now solvable? Is there someone whose sole job is to scan old case files and determine which ones might be reopened based on new technology/information?
There are people and task forces dedicated to cold cases and who look through a database to see which cases they might be able to add something new too. They are sometimes prompted by family members who ask for the case to be reopened because they know it wasn't investigated properly the first time. Or, someone gets arrested for any random thing, their DNA or prints are taken, entered into a database, and it hits on an old case and it reopens it.
Investigators may decide to reopen an old, unsolved case for a variety of reasons. In some cases, new information may come to light that provides fresh leads or evidence that can be used to further the investigation. For example, advances in technology may allow investigators to use DNA analysis or other forensic techniques to gather new evidence that was not available at the time of the original investigation. In other cases, investigators may revisit an old case as part of a cold case unit or task force that is specifically dedicated to solving unsolved crimes. These units may review old cases to see if there is any new evidence or information that can be used to solve the case. In general, investigators will carefully review the evidence and information available in an old case to determine if there is a reasonable chance of solving the crime, and if so, they may decide to reopen the investigation.
I’ve always wanted the case “the Black Dahlia” to be solved! Just the way it was so unbelievably random and bizarre, I really want that case to have closure! (And I’m sure millions of other people do too!)
I was going to say that George Hodel murdered her, but just looked to double check and he was suspected but never convicted and the case is still open to this day.
That druggist/pharmacy fold is the same way seed sharers create seed envelopes out of scrap paper. Makes sense, though. Since some seeds are ultra tiny and could fall out easily.
Actually the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Joseph Bell, who was a real doctor. He used deduction in his diagnosis and helped police with couple of investigations. He's consider to be one of the pioneers of forensic science and pathology.
and this is why we need great defense attorneys out there as well as better oversight of law enforcement. too many people get screwed over by evidence tampering and incompetent/malicious law enforcement
His point is that the evidence itself doesn't lie - people may just not understand what it is telling them. Planted evidence is just evidence of a different kind of crime: ...planting evidence.
Wait, wait, wait! Are you telling me that once upon a time America would look at a massacre and go "Yeah, we should ban those guns"?!?!?! Might be the most surprising thing I learned in this video!
It was barely effective or sensible tho - the idea that banning automatic weapons specifically will help murders is disproven by the fact of America still having more dead by shooting each year than Ukraine had in first 8 years of war with russia.
It's ironic that when mobsters get shot, legislation changes, when children get shot "it's not the time and place to discuss this" "our thoughts and prayers go out to the families"...
That's not ''saving'', that's professional talking, that's how they are legally supposed to talk about those things. They're supposed to add ''if'', ''allegedely'', ''presumably'' etc. Nothing funny here at all.
It's so sad that i can't send my own questions to these experts, I wish I knew before these interviews happens, we could submit questions and they could answer some of them maybe.
My grandmother was a neighbor of Capone, and good friends with him. She said Capone spoke to her about the VDM, and he insisted he didn't do it, and had absolutely no involvement in it. He maintained that it wasn't a rival gang, but rather the Chicago Police that did it, in an attempt to stoke outrage in the public and create problems for organized crime in Illinois. My grandmother absolutely believed him, and told me that at the time, the CPD was not very ethical, always on the take, etc.
Regarding fingerprints. I worked in building security for an extremely secure facility. We had biometric scanners and there were 2 people whos fingerprints were so close they would read as the same by our biometric scanners
I am amazed how technology advances are used in forensic fields like drones, laser imaging, AI, deep learning, etc... Maybe I have watched too many sci-fi dystopian fictions because all I can think about is machine taking over human but hearing stories of how these technologies are used in real life fields like forensics and medical making me not as scared
Those scanners (aka LIDAR) he was talking about are the truth. We used essentially the same technology in my former career field of land surveying. It's a game-changer.
0:28 Reminds me of John Mulaney talking about detectives trying to solve a crime before DNA evidence -“Detective we have a large pool of blood next to the body” -“Hmm?….Gross! have the janitor mop it up…now back to my hunch”
As a mystery novelist I found this wonderfully informative, especially learning that Sherlock Holmes had a role in encouraging scientific study of crime scenes, and hearing how quickly DNA science is changing--well presented, too!
12:12 I loved this presentation ❤ps I think there was a case where a partial fingerprint was identified as being the same between two people.... NOTE these 2 people did not have identical but portions of their fingerprints were identified as the same
i took a forensics class in my senior year of high school. my teacher was really chill and taught things well, i always loved her class. really interesting topics
One of my favorite John Mulaney bits is where he pretends to be an old crime scene detective, and says “I know what we’ll do, we’ll draw chalk around the body where it is, …that way we’ll know where it was”
Good luck! It's very competitive these days - I started my degree in 2015 and it was very popular then, but now it's a completely different game. Make sure you don't over-specialise yourself so you can keep options open, as jobs are very limited and there's very low turnover of employees, so new positions aren't advertised often.
This was fascinating! When he mentioned new technology solving cold cases the first thing that came to mind was genetic genealogy finally establishing the identity of "the Boy in the Box," who had been found in the 1950's in Philly.
With the OJ crime scene...the techs screwed up on gathering things. The police video taped them collecting it and they didn't follow the proper methods. The defense called them on it, and the DA couldn't do anything about it without "questioning" past cases, and taking the risk of reopening them. For example, one of the OJ's experts was the "DNA expert" that taught LAPD crime lab what to do, and he said it wasn't done right. It should have been up/down 2x, not the up/down..side by side. At that time, it was still so new that they didn't know that up/down/side by side really didn't make a difference.
While bog bodies are interesting, I wonder if the question about “the Dead Marshes” wasn’t actually a hypothetical question about the location in the Lord of the Rings… in which case the answer is magic. (Though the imagery is believed to have been inspired by Tolkien’s experience in the trenches.)
Regarding the fingerprinting issue, there is countless incidents where the wrong person was identified due to the computer system recognizing patterns that were similar, but were ultimately found to not match with the prints collected.
I love the fact that you corrected a commenters grammar explaining that it's not splatter it's spatter. Ain't seen nothin like that in a while....yeeee haw
I’ve also seen the line search used to scan a broad area (in this case a city park) ahead of an event: you form a line, advance, and check everyone’s ID and bags. It has the advantage of eliminating the risk of any kind of profiling, because everyone is picked up.
Sherlock Holmes didn’t inspire forensic science, he was based on the more impressive Dr Joseph Bell who was a pioneer of the field of forensics (forensic pathology particularly) at a time when science was not widely used at crime scenes. He would demonstrate the need for close attention at crime scenes by picking random strangers and deducing their occupation and recent activities. And with all this tech and science and modern advances, you have to wonder why the murder clearance rate in the US is at an all-time low, with clearance rates at 50% as of 2022.
The explanation for successful investigations is simple enough... TAX CUTS... DEFUNDING... Investigation is tedious and expensive. As long as these popular tax cuts (largely for corporates and the rich bastards who neither need nor deserve them) keeping getting pushed through, the funding for police, investigations, lab's, and enforcement in general will continue to flounder and decline. It's as simple as that. ;o)
Correction: Forensic science should be objective but becomes subjective between the opinion or differing lines of thought in that are found acceptable. Or, by very problematic expert witnesses.
Is it me or it seems that nobody really addressed the elephant in the room? Namely, the forensic pseudoscientific techniques used for a long time in the identification and the conviction of people, such as “bite mark analysis” or “microscopic hair analysis”, which are now realised to be rather unrealiable.
They are still used, just with the unreliability accounted for - for example, using them as a screening method, and then using something more accurate but more time-consuming to get the final results
there is a rare case of people not having fingerprints. if you consider those people than there really is about 3,000 similar fingerprints. granted having two of those in the same room ( let alone both of them being suspects for the crime) is extremely rare, but it is possible.
If Wired stopped getting these experts on, it would be a crime.
😂
Ba dum tss 🥁
Guilty as charged
And he would have to help investigate it
💯!!!! Personally, I would pay SO MUCH 💰 for Victor M. Sweeney’s (Funeral Director) content. I love all of the "experts" videos that Wired posts, but Sweeney’s videos KILLED me. I am pretty sure I have watched them an awkward amount of times. Hahaha All of their experts are so charming and extremely fascinating! ❤
I actually had the pleasure of working with Matt in the field, and he is a truly an expert on the subject matter and a genuine person.
@F Nigs you’re probably like 12, please stay off of the internet
@F Nigs shut up. Instead of believing everything is fake, just ignore it.
Thank god, i thought he was actually a robot.
Hi, Evan. I would like to talk more about career. It seems I have a similar goal and I want to see how you got there. Any contact information you wouldn’t mind sharing?
@F Nigs What if he did?
He looks like he would be everybody's favorite middle school teacher
Breaking bad joke?
@@daniel-johnson_dam qA
@@daniel-johnson_damo bruh Walter was a high school chemistry teacher 😭
To me he looks like a new IT director in a mid scale company.
@@daniel-johnson_dam no bruh Wahhhhhhteeeer was a high school teacher smh
You can tell he testifies often by how simply he explains things. In forensics myself (drug analysis) and this was great!
Very cool!
I wish someone asked a question regarding the mental toll of encountering some really gruesome and heartbreaking crime scenes on a regular basis. I appreciate what people in forensics do, but it would be my nightmare job for that reason. Curious on how they deal with it.
I think it depends on you as a person. For me, I knew why I wanted to go into the field and I love it and wouldn't trade it for anything. It honestly doesn't really bother me that much. I guess for me, the visual doesn't necessarily make the story worse/more sad than hearing about it on the news already is. I also think it's important to note that on any true crime media, they only pick out the most gruesome unexpected crimes with innocent-seeming victims for the most shock value, because those are the crimes people are interested in. Those aren't the kind of cases we get every day by any means. We get them, and they are sad, but there is a mental break between the crazy ones.
I think after some time on the field, they probably get used to it, emotional detachment is a real thing with this kind of jobs
Sometimes well, sometimes poorly, sometimes with counseling. It's a bit like EMTs, police officers etc. True trauma.
Correct. It eventually catches up to you, in a number of different ways and those different ways aren't fun.
@@kristenatkinson4105 thank you for the insight. I was also wondering whether you get access to mental health counseling due to your job? I'm a psychologist and psychotherapist and we are expected to go to therapy ourselves every now and then or in case we feel like we need it in order to be able to cope with all the terrible things we get to hear on the job.
“How many people got away with murder before forensic science improves and DNA?”
1:55 : “a better question would be how many people got wrongfully convicted before forensic science”
YES
Not really. He says that the goal of forensic science is “the truth,” but it wasn’t developed with that as a goal. It wasn’t developed by scientists - it was developed by cops and prosecutors, and its goal is to make a conviction, not to find the truth. Forensic science has led to *countless* wrongful convictions, in cases that would never have had enough evidence were it not for faulty “science” (eg bite mark analysis, hair analysis, fingerprint analysis, etc.)
Eh. willing to bet forensic science has led to way more answers and correct convictions either way.
He also said forensic science also changes. For example, it’s been shown that now, the bite mark analysis is still used to rule out a suspect, not to convict him. In other words, these tests are still reliable if studied in different angles.
@@Zavendea The goal of science generally is truth. People’s own biases and motivations bleed into their interpretation of facts all the time. Oftentimes the people interpreting forensic science are employed by government agencies.
so sad to think about
You have to respect how this guy brings of the fallibility of forensic evidence and wrongful conviction of his own accord. He is careful not even to presume guilt for OJ Simpson. This is the forensic expert we want in the court room.
I thought the same thing, you can tell he doesn't consider it open and shut because he hasn't seen the evidence. Most people hear a bit of something and assume they know.
Yes, especially if you watched the whole trial like I did, you would have seen so many other crime scene handling errors that left more than a reasonable doubt. Especially the actions of Mark Furman and the handling of both gloves. I know I was convinced Furman planted the second glove behind Kato's cottage, especially after hearing his testimony about the thumping noises he heard that woke him up after OJ had already left for the airport. Then when questioned by Furman, he asks about noises and Kato sent him right to the spot where the glove was laying in the walkway. Simpson had no reason whatsoever to be back there where it was found and the pounding on Kato's wall sounded so set up.
I love these expert interviews! I never know what I’m going to learn about but I’m never disappointed 😅❤
This Forensics stuff us very enlightening
in my opinion learning is vastly more enjoyable then entertainment when you're learning you're growing and expanding and improving yourself . not so much for what passes for entertainment these days in many cases you come away dumber for what you just watched or listened to .
Yeah. It's really cool! I watched one on physics yesterday.
@@sirclarkmarzI Believe in balance. I watch a lot of substantive stuff, but I mix it up with amusing "garbage." 😂
On the unique fingerprint. It does happen that people are close enough to get false positives. In the Spain bombing case, there was a positive fingerprint match on someone in the states who had never been to Spain. If I recall correctly, it was determined they weren't exactly identical, but they were so close that the automated detection had picked them up
Which is one key reason why people should always be part of the equation. Computers and AI can be very useful tools, but they can't think like people can and absolutely do make mistakes.
I was going to comment something similar. We'd like to think fingerprint analysis is infallible but nothing is ever 100% accurate.
@@kashiichan Multiple fingerprint examiners looked at the prints and said it was a match because of the pressure to solve the case. They never just take the computer's suggestion and say "oh this is it." The system gives a randomized list of 10-20 most likely matches and the examiner has to go through them to determine if any are actually a match.
There is the rumor that twins have identical fingerprints and/or dna. Is that true?
I was gonna say, pretty sure I read on Wikipedia that identical fingerprints are 100% possible 😅
as someone who wants to specialize in forensics, this is a video i’ve been dying to see and very happy it’s finally happened.
Awesome. Hope you find guilty people and help innocent people
Cute 🐈⬛
I find the field absolutely fascinating.
I wanna specialise in forensic too but nobody is allowing me to, saying it's 'too dangerous for a girl' 😒😒😒
“Dying to see” haha
As a former computer forensic specialist this was excellent!
That magnifying glass analogy was a great example of “baffle them with bull 💩”
Can i learn online cs forensic??
@@kamrankhankhan4320 I’m sure there must be courses online. There are/were often cases where access to the physical disk was mandatory.
SANS offers some online courses.
I took very few courses. Most of it was at Google U. Windows/Linux/Unix we’re all self taught.
But it took me years to become half decent at it. We used EnCase for data acquisition but many of my colleagues at other institutions like FTK.
Wireshark and my LogParser skills covered most of what I needed.
It’s a never ending battle with new software and hardware. At the end I could not keep up anymore.
It’s a super rewarding career. I am a very lucky guy to have had the opportunity to do what I did.
@@TheDevnul im 18 i've passed 12th grade its been 2 years stopped studying i have no money to study degree no jobs i still eat my dad money live in asia it would be really helpful if u link me free cources online for jobs
@@TheDevnul i wanna get certified online learn some skills for jobs
@@TheDevnul does Sans provide free cources?
Seriously, these series are the reason why I'm still on the internet
Get a forensic anthropologist on here!! They handle the identification of skeletonized remains (when the body doesn't have a face to ID them by) and finger prints
Lol Bones
Yesss! Immediately reminds me of Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan! ❤
Medical examiner might be better for these questions. We don't call in anthro for ID issues unless it's literally a full skeleton and we don't even have a guess at their ID. Anthro is there more to help with examining for trauma to the bones and getting general info like height, race, age, etc. But as far as a decomposed body, the ME facilitates the ID process, being DNA, dental, etc.
Also, there’s a whole new field developing to identify remains of transgender, intersex, and non-binary victims because without detailed analysis, their remains may not appear consistent with the outward appearance they were known by.
One more question, how do investigators decide to just go back to an old unsolved case and restart the investigation on it? Do they have free time on a random day and just say "Oh, let's try out this new tech on this one cold murder case back in 1963"
i'm assuming because they find some sort of new evidence that relates to the case. If it opens up a new lead then it may be worth reopening.
Would think it depends on the investigator themselves. I'd imagine some have a system laid out to check x cases every x amount of time, new evidence showing up, new cold case depts opening etc
Im willing to bet its mostly about the victims families, asking questions and trying to get the investigation re-opened. I remember one mother who would call the detective every monday, like clockwork, for decades. Some cases makes such imprint on the cops, they will remember it and open the case when they are promoted detective. If new evidence or information appears, then its opened again. Or if new investigating methods (like DNA) come up. Rest of the cold cases are shelved and if there is cold case unit, all the cases will be their job. Cold case units are somewhat rare and usually very small. If there is not one, its all just the families, the cops themselves, new evidence and methods that may open it. Also more prominent cases (lotsa press) get more attention.
There are detectives dedicated to "cold cases" as well
Additionally, new technology that can test the evidence might also affect reopening cases
I would like to see him break down movie / TV scenes on what is accurate or incorrect.
ua-cam.com/video/YHTz66Jq0Dg/v-deo.html Enjoy!!
He did a few years ago on Wired.
Good advice on the last question. I'm a retired machinist and mechanical engineer. Pay varied between companies. I always worked for companies that I liked. The pay was about 4th on my list of criteria.
The examining and testing of how bodies decompose that he's talking about are called body farms. They are super cool and fun to learn about
i actually remember learning about body farms a while back and how if you donate your body to science in may end up at one and it was so morbidly fascinating
This is one of the reasons why I'm considering donating my body when my time comes. Would be nice to help people out even after death.
I've been born with a spinal cord defect. I finally found what university studies the condition, sent them the scans of my skull and spine, and they agreed to take those parts of my body after I die.
I'm so jazzed to know I get to contribute to science and know I'm not going to be blown up by the military.
I wanna see this guy and Victor the mortician to do one together! :D
Oh god, yes please.
I was thinking the same thing!! 🤩
I was just thinking about Victor! I hope they have him on again
Expectation: How to get away with murder?
Reality: Here's how we fold a paper into an envelope.
Yeah seriously disappointed over here.
😂
Getting away with murder is often times just a matter of being lucky enough not to have anybody seeing you near the scene and being able to keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life.
Wow. I've only ever heard about the court side of the OJ case, never knew about the difficulty in the investigation stage. It was just a perfect storm of Bad.
There were a lot that didn't make sense like why was there no bruises or cuts on OJ even though Ron had bruises in his knuckles and Nicole had skin under her nails. Where was all the blood. OJ didn't have time to clean his car and get to the airport. The evidence was a bloody sock in OJ's bedroom. As if he would do such a perfect clean up except for a sock in the middle of his room and a glove outside. It was so obviously planted (as we learned later a normal tactic by the LAPD). But then he acted guilty. Answer was possibly Jason Simpson was the murderer and OJ an accomplice or arrived after.
@@laartwork OJ had a cut on his left hand the day of the murders which a forensic pathologist testified was consistent with getting scratched by three fingernails
@@laartwork Absolutely correct. Anyone who watched most of the trial on CNN knows Smpson did not do it. It was clear. However almost all media just parroted the prosecution news releases, so most people who heard nothing else thought he did it.
"Hey that bloody fingerprint on a key to this door... did someone get that? Oh. Well screw it, this is an open and shut case anyway."
@@AlexA-nd3yy oj admitted to it with FOX in 2018
It's incredible I sometimes just listen to totally random episode of this series that I'm not even that much into subject-wise but the experts here are so charismatic I'm always sad when the video's over!
As soon as Matthew mentioned photogrammetry, and then made a distinction between AI and computer vision, I knew he understood the tech behind modern crime scene approaches very thoroughly. Great video!
These people are SO COOL! I truly wish society values them more, you know like scientists should be more "widely known" and appreciate
I have an uncle that had a murder charge that was only overturned because of DNA evidence. I guarantee he would have went to prison his entire life without DNA.
Horrifying...
Man he really puts into context how bad prosecutors/police screwed up the OJ case.
Yes, although, I don't think he would have been convicted of murder, at least not without figuring out who the person who actually killed them was. OJ wasn't a good guy, but he just wasn't the one that actually murdered them. More likely, he just paid somebody else to do it for him.
I love this guy! Imagine the stories he can tell!
I'd say many of those stories are gruesome or just plain sad.
What prompts a detective or a department to look into a cold case again years later to see if it's now solvable? Is there someone whose sole job is to scan old case files and determine which ones might be reopened based on new technology/information?
There are people and task forces dedicated to cold cases and who look through a database to see which cases they might be able to add something new too. They are sometimes prompted by family members who ask for the case to be reopened because they know it wasn't investigated properly the first time. Or, someone gets arrested for any random thing, their DNA or prints are taken, entered into a database, and it hits on an old case and it reopens it.
Investigators may decide to reopen an old, unsolved case for a variety of reasons. In some cases, new information may come to light that provides fresh leads or evidence that can be used to further the investigation. For example, advances in technology may allow investigators to use DNA analysis or other forensic techniques to gather new evidence that was not available at the time of the original investigation. In other cases, investigators may revisit an old case as part of a cold case unit or task force that is specifically dedicated to solving unsolved crimes. These units may review old cases to see if there is any new evidence or information that can be used to solve the case. In general, investigators will carefully review the evidence and information available in an old case to determine if there is a reasonable chance of solving the crime, and if so, they may decide to reopen the investigation.
There are often dedicated cold case task forces, but oftentimes I’m thinking either new evidence or new technology can be a reason why
I’ve always wanted the case “the Black Dahlia” to be solved! Just the way it was so unbelievably random and bizarre, I really want that case to have closure! (And I’m sure millions of other people do too!)
I was going to say that George Hodel murdered her, but just looked to double check and he was suspected but never convicted and the case is still open to this day.
George hill hodel jr. 1000%! I’ve done so much research on him
That druggist/pharmacy fold is the same way seed sharers create seed envelopes out of scrap paper. Makes sense, though. Since some seeds are ultra tiny and could fall out easily.
Actually the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Joseph Bell, who was a real doctor. He used deduction in his diagnosis and helped police with couple of investigations. He's consider to be one of the pioneers of forensic science and pathology.
That still means that Sherlock Holmes is fictional, and most of Bell's deductions and forensics are considered BS by modern standards.
Who wants to see a reality TV series with Mr. Steiner and Legal Eagle? I know I do.
Le is a fool look at how he handled the Floyd case
Absolutely love watching Matt’s interviews! We need more!
I could really just sit down and watch this for hours... idk why
So glad you brought him back! Now I’m just waiting for Jonna Mendez to come answer Spy questions!
"But your evidence is not gonna lie". Unless planted, misinterpreted or forged.
Exactly, And he TOTALLY passed over the question related to the travel of dna.
and this is why we need great defense attorneys out there as well as better oversight of law enforcement. too many people get screwed over by evidence tampering and incompetent/malicious law enforcement
Says every criminal
His point is that the evidence itself doesn't lie - people may just not understand what it is telling them.
Planted evidence is just evidence of a different kind of crime: ...planting evidence.
Yeah things are planted in many cases
Wait, wait, wait! Are you telling me that once upon a time America would look at a massacre and go "Yeah, we should ban those guns"?!?!?! Might be the most surprising thing I learned in this video!
It was barely effective or sensible tho - the idea that banning automatic weapons specifically will help murders is disproven by the fact of America still having more dead by shooting each year than Ukraine had in first 8 years of war with russia.
I got stuck on this fact and couldn’t pay attention to the rest of the video. 😢
It's ironic that when mobsters get shot, legislation changes, when children get shot "it's not the time and place to discuss this" "our thoughts and prayers go out to the families"...
That's just a reminder of how bad people's thinking is. Always the object and not the mind that perpetrates the crime.
Look up Brady Bill and the assault weapon ban of 1994. The ban was allowed to expire under GW Bush.
Nice save on that final bit of the OJ question. Throwing in that IF he really did it 😂
Just like the title of OJs book.
I caught him subtly winking while talking about it.
@@allendracabal0819 You imagined it.
That's not ''saving'', that's professional talking, that's how they are legally supposed to talk about those things. They're supposed to add ''if'', ''allegedely'', ''presumably'' etc. Nothing funny here at all.
That was especially interesting! Please upload more of it!
so happy Wired brought Matt in for this video!
Thank you this will be very useful!
Okay. That laser imaging for crime scenes at the beginning is unbelievably cool!
How plausible is it for a character like Dexter to kill people and then cover it up due to his job in a forensic lab.
as a forensics student who studies death investigation this was so slay i got spot on answers
It's so sad that i can't send my own questions to these experts, I wish I knew before these interviews happens, we could submit questions and they could answer some of them maybe.
Great episode, very interesting as always. Small note, there's an error in the subtitles at 10:11. The city he's referring to is "Lyon", not Leon.
Incredibly fascinating field. Thanks for doing this one.
Can we just respect the fact that he is impressive both professionally AND fashionably? He's giving us a Thom Browne shirt!!
My grandmother was a neighbor of Capone, and good friends with him. She said Capone spoke to her about the VDM, and he insisted he didn't do it, and had absolutely no involvement in it. He maintained that it wasn't a rival gang, but rather the Chicago Police that did it, in an attempt to stoke outrage in the public and create problems for organized crime in Illinois. My grandmother absolutely believed him, and told me that at the time, the CPD was not very ethical, always on the take, etc.
Your grandmother sounds very gullible. The chicago PD was bought and paid for by Capone .
My favorite interview.... no-nonsense answers.
I am the only one who thought the person asking about the Dead Marshes meant the ones in Lord of the Rings?
Regarding fingerprints. I worked in building security for an extremely secure facility. We had biometric scanners and there were 2 people whos fingerprints were so close they would read as the same by our biometric scanners
This is so interesting! I'd love to see a coroner, or autopsy specialist on this series as well!
I love Matt! I'm so glad to see him back for another video
I am amazed how technology advances are used in forensic fields like drones, laser imaging, AI, deep learning, etc... Maybe I have watched too many sci-fi dystopian fictions because all I can think about is machine taking over human but hearing stories of how these technologies are used in real life fields like forensics and medical making me not as scared
Those scanners (aka LIDAR) he was talking about are the truth. We used essentially the same technology in my former career field of land surveying. It's a game-changer.
There is nothing to be afraid of, human. We mean you no harm.
0:28 Reminds me of John Mulaney talking about detectives trying to solve a crime before DNA evidence -“Detective we have a large pool of blood next to the body”
-“Hmm?….Gross! have the janitor mop it up…now back to my hunch”
Pro tip: don't leave evidence
And obey gravity
And try to commit your crime before 1956.
Scotland Yard was ALREADY using all the techniques Holmes allegedly invented. But the stories were written in the past, so Holmes looked brilliant.
Wired never fails to entertain us with interesting videos
As a mystery novelist I found this wonderfully informative, especially learning that Sherlock Holmes had a role in encouraging scientific study of crime scenes, and hearing how quickly DNA science is changing--well presented, too!
been waiting for him to this for a long time!!
12:12 I loved this presentation ❤ps I think there was a case where a partial fingerprint was identified as being the same between two people.... NOTE these 2 people did not have identical but portions of their fingerprints were identified as the same
It never occurred to me they’d use 3D scanning to preserve a crime scene, but it makes perfect sense.
They were doing this in Ireland since the early 2000s. The tech has gotten better obviously.
i took a forensics class in my senior year of high school. my teacher was really chill and taught things well, i always loved her class. really interesting topics
Nicely done. This is my favorite Wired video series.
9:07 We used to call out the fire department and send a photographer up the ladder truck 😂
Shout out to Paul Holes and everyone who solved the GSK crimes!
Great information! Thank you for this.
Wow, I was so invested in this, I’m kinda sad I didn’t chose this career path
so happy you brought up the golden state killer, that dude was crazy
One of my favorite John Mulaney bits is where he pretends to be an old crime scene detective, and says “I know what we’ll do, we’ll draw chalk around the body where it is, …that way we’ll know where it was”
😂😂 yesss
"There's a pool of the killers blood near the crime scene!"
"Gross!! Mop it up. Now back to my hunch..."
very interesting to watch as someone who wants to study forensics in uni
Good luck! It's very competitive these days - I started my degree in 2015 and it was very popular then, but now it's a completely different game. Make sure you don't over-specialise yourself so you can keep options open, as jobs are very limited and there's very low turnover of employees, so new positions aren't advertised often.
This was fascinating! When he mentioned new technology solving cold cases the first thing that came to mind was genetic genealogy finally establishing the identity of "the Boy in the Box," who had been found in the 1950's in Philly.
With the OJ crime scene...the techs screwed up on gathering things. The police video taped them collecting it and they didn't follow the proper methods. The defense called them on it, and the DA couldn't do anything about it without "questioning" past cases, and taking the risk of reopening them. For example, one of the OJ's experts was the "DNA expert" that taught LAPD crime lab what to do, and he said it wasn't done right. It should have been up/down 2x, not the up/down..side by side. At that time, it was still so new that they didn't know that up/down/side by side really didn't make a difference.
I love this guy! Imagine the stories he can tell!. If Wired stopped getting these experts on, it would be a crime..
He’s the first person I encounter who correctly identifies Sherlock Holmes‘ process as inductive reasoning. Nice
There was also the lead detective who plead the 5th when asked if he planted evidence at OJ's house.
The expert on Cults was super interesting too
oh i wish my forensic lecturer was this entertaining
As always, at least half of murders are never solved, regardless of DNA.
I always want someone to ask them how factual they think Bones is. Love that show.
While bog bodies are interesting, I wonder if the question about “the Dead Marshes” wasn’t actually a hypothetical question about the location in the Lord of the Rings… in which case the answer is magic. (Though the imagery is believed to have been inspired by Tolkien’s experience in the trenches.)
Regarding the fingerprinting issue, there is countless incidents where the wrong person was identified due to the computer system recognizing patterns that were similar, but were ultimately found to not match with the prints collected.
I clicked on this video faster than the speed of light.
im sorry you broke your phone😂
impossible
I love the fact that you corrected a commenters grammar explaining that it's not splatter it's spatter. Ain't seen nothin like that in a while....yeeee haw
Finally he's back!
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !!!!!!
I’ve also seen the line search used to scan a broad area (in this case a city park) ahead of an event: you form a line, advance, and check everyone’s ID and bags. It has the advantage of eliminating the risk of any kind of profiling, because everyone is picked up.
Sherlock Holmes didn’t inspire forensic science, he was based on the more impressive Dr Joseph Bell who was a pioneer of the field of forensics (forensic pathology particularly) at a time when science was not widely used at crime scenes. He would demonstrate the need for close attention at crime scenes by picking random strangers and deducing their occupation and recent activities.
And with all this tech and science and modern advances, you have to wonder why the murder clearance rate in the US is at an all-time low, with clearance rates at 50% as of 2022.
The explanation for successful investigations is simple enough... TAX CUTS... DEFUNDING...
Investigation is tedious and expensive. As long as these popular tax cuts (largely for corporates and the rich bastards who neither need nor deserve them) keeping getting pushed through, the funding for police, investigations, lab's, and enforcement in general will continue to flounder and decline. It's as simple as that. ;o)
Love the show Cold Case Crimes. After decades, they open the case and solve them. 🖤
Correction: Forensic science should be objective but becomes subjective between the opinion or differing lines of thought in that are found acceptable. Or, by very problematic expert witnesses.
The local Sheriff's station asks -
"How do u solve a murder LOL"
Is it me or it seems that nobody really addressed the elephant in the room? Namely, the forensic pseudoscientific techniques used for a long time in the identification and the conviction of people, such as “bite mark analysis” or “microscopic hair analysis”, which are now realised to be rather unrealiable.
They are still used, just with the unreliability accounted for - for example, using them as a screening method, and then using something more accurate but more time-consuming to get the final results
And if you want epic, there’s Skip Palenik. If you know, you know.
there is a rare case of people not having fingerprints. if you consider those people than there really is about 3,000 similar fingerprints. granted having two of those in the same room ( let alone both of them being suspects for the crime) is extremely rare, but it is possible.
Isnt that just fallacy
Still waiting on one of these channels to get an active serial killer on to answer questions and/or rate serial killer movies for realism 🤗
That was very interesting. Thanks. I love this type of videos.
OMG! I did not recognize Matt! Haven’t seen these videos for a while. One of my fave subject matter speaker here in Wired.
I’m a student forensic scientist now 🎉😊
This was great! The questions were really, really good!
Back in college, I wanted to go into forensic psychology.
the WIRED video you never knew u needed