ABSTRACT
The crime scene is the aftermath of individuals participating in an event in point and time. In a hit-and-run case, there might be two cars, one hitting the other, a single vehicle hitting a pedestrian, or a single vehicle hitting an object. In each case, a vehicle leaves the scene. In a sexual battery case, the assailant may break into an apartment or house or may abduct the victim off the street. A homicide may be a violent dispute between spouses, the wake of, perhaps, a bludgeoning resulting in death. In each instance, the crime may or may not define the type of evidence present, but the scene scientist/investigator understands that certain crime types spawn specific types of evidence. Finding the evidence that links the participants to the scene is why crime scene investigations exist and why searching is critical. From a philosophical perspective, we can logically split the crime scene search into two parts:
The mental approach, the logic required to devise a strategy for the search as well • as the processes that will be used The by-product of two activities: the original walk through and archiving • (Chapter 6)
A searching philosophy and examples are illustrated in Figure 5.1. Why the Walk through? This is when the team leader sees the macroscene elements for
the first time and begins to consider them in the context of the overall scene investigation, mentally gathering information about the scope, size, and location of obvious evidence and perhaps the not-so-obvious fragile evidence.
