ABSTRACT
Circumstances and situations that investigators and analysts alike are routinely presented with as crimes or suspected crimes naturally beg questions. What happened? In what order did it happen? Who was involved? Why did it happen? The function and expectation of any criminal investigation is to resolve these questions to the best of the investigator’s ability. In order to meet that expectation, the investigator must wade through a wide array of different and disjointed facts trying to build from them a reasonable and valid theory that will answer these questions. Traditional forensic science has always played a role in helping to establish such a theory (Figure 2.1). Each of the forensic disciplines define specific facts and information from the artifacts and evidence left at the scene, all of which will ultimately help set a foundation for any theory of what occurred. However, forging a consolidated understanding of what those facts mean demands more than just possessing them. Context is everything in analysis and that means correlating all of the forensic facts and data together. Relational and chronological aspects between different data elements, even a smidgen of common sense have to be rolled together with all of the forensic data to define any reasonable hypothesis (Figure 2.2).
