Signed in blood. Makes your blood boil. Captain Blood. Out for blood. Blood letting. Blood oath. Fight to first blood. Blue blood. Blood infection. In cold blood. Someone’s flesh and blood. The Blood of Eden. Blood is thicker than water. New blood. Blood and guts. Red blooded American. Blood transfusion. Bad blood. Blood on their hands. Blood bank. Makes your blood run cold. Blood brother. High blood pressure. Like squeezing blood from a stone. Blood bath. Blood-curdling scream. Blood, sweat and tears. – These are just a few of the many English idioms involving blood.
Blood is life, it’s symbolic, it’s powerful. We are, often in equal measure, both drawn to it and repulsed by it.Vampire books and movies show us the sexy and scary sides of blood while forensics TV shows explore the evidentiary and scientific sides. In Frank Miller’s graphic novels, one of the few splashes of colour in his black-and-white world is blood red. Blood also makes frequent appearances in religion, whether the Blood of Christ and the Eucharist, or in the dietary laws of Islam and Judaism dictating the avoidance of ingesting any kind of blood.
Modern science has taught us that blood is essential to life (carrying nutrients and oxygen through the body), that it can be dangerous (transmitting infectious diseases), that it contains personally identifying material (DNA) and if it escapes from the body through accident or foul play, it leaves telltale marks that tell a story.
Blood spatter experts, like Dexter Morgan (in the popular TV show Dexter), can use the shape and position of blood droplets to piece together the sequence of events in a crime scene using measurement, trigonometry, experience and intuition. Whether from the victim or attacker, every drip, spray or spurt leaves the body and travels through the air in predictable ways. Just a few rules of thumb are all that are needed to reconstruct the sequence of events in the scene. These rules include: (1) the smaller the blood droplets, the more energy was involved in their creation; (2) the angle that the droplet impacts a surface affects the shape of the mark it leaves behind, and; (3) a smear implies that blood was disturbed after it was deposited. It’s takes practice, but in time you can become very adept at reading those narratives written in blood at a crime scene.
Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead” – Gene Fowler
Tags: blood spatter · Forensics9 Comments
9 responses so far ↓
CAPTAIN BLOOD IS MY FAVORITE BOOK!!
First of all…
Hello, NetChick sent me!
But more importantly…I’m glad your post was right before mine, because this was a fascinating post – and one I would have been unlikely to come across otherwise. I suppose I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about forensics (well, I was on the forensic team in high school, but that was speech team, the OTHER kind of forensics, heh), but “rule 1″ was pretty interesting to me, and of course, it makes perfect sense when you think about the physics of it. But I can’t honestly say I’d thought of it before.
Matt’s last blog post..Week 8/52
Hey Chris, happy to be sent here from Tanya’s Meet and Greet again
I have, as I have mentioned, a big interest in forensic science and blood spatter is an intriguing science – recognising the direction of spatter, whether the person bleeding was moving or still, recognising the style of attack from the existence of spray or misting.
All fascinating…….
cq
craziequeen’s last blog post..Woman!
i guess I am still mostly in wonderment of sacrificial blood, particularly that of Jesus, called the Lamb of God
Netchick sent me over even though I am so tired.
david’s last blog post..Emma Lazarus ( please, we changed our minds)
Hello, NetChick sent me!
Enjoyed the post!
)
When I read the title, I thought you were taking about messages written with blood. While I have never seen such a thing in real life, it still remains something commonly seen in horror and thriller movies.
Then, when I read the post, I realized that you were talking about reading blood splatter patterns, and it made sense.
Thomas
PS I’ve linked to your blog, a link back would be super awesome, but not required.
Thomas’s last blog post..Call For Blogs
It amazes me how much investigators can learn by studying what’s been left behind. Alas, I wish folks would keep their blood where it belongs
Visiting once more from Tanya’s. Thank you for always sharing such fascinating teaching moments.
Carmi’s last blog post..Caption This 110
Blood splatter techniques featured on television shows always fascinate me. The occasional Discovery feature on crime and forensics. And of course the popular CSI shows. Nice finding its counterpart in the blogging world.
Thanks for dropping by in my blog. And to NetChick, too.
jan_geronimo’s last blog post..If Tweet Be Told I Love Twitter
We ran a very popular blood spatter workshop for kids today… they had a BLAST playing with the “blood” (that smelled of chocolate). I’m sure we’ll do more of those workshops in the summertime. Maybe some for adults, too.