LIsa Black
Cape Coral, FL
Female, 49
I spent the five happiest years of my life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office I analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now I'm a certified latent print examiner and CSI for a police department in Florida. I also write a series of forensic suspense novels, turning the day job into fiction. My books have been translated into six languages.
A pathologist is a doctor, so you'd have to go to med school first, and they usually have standard placement systems. To be a forensic scientist, it's best to get an internship position with your local lab while you're in school or just graduated. Or at least contact all the labs you're interested in, ask for a tour, meet people. You can also attend forensic conventions, though you'll have to pay for the registration. Hope that helps!
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Yes, yes and yes. Our Evidence department’s job is to keep track of everything, how long it’s been around, and then get the responsible party (usually the collecting officer or a prosecutor) to sign off on it’s ‘disposition’, which can be returning it to an owner, destroying, or sale or donation. For example, if you find something (like money) and turn it in, if it’s not claimed after a certain amount of time, you can have it. Stuff that no one wants is destroyed. They had a company that used to sell stuff but I don’t think they’re using it any more. (I think it was called PropertyRoom.com) Things like bicycles can be donated to charitable organizations to give to underprivileged citizens. Drugs are destroyed (which has to be witnessed by at least three people from three different departments—I have to be one sometimes when my boss is busy and we have to escort the Evidence van to the waste management facility and stand there and watch the stuff go into the incinerator...not fun in the summer months!).
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It helps. But I know good homicide detectives who do it for years and still have a weak stomach and they do fine.
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I can’t imagine having so little to do. That would make me crazy.
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Investment Banker
What's a 100-hour work week like?
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See above.
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The basics: our name, address of crime, date, time we arrived, and who else was there (cops, detectives, ME, etc.). Then what we did there, processed for prints, how many photos we took, chemicals used, if we collected evidence. We might also measure the area and make a sketch.
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I don’t interview suspects—or victims or witnesses.That’s the detective’s job. I’m there to analyze and collect evidence.
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