This past week, The Danbury Connecticut Police sponsored a five (5) day Homicide and Death Investigations Course at police headquarters. Ten (10) police departments from all over Connecticut came to listen and learn from experts in the field of homicide and [...]
There are many questions that must be answered during a homicide investigation, but there are six (6) fundamental ones that an investigator must keep at the forefront of every case: 1. Who was the victim? 2. How were they murdered? 3. [...]
What is the efficacy of exhuming a body in an attempt to obtain a suspect’s DNA? I have received a few inquiries on this topic from both crime writers and family members asking, “We want to see if there is DNA [...]
Documenting the Body By: Joseph Giacalone I’ve said this many times, you don’t get a second chance to do it right the first time. Investigators have a tough enough job when investigating a death scene, so doing more is never popular. [...]
Marrying Your Theory By: Joseph Giacalone There is an old maxim, “Be careful who you date, you might end up marrying them.” The same line of thinking has a lot to do with theory building in homicide investigations. A theory [...]
Investigating Unidentified Human Remains By: Joseph Giacalone The first thing to do in any death investigation is to determine who your victim is, but what happens when you have unidentified human remains? These cases are the toughest of all to [...]
Death at the Park Sheraton Hotel By: Joseph Giacalone The United States had just entered World War One, when a young Italian teenager named Umberto Anastasio and his brother Anthony, snuck off a cargo ship at a Brooklyn dock. It didn’t take the brothers [...]
Autopsy Protocol for Investigators Detectives play an important role at the autopsy By: Joseph L. Giacalone How many autopsies have I attended? Enough or that I have witnessed my fair share should be a sufficient answer. The autopsy is one of [...]
Crime Scene Mistakes: 6 Mistakes to Avoid at a Crime Scene By: Joseph L. Giacalone Can you avoid making mistakes at a crime scene? Yes, you can as long as you are aware of them. This article was written so that [...]
Preserving Evidence in Cold Case Investigations A 911 Tape is the ‘Holy Grail’ for Investigators By: Joseph Giacalone 911 tapes are one of the most important elements of a cold case investigation. They often contain the names, phone numbers and other [...]
