Investigation Techniques

When investigating crimes, each type of crime has different types of investigation techniques that investigators will use to solve the crime at hand. One of the major crimes that investigators take part in is homicide investigation.

There are several types of homicide ranging from justifiable, excusable, and criminal homicides, to murder and manslaughter. Though sometimes mistaken, suicide is technically not a form of homicide.The definition of suicide is the taking of one’s own life whereas the definition of homicide is the killing of one human being by another. This can sometimes be mistaken because suicides are at first treated like a homicide until investigators are sure that the life taken was actually a suicide because sometimes there may be foul play that would result in a homicide. When investigating a homicide a lot of your evidence can come directly from the body of the deceased. When examining the body of the deceased, investigators often look at the type of wounds inflicted on the individual deceased.They often look for stab or gunshot wounds and if those wounds are in the front or back of the body.

This can help them determine not only what type of weapon was used, but where the person that may have murdered the individual was standing at the time and where to begin looking for evidences such as shell casings. If the individual was strangled they can sometimes determine what the killer used to strangle the victim. They can also use things such as body temperature to determine things like the time of death, or look for bruises or scratch marks to determine if there was a struggle involved.If there was a struggle, they will then look under the fingernails of the victim for possible DNA that may have been left if the victim grabbed a hold of their killer. Modus Operandi is also an important factor when it comes to death investigations. If determined a homicide, investigators can then, after all the evidence is collected and cause of death determined, look up past records of individuals who have committed crimes of certain types of homicide in the past.After this they can begin narrowing down possible suspects for that type of homicide that was committed.

Investigators use many ways to determine the death of victims, sometimes they are homicide and sometimes they can be suicides. They use the evidence they have gathered from the scene and body to make the their decisions on this and how and when the person died.References Osterburg, James W. and Richard H. Ward: Criminal Investigation:A Method for Reconstructing the Past. 5th ed. , Lexis/Nexus