Star Trek: Picard murder mystery

Star Trek: Picard is a series that talks about the general Jean-Luc Picard’s adventures after his prime, with a crew and a starship. The plot of the 1st season revolves around a murder of Dahj, a droid seeking help from Picard. After Dahj is attacked and killed by an unknown assailant, Picard becomes determined to investigate and find out who is responsible. As Picard and his allies delve deeper into the investigation, they discover that the evidence has been manipulated or completely replaced to cover up the identity of the killer. This includes falsified surveillance footage and a planted message that makes it appear as though Dahj was involved in a terrorist plot. The culprit is eventually revealed to be Narek, a member of the Romulan Zhat Vash, who had been posing as a love interest for Soji, Dahj's twin sister. Narek had been tasked with manipulating Soji into leading the Zhat Vash to the location of a powerful synthetic android, but he developed genuine feelings for her and was conflicted about carrying out his mission. In an effort to protect Soji and prevent her from learning the truth, Narek kills Dahj and replaces the evidence to cover his tracks. However, his actions ultimately lead to his downfall, as Picard and his allies eventually uncover the truth and bring him to justice. The main connection to the curriculum is that Picard used an alien device to see how the murder location looked at the time Dahj was killed, as the assassin replaced all of the materials of the murder location.

Angela Gallop thinking outside the box to solve crimes as a forensic scientist

Angela Gallop is a forensic scientist in Britain, who has held a great career since 1980’s - and just like every forensic scientist, she collects evidence at the crime scene and performs scientific analysis in her laboratory. However, unlike other forensic scientists, Gallop often uses a different approach to solve crimes – she recreates them in some sort. For example, in June 1982 a man named Roberto Calvi was told to be hung by himself from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London, although the fact that he was a banker that might had connections with the Italian mafia, and it was just a week before a trial, this case seemed really sus. His family didn’t think he committed suicide, so Angela Gallop was hired to do that. How exactly? She recreated the scene with her husband as the victim, with the same clothes at the same age in the same scaffolding, and saw that in the victim’s condition he couldn’t have walked there and hung himself. She proved it to the court and Calvi did not commit suicide, although they still don’t know who the killer is. There are at least 7 more cases there. The main point they’ll ask you about is that she recreates the scene and finds flaws, just like reconstructing the past.

CSI Effect

The CSI effect is an effect based on the hit series Crime Scene Investigation, in which the main characters who are forensic scientists find a lot of crime evidence, show them in court and get the defendant not guilty. This affects the jury in a real court to think that scientific evidence is found easily, and that only scientific evidence is useful, and not the psychological stuff, alibis, motives…
The prosecution combats the CSI effect by acknowledging the effect in front of the jury. It screws up both the defense and the prosecution, depending on the case and its scientific evidence. As there are two types of evidence: evidence from people and physical evidence, the physical evidence is what the jury tends to care about more. Forensic Evidence was first documented in the 7th century when China used fingerprints to identify some documents and sculptures. The CSI effect also screws up the labs, because the jury always wants more scientific evidence, which causes the labs  to work for extra hours.

How police breaks an alibi

Policemen need to determine if an alibi is real or fake, but how do they do it? If someone tells the truth, he will only tell you the story and not any additional details, and when you’ll ask him about additional stuff he’ll get angry, as in reality he really told you the whole story at the beginning. If someone brings a fake alibi, he will always change his story when you present additional information, and then you gotta wait until you find a contradiction in their story. Evidence that you present may be evidence from the crime scene or evidence from the alibi’s location.

Alternative Light Source (ALS)

A way of identification of physical evidence. It works as when you pull up a device that provides light at specific wavelengths that our eye can’t normally see, and by using goggles that defend us from the dangerous light, we can find a lot of physical evidence that we couldn’t see without ALS, such as biological fluids, latent prints and fibers. As you can see in this short article Forensic Science - Alternate Light Source there is a picture of a shirt with semen inside its pocket, and with the usage of ALS we can simply find the semen inside the shirt.

Toxicology

The study of poisons and their effects on living systems. Forensic toxicology is the analysis of poisons inside someone’s body. If someone went over the speed limits, cops can analyze if he has drugs or alcohol in his body. If there is a murder crime, forensic scientists can find out from what poison was the victim killed.

Ballistics

Ballistics is the examination of evidence from firearms that may have been used in a crime. Ballistic markings are like the "fingerprints" of a gun. The barrel leaves distinctive marks on each bullet it fires. You can examine these "ballistic fingerprints" to see which gun fired the shot. It's quite accurate.

Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA)

The analysis of bloodstains in a crime scene. With measuring the biology of the blood (its behavior), the physics (its cohesion, capillary action and velocity) and math (geometry, distance and angle), bloodstain pattern analysts can answer a lot of unsolved questions about the murder scene. On top of that, they can try to contradict the evidence they found and the story the blood tells, to the alibi of some people. By contradicting the blood’s evidence with the witnesses’ evidence, you can find out if the results are true.

Patent vs Latent print analysis

Patent prints are visible prints from a crime scene, like fingerprints, while Latent prints are invisible prints from a crime scene, like sweat. You gather Patent prints by taking a photo of them, while with Latent prints you use ALS to find and capture them. Then, analysts use the following way of work to examine a patent/ latent print. First they analyze them, finding on them biological/ physical details, then comparing them to the suspects’ prints, then evaluating if these were truly from the crime scene, and lastly verifying them by asking from another forensic scientist to independently do the same process and if they both get to the same conclusion, they are right.

Forensic Entomology

The study of insects associated with crimes, to determine the time and place of death. Most of the time, forensic entomologists analyze flies and beetles that were around the body, to determine where the person really died, and time of death, by examining the insects themselves, as most insects tend to get close to a body only when it is dead. Therefore when someone dies you can find where and when did he die by seeing when and where insects came closer to him.

Forensic Ecology

Analyzing the relationship between the victim and the physical environment, aka the crime scene. They analyze the temperature, ground, water, light, oxygen and minerals in the crime scene, and then link it to the murder and the victim.

Forensic genetics

Forensic genetics is linked with providing data to the DNA found in a crime scene, who has that DNA, and connecting the person with that DNA to the crime scene. Forensic scientists mostly find a matching DNA from the DNA database, but if they don’t find a matching DNA, they match it with a similar DNA and then find from the suspects who looks more alike that guy.

DNA phenotyping

DNA phenotyping is the technique I just talked about to narrow down the number of potential crime scene trace donors, if there is no matching DNA of the murderer’s DNA. What I mean is that they match the killer’s DNA with a guy who has a similar DNA, and then whoever doesn’t look at all like that guy is not a suspect anymore.

Geolocating with stable isotopes

Just like Carbon dating but on murder cases, and with locating instead of dating, and with isotopes instead of carbon. In our environment we have elements, and some of them can also be isotopes. Each area has a different substance of different isotopes in our air, so scientists can also map the origin of the victim by the isotopes inside his body.

Cloud forensics

In cyber crimes, the bad people use the internet, aka the cloud to infiltrate to private people/ company’s electronic devices, and then they can destroy it or request real money for not destroying their electronic devices (when someone is inside the school’s internet, a skilled school technician can access your phone and do everything with it). Let’s say Iran infiltrates one of Israel’s hospitals via the internet and turns off all of the ventilators. Doing this is a crime. Now in a case of murder, Cloud forensics have the skill to find out who accessed the internet and sabotaged it. They use the internet to see who used the internet to use the electronics in the internet for bad purposes. With the cloud, people can also find the electronic device's location, therefore cloud forensics can detect where the cyberbully is.

Forensic sketch of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination

Before today’s advanced technology, people used to sketch the moment of murder, as there weren’t cameras. On the morning of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth heard that President Lincoln will visit Ford Theatre evening, so he and his co-conspirators planned to attack Lincoln and the Vice President Andrew Johnson oh and also Secretary of State William H. Seward. Because Booth was an actor in the Theatre, he knew the layout, and he entered Lincoln’s booth and shot him once to the head, while also stabbing Major Henry Rathbone, before making his escape. From (a lot of) witnesses, and scientific evidence, artists at the time created a pretty accurate forensic sketch of Lincoln’s death, and it seems that every man there is in his “main character” moment, as they have extreme expressions. This can mainly be because of each witness’ dramatic testimony, or maybe because the president died.

Apple Daily making animations of murder cases without camera evidence

Jimmy Lai is a Chinese media elite guy who likes shaking things up and likes a lot of drama. He took the China-Taiwan-Hongkong publishing market by a storm with the introduction of Apple Daily, a newspaper that combines politics and business, but is being reported with colorful tabloids (a creative form of newspaper, google it!) and extensive graphics. Then bro moved on with founding in 2009 a youtube channel called “Next Media Animations”, a channel that offers more than 1000 videos focusing on some western news and scandals, being put in 3d animation/ cgi. Taiwan’s National Communications Commission rejected Lai’s application for a tv license, because his content blurs the border between reality and dramas. As said, now his animations focus on western scandals, such as a Killer Whale attack with no real footage, Gordon Brown, UK’s PM abusing his staff in an over-volcanic way, Jay Leno and Conan O’brien, talk show hosts, get into a serious battle with each other (in reality it’s not that dramatic), and how Marilyn Monroe, Beyonce and Shakira have an effect on the male brain.
Last but certainly not least, the video that made “Next Media Animation” popular, the Tiger Woods car crash, which is a mix of real pictures from the Woods crash with an animated fight and accident. There is a narration in Taiwanese, but it’s translated to English so that’s cool.

Tiger Woods car crash and Next Media Animation’s ”artwork”

A video of Tiger Woods, a famous American golf player, the richest athlete worth 1 billion $, who was injured in a car crash, Next Media Animation tells the story in a dramatic way – at the beginning they deliver the facts with a pretty accurate animation of what we surely know from the car crash, and also a lot of pictures or videos that are actually real in a mix. Accurately enough, they explain that he just died from a car crash, and Elin Nordegren’s alibi, Wood’s wife who was in home and Woods crashed near their home so she came and tried to help him with no success. Then comes the sussy part, where Next Media Animation literally accuses Elin of killing Woods with no evidence, except for the fact that she once had an affair with someone else. They can accuse her, but also make an animation that falsely shows Elin bumping with a golf club on Woods’ car leading to his crash with no evidence? This is outrageous. That’s why the Taiwan Communication Commission didn’t give Lai a TV license. He paints a maybe-false image that is too real, therefore the watchers think that the animation might be actually real, despite having no evidence.