Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas - 29 | Raychelle Burks on the Chemistry of Murder

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

Sometimes science is asking esoteric questions about the fundamental nature of reality. Other times, it just wants to solve a murder. Today's guest, Raychelle Burks, is an analytical chemist at St. Edward's University in Texas. Before becoming a full-time academic, she worked in a crime lab using chemistry to help police track suspects, and now she does research on building new detectors for use in forensic analyses. We talk about how the real world of forensic investigation differs from the version you see portrayed on CSI, and how real chemists use their tools to help law enforcement agencies fight crime. We may even touch on how criminals could use chemical knowledge to get away with their dastardly deeds. Raychelle Burks received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Nebraska, and is now an Assistant Professor at St. Edward's University. Her current research focuses on the development of portable colorimetry sensors that can be used in the field. She is active on Twitter as @DrRubidium, and often appears as an expert on podcasts and TV documentaries, as well as speaking at conventions and festivals. She is an active advocate for women and underrepresented minorities in science. Web page Wikipedia Twitter Columns at Chemistry World Blog at Scientopia

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I see terms at vinmo. verification required to use a VIMO balance. Hello everyone and welcome to the Minescape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Now, let's face it, we've all contemplated how we would go about committing the perfect murder. Or if any of you are truly innocents out there, perhaps you've contemplated what it would be like to be the victim of a perfect murder. One way or the other, perfect murders are the kinds of things that dwell in our minds.

We want to know what it would be like. One of the things that we think is true, anyone who has watched TV or movies, knows it is harder these days to commit the perfect murder than it might have been in the past. The ability of the police and their friends to investigate crimes is better than it ever has been before, in large part because of science, because of our ability to do chemistry and forensic science that teaches us something from the crime scene about what actually went down. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Ray Berks is an analytical chemist who moved from actually working in a crime lab to becoming a professor at St. Edward's University in Texas, where she continues to work in

forensics. Her lab constructs detectors that look for explosives, drugs, and other substances of questionable repute to help the cops catch the bad guys. We're going to talk about different types of poison, if that's the way you want to roll, how to dispose of a body. This is a big problem for would-be murderers out there, and also the major differences between what you watch on CSI, and the real world of a forensic investigator. As far as I can tell, the major difference involves paperwork. So hopefully this is going to be an amusing listen. Usually in podcasts, my goal is that something educational happens,

but I'm not quite sure I really want this one to be very educational. Let's stick with amusing, shall we? Hopefully this will not turn out to be useful in your own future planning. I really don't want Minescape podcast to be investigated by the FBI. despite our best efforts, though, it's very possible where you're going to learn something as well as have a few thought-provoking ideas go into your mind. All right, let's go. You're a small business owner, but that means you're a lot of other things too.

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Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Ray Burks, welcome to the Mindscape podcast. Thank you. So I'm very excited. We're going to talk about chemistry and murder. Murder. Which came first for you? The chemistry or the murder? Murder. Murder. That got you into the chemistry?

Murder got me into chemistry. How did that happen? So I wanted to be a lawyer. And I was a real dorky kid. I used to go to the library on Saturday carrying a briefcase that my parents got me because they supported my dorkiness. And I used to go and I used to like, you know, read law books and learn about collateral estoppel. And so again, really fun. Sexy stuff.

I know. Very fun kid. And then in junior high, I got an opportunity to go to a junior high trip. And we went to Washington, D.C., which, of course, if you want to be a lawyer and you're a kid, that's like, what? Right. But then we had an opportunity to visit FBI field office. And at the time, they were kind of had a tour with a little bit of forensic science talking about crime and how science could be used for that. and I had never ever before in my life thought science was remotely interesting or useful.

Okay. But this really did it for me because I was just like, what? You can use science to do stuff. And I don't know why it never really hit me before. You know, some people, of course, my age in the shuttle era would have been big into space or dinosaurs or, and that never really got me. but the forensic science, that really resonated. And then from there, I just went down the nerd rabbit hole. Because this was high school age.

Junior high. But then that's when you actually actively became interested in chemistry for its own sake. Yes. Because a lot of the tests, you know, the idea that you didn't know what something was and you could do some tests and figure out what it was, that really got me. Right. The solving mysteries. And I think that, you know, it's kind of what, in a weird way, being a bit of a law nerd when I was little and watching murder she wrote with my grandmother and Matlock.

And there was always some lawyer running around solving, you know, or some ex-high school teacher who wrote mystery novels just up to no good. And so seeing that science could, you know, solve these mysteries was really the hook that got me interested. And then that's when I realized, I'm like, oh, so science is like kind of a big deal. Yeah. And that's probably common, but you stuck with the whole murder aspect. I mean, I don't know exactly your trajectory. I'll figure it out before I post the episode. But you served, you worked in some kind of law enforcement capacity.

Yeah, I was in a crime lab. So, you know, I chemistry and then went to graduate school and then left graduate school and worked in a crime lab for a while. And so, yeah, I mean, that's what I thought I would do for the rest of my life was, you know, be in that line of work. So this is literally the CSI stuff. You know, you're doing the, I don't know what you were doing. You're analyzing compounds trying to figure out what it is.

Lots of, you know, I worked at a small crime lab with just five people. And, you know, you're doing a lot of, a little bit of everything. Sometimes you get called out to a crime scene. but a lot of times you're just, you know, you're pulling casework that you get assigned. You go down to evidence property. You pick up the stuff. Yeah. And you bring it back and who know, I mean, you might be doing all kinds of things.

I actually did a lot of forensic video and image analysis. Oh, okay. In addition to chemical processing and physical processing of prints. Again, it was a very, you know, kind of small. So you kind of had to like cross-train and do certain things. And then we also, you know, when we were called, called out to do, you know, crime scene work. That was something that, you know, you had to be requested to go out.

So that, and then it was usually some type of major incident. So it could have been a homicide. It could have been, say, a robbery, which, you know, threat of violence or something of that nature, that you would get called out and have to do kind of all this crime scene work. Any particularly memorable incidents from that period of your life? Tons of memorable incidents. Very few I could talk about. This is your law training.

You know a little bit about what the rules are. Yes. That's right. So I would say, you know, for CSI, I think, you know, and I knew this just from, you know, really being involved and going through education and everything is that, you know, first of all, in CSI, none of us are that good looking. None of us have wardrobes that are that hip or cool. I never had sunglasses that neat.

And, you know, I always used to watch those shows. especially when I was in that job, and they never show them doing paperwork. And I know I spent at least half my time documenting and writing reports. You think the show would be improved if there was more paperwork? I think the show would be improved. Yes, CSI at paperwork. Yeah. C-Side paperwork.

But I think that was the fun part is, you know, it's like, okay, so take all of that, cut the episode by 20 minutes and put in just writing reports. More paperwork. More paperwork. Yeah. I have no idea why you're not a showrunner for a major. I don't know either. Some days, I hope, yes.

So then what in the world gave you the idea that what you really wanted to do was be a professor? That's so. I think it's funny because, you know, I planned this whole thing where I was going to work in the crime lab for a long time. And definitely when I was in graduate school, you know, you're kind of sometimes are surrounded by folks that want to be an academic. And a little bit different in chemistry, because chemistry is also very, not in industry. It's useful for things other than being a professor. Oh, sure.

I mean, you know. Not like theoretical physics. I didn't. That was not me. But I think, you know, chemistry with this history and applications, you know, there's the kind of common thing is that a third are in academia, a third are kind of in government labs, a third's in industry. So, you know, lots of applications in that way.

And so actually most of the people that I went to graduate school with were not going to be academics. It's just chemistry. It's a little bit different for other fields. So this was your PhD program. You had a PhD before the Climbab. And so a lot of people actually, no, I left, this is what not to do, kids. I left graduate school to take this super awesome job because there's not that many jobs. And I said, you know what? I will totally write my dissertation while I'm working a new full-time job.

Famous last mistake. So funny. I mean, I did, but let's just say it took a little bit. longer than I had deluded myself and my advisor. Yeah. And thinking. But yeah, so I think with, you know, I think most of the people in definitely in my PhD program or in my, in the lab that I was in, you know, a lot went into, you know, working

at, say, Glaco Smith-Kline or Merck or, you know, there's a colleague that works at NIST. So a big mix, academia is not the big deal. And so that was not uncommon, and you planned for that. Like in your programs, you know, a lot of people are going into industry and chemistry. And so, or they're, you know, they're going to be full-time researchers, but not professors, you know, not academics. And so that was really interesting to me because that certainly wasn't what I went to graduate school for. But I had, you know, I learned a lot. And I definitely, when I, you know, you started doing a job, then I realized, hey, I couldn't actually miss doing the research and development.

Because when you're active casework, you just have no time. Certainly not doing research, no. No. I mean, and. There's a lot of paperwork to be getting done. There's a lot of paperwork to be getting done. But your case backlog in some places can be, you know, several months, if not years. And so even though you might be best positioned to develop.

some new method, you have no time or no resources in order to do that. So I missed that. And I did miss teaching, even though, you know, when you go to graduate schools, you know you don't really get a PhD in teaching or education. No. The more successful you are, the less you teach. Right. So it was, so it was kind of funny to me. And then, you know, going back into academia, I realized that, wow, I did, I did miss these things. And it kind of in a way snuck up on me because it's not quite what I plan for. But I do like, I like the training aspect, too, of undergraduate research. Because I'm at a principally undergraduate institution. So, you know, the idea of training folks to do field work or lab work and, you know, really giving them the

opportunity to develop new skills is in an informative way is really fun. I find that. It's very hard. You know, some days you're like, I hope I have. not messing this up. Yep, a lot of responsibility. But it's also a lot of fun to see, you know, people really grow into their scholarship and into their profession. So I do physics for a living. Some people have the misimpression that this is somehow close to chemistry. In fact, I know nothing about chemistry. I've never even taken a chemistry class at the university level. I took high school chemistry. So if you had in mind that what you were interested in was sort of the forensic side of chemistry, what kind of chemist would you become? I know there's physical and

organic and organic and so forth. I would say analytical. So what does that mean? So I like to call analytical chemists the detectives of chemistry. So we tend not to make chemicals. We find them. Okay. And we tend to find them in a sea of other ones. So, you know, I always joke when people say, oh, it's really hard to find a needle and a haystack. That should actually be pretty easy because a needle and a haystack. are very different. Very different. But analytical chemists, it's about finding a needle, particular needle, in a stack of needles. Yep.

And so while we don't often build, you know, or we don't do a lot of synthesis, we may build molecules or engineer instruments that will then be used as detective tools. Right. And so I think that analysis and then also being able to look at the data and and treat it in a certain way, whether it's statistically or modeling the data to then kind of stand back and look at it. What the hell does it mean? Right. And really, it is sometimes that way where you just like, you project it and you have this thing and then you have to like step back and look at it. And it might be one of those things where I know for sure this has happened to me where you're, looking at the data, you know it means something, and you bolt upright at 2 a.m. And it has come to you, where you've seen this pattern before, what the pattern indicates. When people turn to telehealth or weight loss, they're looking for real support.

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Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. And then you run to write it down. Well, this is fascinating because I think that, you know, people who are not chemists or scientists for a living might have a different idea of what it means to do chemistry. The process you're describing, it sounds much more creative and artistic than a lot of people might think. But so when you say the pattern, you recognize the pattern, a pattern in what? What are you looking at? So, you know, there's sometimes, so I build sensing devices and sometimes they're chemical sensors.

So one chemical will interact with another and give off some signal. And a lot of times it's a color. It changes color. Okay. Or it fluoresces. There might be like biolum. or some kind of luminescent event. And so you might do something like trying to not only,

you might have several of those sensors. And then not just do you look at how does it change. You're looking how if one change is in relationship to another. Is there some type of pattern in how certain sensors behave? And then what does that tell you about what they're interacting with? Because oftentimes you're trying to design something to find at least for me being forensic, I'm trying to find, quote, bad stuff. Weapons, chemical, biological, explosives, scheduled stuff.

So how then does the sensor respond? Because it's not enough to build it and have it be reliable and be like, yep, it always turns red when it's in whatever. Why does it do that? Right. What is the risk? Why does it turn red here but green here? And so sometimes you look at the data and you can use various tools. And sometimes you use chemometrics, which is like fancy chemistry statistics.

And there's a way to, again, you're looking at changes of changes sometimes, and you map the data. And sometimes you'll look at a plot. And I think some, you know, even economic data, there's lots of people that have all kinds of data. And you might plot it in a lot of different ways. Bar chart, pie chart, Venn diagram. Like, you're just plotting it. And then you know that there's something there. And you just, you know, sometimes you just don't recognize.

the pattern or how one thing influences another. You just need to step back from it for a moment. And it could be literally. I have literally projected things and literally just gazed on it. And I do feel like maybe that is a bit of the creative thing where sometimes I've gone to museums and pieces of art and you're not sure that you're seeing what either quote you should or what maybe either the artist thought or maybe you're seeing something that is not intended, but you need to get a better look at it. And sometimes you step

forward, but sometimes, like, there's been a few pieces in the, I remember when I first time I went to the Uffizi Gallery and saw, say, say, like, the Allegory Spring or the birth of Venus, I had no idea they were that large. Ah. Because you see photographs. Because you see little small, you know, or, you know, something, or like the Mona Lisa is that small. Motelisa, I was going to say that. Right. And you just have to step sometimes with the ones that you're like, that thing is the entire side of the room. Right. And you are almost out in the hallway, trying to really see the full picture of all the data

and what it means in relationship to other data. And that's what oftentimes we do in science is that, you know, because you might have a very simple data set, okay, this thing turns red. But then the more sensors you add, then you have 17 of those things. And then you're trying to detect 100 different chemicals. So all of a sudden you have a very complicated pattern. And you need to kind of step back and say, well, what does it all mean in relationship to each other? And so that part, there is a creative aspect in how you visualize it.

And I think sometimes I look at why did that person paint that way with that shadow or why is that so abstract or why did they sculpt it in that way and this? And then maybe it's, you know, maybe we'll never know. I do think that sometimes artists take stuff literally to their grave. And they don't communicate the intention or anything. And sometimes, you know, the point is you take from it what you find important. But you do sometimes from every angle have to step kind of back and see, okay, can I interpret it in different ways. And I feel the same thing with scientific data. Absolutely, right.

Yeah. Different treatments. And it's not as if you're making it up, but you are doing. different, like, again, I'm going to make it a bar chart versus a line graphers. And then what does that visualization reveal about the underlying process? And the thing about chemistry and crime fighting or whatever is that there's so many different ways that the chemicals are involved in the investigation, right? So let's say you are called out.

Like, you still get called out? Do you know that you're a professor now, not a crime lab technician? Do you visit crime scenes? No. You're very sad about this? You know, in a way I'm not because it's a very stressful job. And academia is stressful in different ways. But also, you know, there's the cost-benefit.

I get to do other things now. Yeah, okay. All right, let's pretend that that's not true. Let's pretend to get called out all the time. What is on your mind when you're called out to a crime scene? What are you going to be looking for as a chemist? What good is the chemist out there at the merger investigation scene? Well, I think it obviously depends on, you know, what kind of background.

So typically when you would get there, you would get briefed by who's ever in charge of the scene, which, you know, is not you. And so, no, but like when you watch on the TV, you're like, what are the police for? You know, because the CSI people are always running around. But, like, you know, the background is important of, you know, what should we be looking for? What shouldn't we be looking for? What's missing is just as important as what maybe should be there. And so. So what does that mean?

What's missing? Well, let's say that you had somebody that had a severe shellfish allergy. And you hear that from family. But yet you're not seeing anything. You don't see an epipen. Right. None of the drugs they might have. You know, you don't even see a medic alert bracelet, which is really odd.

The dog that didn't bark. You know, I mean, you just also what's not there. Or if the person was, you know, you hear from the ME that there's someone was shot. or somebody was stabbed or they're strangled, but there's literally no weapon around. So what's not there can be just as important as what is there. And so, you know, the same thing goes with any kind of analytical data. And I'm sure in physics and astronomy, at least from, you know, friends that I have in those field, it's not only looking for what's present, but what is not there can tell you a lot, too.

So if someone is poisoned or something like that, I could absolutely understand the usefulness of a chemist. If someone's shot or knife, does there still things for the chemist to do at the crime scene? There might be, and chemical tests, though, and which, whether it would be a chemist there or not, but sometimes, you know, you might do like gunshot residue. And so presumptive tests for that, or they would actually collect, you know, swab hands very similar to what some, you know, you get screened for testing at the airport. You know, they might swab your hands. And then they might actually take that swab and secure it and transport it. And then you may be do some x-ray spectroscopy and some type of, you know, atomic emission or absorption spectroscopy

to see, okay, are the metal components that you would typically find in that in gunshot residue? Are they present and maybe at what amount? So that would be some level of analytical chemistry. But also, let's say that there is, you know, you're trying to say, okay, is this red-brown stain? Is it blood or not? Right. Okay. Then you would do some type.

of chemical presumptive test or even okay so it is blood but is it human then you might do an immunosay that would you know illuminate that so what does that mean exactly how do you do and how do you figure out whether blood is human or not certain antibodies for different types of animals would be present or not present and you can do kind of like the same type of technology as a pregnancy test okay um to kind of do it's really a dipstick it does look a lot You know, it reminds you a lot of a pregnancy test. And you can kind of get an idea and say, oh, it's, you know, which doesn't, you know, that might lead you to another thing of why is there dog blood here then?

Like, you know, there's no dog. Right. Like, what's that? You know. Or so that I think that's another thing is that there are lots of tests that folks do. And so, you know, a lot of the, like even the presumptive, and by presumptive test, I mean that it's just a quick screening. tests. Usually they change color, really visual, really fast to do. And so sometimes there's real popular ones for scheduled drugs that will, you know, if you've roadside, they're very popular,

like Highway Patrol or if you're screening something. And then you put a little sample and a little bag and you break a couple of ampules and boom, purple, right? And then... So you don't even, that's not even a professional chemist. That's like the comp on the street can do a little... Sure. And a lot of those have been developed. Right. And then there's a lot of development behind that to get it down to it being that, quote, simple to do. And so those types of tests are very popular. And then can, again, they're just, you know, providing quick information to maybe make some type of a command decision. And so that's chemistry. Chemical development of fingerprints. So say on paper, you can use an in high. Hydron, which interacts with amino acids, turns purpleish pink color. Okay. Works like a charm on porous materials.

So you can get fingerprints off of paper that way. Yeah, visualize. So it'll stay on the material. Yeah. But you can visualize, you know, this print matter. And that actually came about when, you know, folks were trying to do staining and chromatography of proteins and amino acids. And then they were like, hey, this might be useful for this other thing.

solve murders with this, yes. And there's many things, like, you know, even CIA Accurlator super glue fuming that you see a lot on a TV. That was a total, you know, oops. I mean, you know, we say that, but that's, you know, it's a very useful kind of technique. And so that's a very, you know, interesting chemical process that people are still talking about in literature about how exactly it works. What's the mechanism? Oh, so we know it works, but the chemistry, the sort of individual chemistry is not completely understood. We think we're pretty good

But I feel like that's a lot of We have really good Mechanisms worked out Or we think we've got You know, very strong evidence that this is Is this the action? Right Until we don't

Yep Until the better idea comes along There's lots of And the fun, you know When I think about say slime Which might seem unrelated You know the kids and adults Let's face it

Love making with the glue And the borax Love making slime And just this year in chemical and engineering news, you know, people, it was, you know, still in literature. In real chemists, they're still debating about how that actually works. And everyone thought that that was a fissure lock. And you realize that no, it's not actually that. It's actually this instead.

I think that you're more familiar with this process of slime making than I am. How do you make slime? Okay, so. I don't make slime intentionally. Well, any of your listeners that probably have kids have made it or so that's the, you know, you just, basically like Elmer's glue and you add in a little borax, you know, like a soap, borax soap, the powdered soap, old school, I don't know, maybe in college in the labs they had the borax soap.

And then you basically mix it together and it becomes this non-Notonian fluid. You would love this. I would. I'm going to go home. Yes, it's super. And it's super fun. And of course, you know, you can make it with different types of polymers, clear glue, white glue. People put glitter in it, food coloring.

and like bespoke slime. But part of it too is even though that process was like we know how it works, it's polymer, it cross-pollomalomizes, blah, blah, blah, we're out the door. Then in the last couple years, people were like, actually, it's not this discreet, repeating, you know, cross-pululomorization we thought it was. And actually is it. And so I find that really fun because even though the best evidence at the time, people were very confident, it's explained a lot.

But then you get better techniques too, right? And we've seen that definitely in forensic science where the trajectory of the field has changed. The instruments get better. You're able to see, you know, literally see either smaller amounts or levels of detail that change. Even small amounts can revolutionize an entire thought process. Would you say that chemical forensics is becoming more important over time in crime investigation? or less? I definitely think more.

I think that the use of science in both criminal and civil matters has really dramatically increased. I would definitely say in the last 200 years and definitely in the last 30. And I think it's kind of funny because one of my show as I grew up with, murder she wrote, kind of demonstrates that over, you know, that show. was on, I think, for 12 years. But when it was on, you straddled the era of pre-DNA and post. And you see that in the show, the things that they talk about in early episodes and oh, we can get fingerprints and like abiottyping and you're just like.

Why would anyone do that? And then later, you know, it's a very big, big revolution. And then, you know, even watching shows, you know, Colombo, where they, you know, they'll have a handgun. They'll take a handkerchief from their pocket and think that they're, you know, somehow protecting the prints or they'll take a pen and literally either the pen and stick it down the barrel of the gun to pick it up. Even I know, that's a bad idea. Right. Like all these.

Yeah. But I think, you know, even that visualization, you can see how even the perception, you know, and how shows are run now. And now it's not uncommon to see whole shows where they show folks in Tyvex and they're changing out their booty. and they've got gloves that they keep changing. So you've seen the evolution of a field be mirrored in, you know, television and movies and sometimes right, and sometimes there's artistic license taken. But definitely the field is that that reflects the big changes in the field,

which continue. I mean, they march with the technology. And do the chemists get very involved with poisoning and things like that, or is that mostly medical people? So, yeah, medical examiner really depends on the state. I mean, there's the difference between if you're doing testing of, say, tissues and biological fluids, that's typically under the control of the medical examiner. And then that person would send tests out or request samples to be processed by toxicology folks

and maybe histology and pathology, looking at different, depending on which, like, if is it tissue or is it, say urine or is it that kind of thing. So different types of materials and different types of tests. But if you say, you know, you found some mysterious white powder, that actually might go to trace. I see. Right. So once it's in their body, then maybe it's the medical examiners. Yeah, that's a different deal. But when you find all sorts of chemicals around, then the chemists get involved. Yeah. And there was a big workplace poisoning case in Germany this year where

a worker, I mean, allegedly, allegedly, is, you know, dozens of their coworkers. And the last one that kind of kicked off them finding that, first of all, nobody had known this workplace poisoning was going on that spanned maybe, you know, he'd worked in that company for 40 years. He's just killing people, poisoning people? Potentially, because, you know, this one worker brought their lunch, you know, in the break room, you're putting in the fridge, you know, your biggest concern is you hope. Susan doesn't eat your wontons. Right. Exactly. And so they, they open up their thing and they see this white powder that they didn't. Why is it on their sandwich? Right. And so, you know,

they, you know, took their supervisor who, you know, at first was like, oh, it's some kind of a prank or whatever. And of course, me being a chemist, I'm like, that's not a brain. That's not a prank. Mysterious white powder is, let's assume the worst. And so, you know, they do some testing. In the meantime, they also installed CCTV. And it seems as if they did not maybe inform people that they installed cameras. And so it turns out they were, they got this person on video opening lunches. Just for kicks. And that's, I think that's the thing that, you know, the investigation is, is going to look into of what was going on there. And, you know, they do testing and they realized, you know, it was lead acetate, which is very sweet-tasting, but incredibly dangerous. But then they go back and they

realize, you know, he had so many different types of poisons, poisons, too, that could have potentially mimicked, you know, especially these would be like a chronic poisoning, not an acute. So it might look like coworkers were ill. And at the time the person was arrested, there was one coworker in a coma and one on dialysis. All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there. What's worse? Being understaffed or being poorly staffed? Well, that's a trick question, because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications, and everything else you're looking for. Or go a different way and get no traction.

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This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. When people turn to telehealth for weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderly meds.com. Orderly meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP1 medications like semaglutide and terseptatide. No guessing, just a more supportive experience, and all ship directly to your door in discreet packaging. Do your research. Ask questions.

Then visit orderly meds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderly meds.com slash podcast. Podcast. Individual results may vary not medical advice. Eligibility required seaside for details. So this Poisoner was an aficionado. Like he wasn't just, he didn't have just a bucket of bad stuff, but he had a retinue of different possible ways. There's a lot there to unpack, right? And then they start going back and looking at that how many coworkers of this person had died in the last 20 years.

And there's a lot, I mean, there's going to be a lot of work to do. Wow. All right. So chemists are going to be fully employed by this job. Yes, I think toxicology and then medical, you know, there's tons of stuff. But I also think, you know, my chemistry background too working in analytical, I, you know, did, you know, image analysis and video, which seems a bit odd. But then, you know, how photography works, how digital data works and how things are stored. You know, an image is in some ways, an image is an image. So if you have, you know, a camera. camera that's hooked up to a microscope versus a security camera, how do those work? What does the data mean? How do you retrieve the data? And so I think just like in a lot of other fields where, you know, you can translate the skills you've learned to this maybe new application or looked a bit tangent. You can do the same thing, definitely. And it's not just, you know, figuring out how a murder was done or who did it. There's presumably a lot of chemistry involved in

things like finding the body or, you know, analyzing old cases and old... Oh, yeah. I do want... One thing I do want to say is that I don't, you know, it was never my job to solve anything. That's definitely a big thing. It's like, that's the police's job, right? But we, you know, you might say, okay, is this possible? And the thing would be like, yeah, you know, or provide some data.

But I think with, yeah, I mean, I think some of the most interesting stuff, that comes out is trying to find like clandestine graves. And how do you find when people have been moved or if people had been there? And so trying to develop, you know, chemical tests. And of course, geologists do this as far as types of imaging and trying to look at and even, you know, different life scientists of how different plant growths and then entomologists, what kind of bugs are there. They're trying to locate those things and trying to map those.

you would think, I mean, even I sometimes am like, is that a big problem that we have a lot of clandestine graves? And it turns out, yes. Or trying to find them. So a clandestine grave, this is not supposed to be a grave. Not supposed to be a grave. So it's like a dead body in your yard and you didn't tell it. Yeah. And actually in L.A.

So we're in L.A. now. And there's just a case that happened where someone discovered a decaying skull in their backyard and then packed it up and brought it to police things. And the police at first, you know, this was just reported by LA Times, I think it was yesterday, and the police were like that we thought it was a prank at first because, you know, my thing is like, so if you find that, don't move it. Don't move it, right. And, you know, the police will come to your house and take care of. It's possibly you don't want the police to come to your house. Right, right. And so I think that's the thing is, you know, sometimes there's those types of endeavors or when you have missing people or, you know, you know,

And it could be historical. I think there's also, you know, kind of historical forensics where you might be trying to investigate a certain event and trying to really get now that, again, technology advances. And maybe we can start, you know, finding certain mass graves or when, you know, certain sites that things that people thought would occur. Or sometimes there was a case that I wrote about from my column that was like Renaissance era poisoning. potentially. That was the rumor. That's a long time ago. Oh, yeah. And the rumor was, you know, this was the Medici's court in Florence, which was just a hotbed. Scandal and activity and art and intrigue and all this stuff. And there was this rumor that this, you know, these folks philosophers and poets had been poisoned. And in an odd way or a good way, it's, I feel weird saying that. But there are certain poisons that.

that just they stay with you. They're literally in the bone. Okay. Or in, you know, certain amounts that get preserved. And so it was really interesting work that they did because they had baseline, say, arsenic levels that just take it. You know, because it's everywhere. That's a naturally occurring element. And it can be in drinking water.

It can just be around. So there's that really small baseline quantity. And so they had that kind of environment. background of what was kind of just present at the time. Because arsenic is not some complicated molecule. No, it's an element. Yeah. One atom.

And so, you know, they have that baseline. And you can get that in a lot of ways. You know, we have a lot of artifacts from that period. I mean, the stuff is just literally everywhere. But then, you know, they did some interesting work where they found that for definitely, for one of the two courtiers, the amounts that they then found were like way beyond what they found in kind of separate remains that would have just been more like, yeah, this is pretty standard. And it's, you know, again, maybe then the leap of saying this was a malicious

poisoning, that's a, that's a legal law enforcement thing. But when you look at the levels and you go, wow. And they were in the Medici, you know, it is now, does that mean that it's a criminal? You know, I mean, again, we're also talking about an era where you could, you know, and even much after that, you could go to a pharmacy slash chemist and pick up stuff that nowadays, you're like, I'm sorry, you could do what? You could just go to the pharmacist and pick up. The rules were looser back then. Strychnine and cyanide and, you know, and so it's hard to say, but the levels are interesting

to be like, yeah, so that's, someone needs to explain. I mean, it's more about, you know, what's the reasonable explanation that? That's not just casual, like. Well, we tell stories about Medici's and, you know, it's kind of fun, palis intrigue stuff. But are we exaggerating or was there really that much poisoning going on? I feel, you know, it's when you look back on those things, you know, people always say now that, you know, like, oh, this, you know, kids these days or nowadays. And I'm like, mm-mm. I mean, there was some stuff going on, right?

Between the Borgias and the Medici's and, you know, the stories that you hear. But then, I mean, has that become almost integrated into historical lore? And that's why, you know, sometimes these folks that go back. And if you look at, like, the Egyptian houses in the upper. lower Egypt that, you know, what is that with great power comes great responsibility. I think with great power also comes great shenanigans. And there's just a lot of, you know, potentially things that have gone on. And part of it is, you know, wow, really?

You know, like, I remember the first time I heard about the Borgias. I was like, oh, scandal. You know, and again, we think that that's very modern. Right. Some of these things. No, it goes back. Oh, yeah. And I think, you know, the kind of the nicknames.

that things get like arsenic like inheritance powder. That's how common it was. You know, when you think about your inheritance process a little bit. Where you think about those things or, you know, hemlock and belladonna and, you know, strict nine and you think about all these things and how easy they were to get. Right. And how, you know, so his uncle or whatever had a, you know, gastro distress and then, you know, took a long time.

And, you know, this is also an Agatha Christie device of, you know, sometimes it is artistic and sometimes art is just mirroring that, you know, yes, so-and-so, aunt whatever did have an eight-month-long illness and then died and then so-and-so inherited it herited the house or, you know, some small bequeath. But, yeah, but then a lot of times you look back at the old newspapers and you realize that that is like the whole, remember. The law and order, I always love the tradition, you know, the old school law and order where it says, you know, or even in SVU now it says that little proviso of, you know, this is not. I mean, it may be similar. Right. This is, you know, ripped from the headlines. And actually. And you realize, we've been doing that for a long time. Yeah.

You know, in some of these cases, you're like, that hits a little too close to home. Right. Well, this is good. Let's switch gears from being the investigators to being the perpetrators. Let's put ourselves in the mindsets of the perpetrators. So we can maybe working our way historically works here. Like if so, if you were back in ancient times, what were the good ways to off your nemesies? You know, besides just like bludgeoning?

Yeah, I mean, let's say a little more subtle. Maybe you didn't want to be caught. That's the great thing about poison, right? Is it at least presumably back in 2000 years ago, if you bludgeon someone, it's pretty noticeable, but maybe you could poison someone and no one would know. And I think that that's the, you know, when you have some of the classic, quote, old school poisonings, they've been around for a long time. Your hemlock, your belladonna. So what you want, I mean, presumably the trick is you want something that the person imbibing it wouldn't know about.

Wouldn't know about it. So not too strong a taste. But, of course, how do you know it doesn't have too strong a taste? You don't want to taste it. Well, I mean, that's where the, you know, kind of folklore and legend. And people, I mean, that's the other really interesting thing is when it comes to poisons, The certain things, again, that people think are kind of, quote, modern inventions, poisons, abortifactants, birth control attempts. This has all been well documented in texts.

I mean, as soon as people could be writing down things, they were either writing down, you know, how to kill, how to not get pregnant, how to terminate a pregnancy, or, you know, oh, wait, we need to write down some laws, you know. Yeah. You know, these types of, and bills of sell, I think, where I think the historical. folks would be like, no, no, no, bills the cells came for, you know, like those kind of tracking things. But all of that, when you look back at some of these, you know, some of our earliest, great, you know, scientific text, and, again, at the time it was the best they could do because you read some of the things now and you're like, that would never have worked. But, you know, there was a lot of information. And sometimes, again, it was observed that so-and-so ate this plant

that was grown by the river. Right. Yeah. And so, unfortunately. And so that's why, like, that kind of information. But poisons, certain types of poisons have been known for a very long time. And people have been killing each other with poisons in one way or another, whether literally chemical or biological also, you know, and being intentional in trying to infect

people. You know, I mean, people were flinging, rotting corpses over walls and, you know, leaving dead rats and water wells and trying to do different things and also just kind of both poisoning for a long, long time. And one of the, yeah, one of the things you hear about is carrying poison not just through ingestion, but, you know, through a garment or a weapon or something like that. Oh, yeah. How plausible are those devices? Pretty plausible. I mean, you know, we've got, I mean, most folks know about like Harare and, and darts and arrows and things like that. Yeah. And also, you know, lots of Greek mythology and, and, and, you know, and, you know,

And ancient plays, you know, we'll talk about like a poison dress. The poison dress trope is really popular of, you know, kind of saturating fabric and having it somehow, you know, and also like a metaphor of having it be beautiful and then having it kill you. And that you covenant. So the person who wore the dress would be the victim of the... Yeah. And sometimes, you know, or any garment could be a dress, could be, you know, a fancy garment, it kind of reminds me, you know, even the crowns.

So even, you know, Game of Thrones a bit, and it wasn't really a poison, it was hot molten gold. But, like, you lust for something and you covet it so much. There's a symbolic. There's a symbolic element there. But, you know, when you read some of these plays, like Medea, and you go, oh. So that, and that, again, didn't come from nowhere. And what happened in Medea? So, again, the poison dress trope.

Oh, yeah. Where it kind of actually reads a bit like a napalm. And then when you think about open flames and how, you know, and even flammable fabrics were, have always historically been a problem for ladies as far as the types of materials dresses are made out of and the fact that there were so much fabric for certain folks and that, you know, lighting devices were literally open flames. Right. Yeah, everything was open flames. So, you know, this kind of danger of that.

And the visualization of that whole thing. It looks good when your dress catches on fire. know, but even in a more artistic way to make a statement like hunger game, right, that whole visualization. But when you think about, there's lots of routes of exposure, you know, there's ingestion, there's gas, there's like through the skin. And so there's a lot of methods. And that also, you know, is interesting. And historically, it goes way back. Could have been something that you were touched. Could have, again, like clothes, you know, and you saw that the danger too, like World War I, which is called the chemist war, some of the...

It's not really called that by anyone who's not a chemist. Right. Unless you're a historian, unless you're a historian, maybe you call it the chemistore. But also some of the challenges with some of the earliest nerve agents and today is that they persist in the environment and on your clothes. Well, you know, if you're in a theater of war, you can't really start running around taking all your clothes off. I mean, even in a lab environment, like lab safe, anyone's been through lab training knows that, you know, if you spill something on yourself, you had to use, you know, shower. But the first, you know, you're actually supposed to take off this garment because it's keeping it against yourself. And so that's definitely based in history or fact with, again, with some flair.

And you know the ancient Greeks really did love their flair when it came to their tragedies. They did. They vended drama and tragedy, right. So, yeah, that's definitely rooted in. Do you think that it was an impetus for early chemistry, the desire to kill people in more creative, interesting ways? I think finding out, I think it's. fun. It's funny because, you know, when you think about maybe the history of chemistry, but in specific analytical chemistry, was to test currency. You know, you're talking about time where currency or things that you could trade, you had to prove they were the chemical composition

they were. Is it gold? Is it silver? And for a long time, salt was considered a currency. And you could trade and barter because it was so damn. And we don't think of it nowadays. because it's like laughably cheap. You can buy like a bucket of it for like a dollar. But is it what it actually is, this thing that you've attached huge value to? And that's one big thing. And then, of course, the other one is we got to find out why people keep dying. And so I feel.

That's an important question. I feel like, you know, in analytical, there's definitely this kind of, you're trying to, you know, again, solve mystery. of either is this thing what we say it is, because either it's going to be the foundation of an entire economy, which can cause the entire thing to collapse if the gold isn't gold. Or we have such a problem with proving goods are what they are, which again is a foundation of economy. Or, again, like the poisoning thing,

and Deborah Bloom did a great job in her book, Poisoner's Handbook, of tracking why that was such a thing. thing because again in a foundation of society I mean the poisonings are we're not that common that it was literally but it's the confidence and it's the security of society which is very tenuous yeah and doesn't take a lot of criminal behavior no I had to do that a great podcast with Neha Nerula talking about digital money and you know first you have to agree that it's money right and digital currencies are struggling with that right now so the perception of safety and security, whether it's in the economy or your person, that a lot of the earliest chemical

tests were based solely on that, on a level of protection and community and security of, you know, what does that mean? Because we've had to all agree and trust. Right. And yet, trust can be violated. Yeah. And so once we get to the Renaissance, if you're Lucretia Borgia and you want to, you have an annoying cousin, what do you do? Like how do I go shopping for poison? Ooh, yeah. Or do I need to make it myself? Well, or you'd have your right-hand person.

But also, you know, your apothecaries and your thing. And I think there's always been, right, there's always been a challenge of, what is that old proverb? The only way to keep, the only way three people can keep a secret as if two of them are dead. You know, the more co-conspirators that you have. And so, sure, if you can do it yourself and keep your own counsel, I think that's actually a biblical phrase, keep your own counsel, then that would be, you know, better in that. And so, you know, some of these folks were actually quite good. But also, you know, the important thing to remember is at the same time that these things are lethal and poisonous, a lot of the same things were in cosmetics and in smaller quantities they were considered medicinal.

It would not be uncommon, especially in an affluent household. You know, when we think of like, I'm going to open my medicine cabinet and I've got acetaminopin and aspirin and ana acids and like nine types of band-aids of various sizes and I've got ointments. Like you have like this whole spread, especially in a big household. Well, that was again. So the equivalent of that fact then. That would have been, it would not have been uncommon to have some of these things. And then also to think about pest control, which was also, you know, kind of a big deal. And also that, you know, the beginning of understanding the pest role in.

disease and all of that. But it wasn't also uncommon to get rid of vermin just because they ate your food. And even if the disease link came later, you knew they were eating your food, they were eating through your clothes, they were, you know, they were just pests. And so how do you get rid of them? Okay. So it was totally not uncommon for people to have buckets of the craziest stuff in their house or to also be using it in some much smaller quantity in a medicinal way, again, whether

it worked or not. This sounds like a very 1800s kind of thing to me. Like, was that the high point for ingesting crazy substances as potential miracle cures? Can go much earlier. You know, and it's kind of fun to go to museums and you'll see these, you know, chests of things. And you realize that especially, again, the more affluent the house or whatever the equivalent would be of, you know, middle class and up. And even more precarious socioeconomic positions, there were kind of the community medicinal chest or things people had access to. So like what kinds of things?

So, you know, you just had to say so different herbs. And some of the things that we would think now are like, oh, so basil, right, like flavoring agents or things like that. Or peppermint, different mints that were soothing on the stomach or let me do a little. a combination of, you know, a little bit of mint with Penny Royal and add in, you know, these kind of concoctions that you'd inherited from, you know, grandma, whoever, and it just seemed to work. And again, the fun thing is from a natural products thing, there's a lot of things that you carried forward and you're like, that actually did work.

And so we're going to now make it and manufacture it, and it's aspirin. You know, so some of these things, and people go back to, there's a whole, you know, area of scholarship where people go back into historical tests and try to figure out what was this thing and then test it, you know, against modern or historic diseases and see that, hey, it really did. Like, you know, even on a weird way, honey and mummification, the antibacterial properties in honey. I mean, it wasn't just this, it wasn't a weird thing or because it was sticky. Like, actually, it served. Sorry, I didn't know that honey played a huge role in mummification. Is that true? Yeah, a little bit. There's lots of different types of mummification.

protocols. But some protocols actually a thin layer of honey. And it did help keep down some of the little bacteria friends from getting a bit out of control. That's crazy to me because it seems like it's sweet and nutritious and it would attract all sorts of crazy things. But it's jam-packed, full. I mean, it's another chemical.

It's just, you know, the things like honey and coffee, we just don't think about of what they contain. Okay. And it's a thousand chemicals. and, you know, it's got all kinds of stuff in there. You know, it's an animal product, honey. You've got all kinds of cool stuff in there that could be serving some really interesting purpose. Like, what are the animals doing with it?

I'm not sure that they're making it so that I can have it on my toes. Right? You know, so there's some really interesting. And again, it's an active area of scholarship. You know, and some of the plants that are, you know, that people grow, oh, it's ornamental, it might be poisonous, or it's ornamental. And it seems like, you know, if I place it. it here, it keeps down these types of pests and insects. Well, it's, you know, releasing this volatile

organic chemical and there's, you know, there's really something in that that people have known about. And gardeners, you know, it's not an accident that these very elaborate gardens that were planned out, plants were where they were. And it wasn't just because they looked cool. You know, when you talk to, you know, or you read it these old historical documents, you realize, oh, that's why they're trying to keep down pests or trying to attract certain things. And you know, you know, and or, you know, certain gardens place certain things there because if you weren't well, you would want your medicinal garden close to the house. You weren't going to have to, like, hike out.

And so, like, some of that knowledge, now we just, again, we have better tools that we can kind of find or dismiss, you know, certain things. And I think that's kind of the fun part is that you can look back and say, okay, well, that explains it. or you're like, I have no idea why everyone was put sprinkling arsenic in there. You know, why? Why were you people doing that? All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there.

What's worse? Being understaffed or being poorly staffed? Well, that's a trick question, because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications, and everything else you're looking for. Or go a different way.

and get no traction. Seriously, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. It really is a no-brainer. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves. at Indeed.com slash podcast.

Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. When people turn to telehealth for weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderly meds.com. Orderly meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP1 medications like

semaglutide and terseptitide. No guessing, just a more supportive experience. And all shift directly to your door and discreet back. Do your research, ask questions, then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderly meds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary now. Medical advice, eligibility required seaside for details. Well, nowadays, we presumably know a lot more. Would we be able to commit the perfect crime with our chemistry knowledge now? Hypothetically, of course. We're not advocating anything here.

You know, whenever, and I do, I've done some panels where, you know, how to commit the perfect murder and things like that. because I never think it comes with planning in that way in the perfect murder weapon. Because sometimes even chemicals like succulentoline, which is a really scary agent, it's a medical purpose. If it's used, it's probably because you're going to be intubated. And it works on a certain type of muscle where it completely is going to paralyze it. Unfortunately, the type of muscles are also the ones that help you breathe. However, if you need intubation, they need to get that tube down your throat.

There's that, and it's all very well coordinated. Right. But if you use it for nefarious purposes, it goes very bad. And for a long time, you know, it was such an odd poison to use as a poison. You know, again, we have the ones that we've developed a lot of tests for, that we know what they look like. These are the symptoms. are tests, you know, we've got very simple tests. They're going to be the first run, like arsenic. You know, say carbon monoxide, cherry, you know, your skin turns like a cherry red.

There's other types of drugs that would call cyanosis, your skin would turn blue. But something like succinctalcoline is such a, I mean, it's a very specific application. It's not, you know, one of the heavy hitter poisons, the historical poisons, that it literally isn't found, wasn't found. I mean, now it's been, you know, the jig is up. Yeah. Because it just was not commonly used. So I guess that you could at one time. That really went under the radar and you could get away with some stuff because nobody was looking for it.

I mean, so if you're poisoning somebody, you might want a chemical that disappears from the body. Rapid metabolism, which sucks no coline. That can be an issue. another one would be some of your, say, your drug-facilitated crime molecules, like scoponamine, which I wrote about recently, where, again, not only does it, is it an issue because the metabolism can be fast, but one of its effects is memory loss. Oh, perfect. And it affects your ability.

So by the time you might even realize, or even if you do, that maybe I should seek medical attention three days later and you know whether a metabolite could be found or which metabolites i mean that so the drugs action itself limits its ability to be found and that's a big but that's you know there's a whole area of scholarship you know going with that one and you know really seeking out so every new drug or new poison you know requires another set of people like myself who develop a method like it's a race It's a race against time Somebody comes up with something and you've got to find a test for it So today's perfect murder is tomorrow's easily solved crime

But you gotta keep ahead of the curve Same thing with inheritance pattern I mean sure it got that nickname it for a lot of times People were able to get away with some really You know outrageous stuff and then you develop the test Even if they disappear from the body because they're metabolized They have some other effect on you know like you turn red like you said There could be other effect but even if they're metabolized

As long as we you know the other important area of scholarship is really understanding that metabolism. Because even if you can't find the parent compound anymore, you can find all of its little metabolites in certain ratios. And then it's like it's indirect, but it's very good evidence. And there's tons of those. And so again, that's a good, so the application of building a technique does depend on that good, not even old fashioned, that clinical metabolism really getting the mechanism and the

why so you can build a better test. And to me, it all comes together full circle of, I'm an applied scientist, but the reason I can build better tests is I have to understand the basic research in the clinical applications and the roots in order to get to the point where the little test that everyone takes for granted that it's so simple. Comes back to the science. It always comes back to that. You wrote this wonderful little snippet in one of your columns that is relevant here.

With its red color, bubbles, and sweetness, Cherry Lambreni is a popular tipple. It is also a good disguise for the sweet killer, Ethylene Glycol. Oh, one of my favorites. Ethylene glycol was another one that for a long time went under the radar. And an antifreeze. It's anti-freeze or it is antifreeze? Oh, okay. And so, of course, you know...

Again, easily obtained. Easily obtained. I mean, you can buy literally gallons of it. Now, you know, the reason why, too, it's not actually that. weird green color. They color it. They color it because they're like, hey, don't drink this. It's anaphrase, right?

Because it's incredibly dangerous. And of course, the danger like that is that it's very sweet, like at lead acetate. It's a very sweet thing. And so how you disguise it if you're trying to poison someone, much like, say, a lot of, you know, a lot of also plant-based poisons are alkaloids and they can taste very bitter. and so where do you hide it? Right. Right. And so that's why, you know, of course, even in cinema,

you see a lot of these poisons in red wine. Or elaborate cocktails, right? Or elaborate, yeah. Sweet and bitter. Or, you know, some kind of thing where it's like you're going to. Anti-Freeze Nogroni. You know, you're going to, I mean, but, you know, Ana-Fries would be so sweet that that kind of cocktail.

There was a big case where it was hidden in like a propel or like a gatorade. because Gatorade is also can be sweet. Well, would you want to hide it in something else that was sweet or do you want to balance it? Maybe I'm thinking more of a mixologist rather than a killer. Right. And I think that that is your first mistake. No. But you want, you want like.

You want like, right? If you're expecting sweet. Okay. Like this husband and wife, you know, I mean, like my wedding toast, my, this is a real case. This is a real case. My go-toe wedding toast is, may your marriage never be described as perfect by date line. because then you know, right?

Until. But in this case, I mean, it's such a sweet beverage that adding, you know, a little bit. A little bit of antifreeze. Isn't, it's going to disguise it. You wouldn't want to add something like strychnine. Right. It's too weird. Somebody would drink it.

First of all, there's, you know, the white powder you'd really have to work to get it dissolved. But also that, that bitterness would seem odd, right? So if a friend was a groni drinker, I'm not going to put anaphrase in it. Right. Because the minute it hits the palate, it's off. They were like, well, who made this? And they dump it. And so part of it is you want to do like dissolved light.

And of course you have the really dangerous ones that are colorless, odorless, tasteless, which of course is dangerous for the person. And maybe just what the doctor ordered for the villain. So there's a known list of those things. Oh, yeah. There's actually a nice little review article about, you know, the seven most, about seven common homicide poisonings. Oh, okay. And, you know, it's, it's weird or it's not weird, but just like everything else, things are in vogue.

Yeah, there's fashion, right? You know, so, and again, it also becomes of how easy it is to get. Sure. Because you don't want to arouse suspicion. You know, I mean, that's part of it, good old fashion. gum shoe intelligence police work, right? It's just amassing information. And there was a really old case that involves strychnine

where a person went to, you know, you could just go to a store and buy it. Because again, for pests, if you're getting rid of rats and, I mean, it's still utilized in these kind of poisoned wheat, sprinkle it around. And so the shop owner was like, yeah, yeah, you did come in and you did buy that and you bought it one month, you know, and that was, you know, that was, you know, almost 200 years ago. So, I mean, and then of course there was 150 years. Yeah, there was 150 years ago.

And then there was a test, you know, there was, again, these preliminary tests of looking at these things. Then there was that and they discovered that. But again, of the tests were done later, right? The tests are always, you know, later than you just went and you went to every place that sold it. You looked on the farm, and yep, yep, she was here. Last Wednesday. You know, I mean, that's the, you know, the good old fashion kind of gum shoe stuff. And even I think that's the thing is that even when you have the test, people are still going to want to, but where did they get it?

Yeah. There's a lot of, we live in a world where there's a lot of records that are left by everything we do. Yeah. So it's becoming harder and harder to commit a good murder. And, yeah, and I think, you know, the records. So when people ask me about, you know, committing a perfect crime and some really elaborate scheme, I think the better thing to do is that when people have... Keep it simple, stupid. Yeah.

We've gotten away with something, quote unquote. It's really a kind of sometimes a perfect storm of incompetence. Sometimes of just low response time, certain things weren't collected that should have been. you know, the, maybe the investigative officers made mistakes or there were accidents, or, again, there could have been some level of professional incompetence. The prosecuting attorney declines to, I mean, there's almost like a perfect storm of things that can occur where it's, you couldn't plan for that, though, unless you literally did the investigation of like, it needs to be on the corner of Sepulvita. And like at this time of night, between a shift change, like, and then you, that would almost, how did you find out, you know, the pulling your Google search records and that kind of stuff? And so it can be the more you plan, the plan reveals your malfeas.

That's true. That's a good point. Yeah. But some other, I, sometimes I get mail from prisoners who want, like, me to give them a free copy of my book or something like that. because they can't get it in prison. And part of me wants to help them out, of course, because they're in prison and they want to improve themselves. But when you get mail from prisoners,

it always includes their prisoner number, and you can go and look up what they did. You get way more exciting mail than I do. So far, the ones I've gotten, it's not like, you know, mail fraud. Like, there's really bad things that these people did. This one guy, it's pretty clear that he killed his grandmother. and like they never found her body. She disappeared and from staying with him and things like that.

But, you know, he got in prison for a related thing, but they never found her body. I mean, how do you get rid of the body? That's the other thing. Like, once I've committed the perfect crime. You got a lot of options. But, you know, there's also weaknesses. Body transport can be where you get caught. You know, there's key cases where moving people and or bodies is when you got pulled over for that broken tail light.

And so there's, you know, those... How often do tail lights get broken anyway? You'd be a surprise or some, or speeding or a parking fine or, you know, something like that. And so, but then, okay, you move it. Then you've upped the number of people that see you. And especially now with CCTV and parking garages and just the street and stoplights. And, you know, one of the first things that folks will do is they'll pull cameras from as many locations as they can. And someone's going to have to sit through it all.

So all of the, literally just the transport can be hard. And also, I would advise, because this is actually a real case, don't Google Best Disposal Spites in Los Angeles County. Can't you go to the dark web and, you know, do this without leaving a drag? Just saying, maybe. But also, you know, again, it's, are you going to bury it in your house? Are you going to transport? That's it.

You know, that time leaves you open and vulnerable. There was a different case where someone, bought like disposal type things, and they paid cash, but they went to a store with cameras, and then for some reason they wanted to use their club card so they could get a discount. Again, you cannot make these things up, like human behavior. There's a selection effect that these are ones we've caught. Right. Right.

But, you know, on the other hand, but I think, you know, there's chemical disposal methods, right, acid or base. There's fire, you know, so trying to obliterate it that way. there is, you know, I'm going to... It would seem very difficult to incinerate a body if you didn't have the right equipment. Oh, no, you can do it. Okay. I think that... Dry it out first.

I think time and, you know, where you're at and how hot you can get things. That might shorten the time. So if you're out, if you're in a cabin in the woods, this might be the way to go. Maybe, but then, you know, why is there a huge smoke thing coming from that person's got? I mean, I think there's always, you know, that you can't, what you can't, plan for is someone that decided to do them and their friend hike past your remote cabin and see you carrying that thing rolled up in a carpet out to the bonfire. Right.

You know, and even the cases where, and in recent years you've had, you know, it used to be the cliche was no body, no crime. You know, it was at one time harder to prosecute those things. but almost with the advent of as much data and how everything, you know, is kind of logged and you have to kind of access certain records, you know, unless this person is totally ghosted, everyone, and then gone completely off the grid, which is really, really hard to do, they're dead. Right. And that's not a, and then you look at the person's behavior and how they would. you know, kind of carry on their life. They're not accessing their bank of card.

They didn't do a major withdrawal. Their credit cards aren't being used. Their car is still there. I mean, all of these things, then it's reasonable to conclude something has occurred. And so with, again, like, again, the ramp up of technology, and sometimes, you know, there are concerns about privacy and things like that are legitimate. But at the same time, it's like, you know, maybe a couple hundred years. years ago, maybe even 50 or 60 years ago, people would have been like, nobody, no crime.

Way easier to get away with the crime. But now it's like no digital signature means that Aunt Glenda is that, you know, it's not, is that, you know, it's just so hard to do that. But the saving grace is that the crime labs are backed up by months or years, right? It doesn't that make it easier? I mean, I think that, I think that that's the other challenge, right? So, you know, again, that's a practical administration problem. and we've seen, unfortunately, we've seen that manifest itself, especially with sexual assault test kits and with sexual limitations,

where you're talking warehouses full of kits. And there was a great bunch of work where they... With kits that have just not been analyzed. Analyzed because, again, the backlog, the cost, combination of those factors. But when they've gotten the funds and actually gone through, and there was, I believe it was in Michigan, And they did all of this work in analysis because they got this funding and they were able to process all these, you know, backlog kids. And they found a number of serial predators.

And, you know, when you look at the data, again, you come back to the data and you look at these numbers and you look at the, I mean, again, I'm not over saying it when I'm saying warehouses full of stuff. That it's just, again, you get away with it, not. because you didn't leave evidence behind, but because of, you know, limitations in staff, instruments, budgets. Right. And it's shocking and somehow so ordinary to say that. But that absolutely influences, like every other type of analysis. It absolutely influences what you can do.

Sure. You know, I always like to end on a more or less optimistic note. That was not it. Sorry. Sorry. Whereas we as we wrap things up, you know, I did want to say, like, I hope that most of your students go into lives of fighting crime rather than committing it. Me too. They seem prepared for either one, but, you know, presumably the ones who are best prepared would be good at either one.

But are we, is it an exciting frontier for chemistry now and catching bad guys in better and better ways? I think, I like to think of it maybe as keeping us safe. And there's, again, not just catching bad guys, but I think, also the things that we think about are just, you know, kind of workplace contaminants or environmental accidents or, you know, as, you know, someone who lives in Austin, Texas, we just had this boil water notice. What was that? Boil water notice.

There was a, you had to boil all the water because the processing plants weren't able to function at the way they could and went again, like a storm or, you know, again, a hurricane, you know, it doesn't have to be malfeasant. And so when I think about my students, and even the work I do, which would still be forensic, even if it's not duplicitous, is that it's in the business of keeping us safe and being able to have confidence in the things that we take for granted,

our food and our drink and our air. And I think that being able to have the skill set to keep yourself safe or at least be able to look at the data and make good choices, I feel like you're giving, you're empowering folks. And so that's kind of how I look at what I do rather than the opposite of catching bad guys. Most people don't want to kill people or even catch bad people. They just want to live their lives. They just want to drink their water and eat their kale smoothies.

No, and they're bacon. They want to feel, you know, and so that's how I look at it is, is, you know, even though the CSI and the forensic stuff is sexy and people find it interesting. For the most part, what we do is, is this mundane stuff that you just want to be able to, you know, your milk is going to be good. Your water is safe to drink. And, you know, you've got a safe train station to walk through

with no contaminants. I mean, that's really, so in some small way, I think a lot of scientists, you know, in general, I think a lot of scientists are, I just want to help people. Whatever small way, that is. And we're thankful for it. Ray Berks, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thank you. What if you could have even more and more and more help to pursue your goals? At LPL Financial,

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