Just blocks away from the VCU Medical Center campus stands the Virginia Institute for Forensic Science and Medicine at the corner of Fifth and Leigh streets.
“There is nothing like it in the United States,” said Linda Fairstein, one of the country’s best-selling mystery crime authors and a former New York City prosecutor. “What it has done for Virginia and the world is amazing.”
The institute, housed in the Biotech One building of the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park, contains individual laboratories — each with an important purpose in processing crime-scene evidence throughout the commonwealth.
When visitors, such as those touring the facility during Fairstein’s recent visit to Richmond, see the trace-evidence lab they find it similar to most high-school-science labs. Black lab tables stand in individual cubby holes where scientists can perform tests.
Here they test samples of accelerant used to start fires, analyze items ranging from a homemade bomb to paint marks left on a bumper from an accident, and analyze poisonous chemicals, hairs and fibers, glass and gunshot residue.
Scientists in the firearms and tool-arks laboratory analyze firearms, bullets and cartridge casings to determine which, if any, items were used in a certain crime scene. Each gun has a unique pattern that it leaves on the side of a bullet as it travels down the barrel and on the end of a bullet from its contact with the firing pin.
The tour group became startled when watching a scientist demonstrate firing a gun into a water chamber and collecting the bullets. After firing, the scientist used a computer and a microscope to compare those bullets side by side with a bullet from a crime to determine if that gun was used.
These scientists also analyze tool marks. They can determine the exact pair of pliers that were used to construct a bomb by analyzing the impression it left. By analyzing unique marks left from knives involved in stabbings, scientists also can determine if they were used in a crime scene.
The toxicology laboratory houses several computers used to analyze bodily fluids and tissues for alcohol, drugs and other poisons that may have affected a person’s actions. For instance, the institute’s toxicology lab receives most of the blood samples taken during DUI cases to determine the drugs or alcohol concentrations.
In the institute’s controlled substances lab, scientists analyze drugs to determine the type of drug, its power and its potency. Scientists there say they can sometimes determine where the drug has been, simply by its ingredients. All of VCU’s forensic science students in this lab grow their own marijuana plants, so they can test its different stages of development.
The institute’s DNA lab, which Fairstein highly praises, ranks as one of the fastest growing labs in the country. These forensic biology labs analyze items for the presence of blood, urine, skin cells, saliva, tears, perspiration and other fluids that may be present. Once analyzed, DNA profiles then can be compared with a suspect or to unsolved cases in the computerized database of DNA profiles of convicted offenders and others already in the system.
When water-soaked or charred documents are found in a fire, scientists attempt to restore these documents if they appear to be potentially important evidence. These scientists also can examine handwritten documents to determine an author of a forgery.
Every human has a unique fingerprint. As the scientist from the latent fingerprint and impressions lab described during the tour, these fingerprints are compared to known prints by suspects and/or run through theAutomated Fingerprint Identification System, which contains more than a million fingerprints from local, state and federal agencies. Using this program the computer tries to match individual characteristics of each fingerprint.
During Fairstein’s visit, the group also toured a morgue. They walked through the medical examiner’s office and then the examining room, where the autopsies are done. The morgue air is circulated four times more than other parts of the building to reduce the odors. In the morgue are seven or eight examining tables sticking out from the wall, each with its own sink, X-ray boards and sets of tools.