A fly for the prosecution : how insect evidence helps solve crimes / M. Lee Goff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goff, M. Lee (Madison Lee), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Forensic entomology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (236 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, [2000]

Summary:

The forensic entomologist turns a dispassionate, analytic eye on scenes from which most people would recoil--human corpses in various stages of decay, usually the remains of people who have met a premature end through accident or mayhem. To Lee Goff and his fellow forensic entomologists, each body recovered at a crime scene is an ecosystem, a unique microenvironment colonized in succession by a diverse array of flies, beetles, mites, spiders, and other arthropods: some using the body to provision their young, some feeding directly on the tissues and by-products of decay, and still others preying on the scavengers. Using actual cases on which he has consulted, Goff shows how knowledge of these insects and their habits allows forensic entomologists to furnish investigators with crucial evidence about crimes. Even when a body has been reduced to a skeleton, insect evidence can often provide the only available estimate of the postmortem interval, or time elapsed since death, as well as clues to whether the body has been moved from the original crime scene, and whether drugs have contributed to the death. An experienced forensic investigator who regularly advises law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad, Goff is uniquely qualified to tell the fascinating if unsettling story of the development and practice of forensic entomology.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Prologue: Honolulu, 1984

Chapter 1. Beginnings

Chapter 2. The Bugs on the Body

Chapter 3. The Pigs' Tale

Chapter 4. The First Flies

Chapter 5. Patterns of Succession

Chapter 6. Cover-ups and Concealments

Chapter 7. Predators

Chapter 8. Air, Fire, and Water

Chapter 9. Drugs and Toxins

Chapter 10. Coping

Chapter 11. Testifying

Chapter 12. Spreading the Word

Epilogue: Summing Up

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674037687

0674037685

OCLC:

1286427650