Forensic Social

In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War II to be legally defined as genocide. Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley, California, to serve as one of sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide. Over the next four years, Koff’s grueling investigations took her across geography synonymous with some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century.

A riveting true crime story that vividly recounts the birth of modern forensics. At the end of the 19th century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher, known and feared as “The Killer of Little Shepherds”, terrorized the French countryside. He eluded authorities for years - until he ran up against prosecutor Emile Fourquet and Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, the era’s most renowned criminologist. The two men - intelligent and bold - typified the Belle Époque, a period of immense scientific achievement and fascination with science’s promise to reveal the secrets of the human condition.

What drives a person to commit seemingly inexplicable crimes? Dr Duncan Harding is the person the police and the courts turn to for answers. An expert witness, he must try to establish a defendant’s mental state and motivation. And their fitness to stand trial. Growing up in a broken, violent home, Harding became a doctor because he wanted to be good and kind. It led him on a journey that has brought him face to face with psychopaths and taken him to the limits. But he’s never turned away nor given up hope. Mesmerising, insightful and redemptive, The Criminal Mind is his unforgettable story.

Despite advances in DNA evidence and forensic analysis, almost half of murder cases in Canada and the US remain unsolved. By 2016, the solved rate had dropped so significantly in the United States that it was the lowest in recorded history, with one in two killers never even identified, much less arrested and successfully prosecuted. And the statistics are just as bad in Canada.

Award-winning investigative journalist and clean-food activist Mike Adams, the “Health Ranger”, is founder and editor of Natural News, one of the top health news websites in the world, reaching millions of readers each month. Now in Food Forensics, Adams meticulously tests groceries, fast foods, dietary supplements, spices, and protein powders for heavy metals and toxic elements that could be jeopardizing your health.

While there are high-quality manuals for conducting digital examinations on a device or network that has been hacked, the Cybercrime Investigators Handbook is the first guide on how to commence an investigation from the location the offence occurred and collect the evidence necessary to locate and prosecute the offender. This valuable contribution to the field teaches listeners to locate, lawfully seize, preserve, examine, interpret, and manage the technical evidence that is vital for effective cybercrime investigation.

From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

Written by the world's leading expert on false confessions, this landmark book reveals the psychology behind why innocent men, women, and children, intensely stressed and befuddled by the promises, threats, trickery, and deception of a police interrogation, are duped into confession, no matter how horrific the crime.

From an FBI insider, a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the historic investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia and the president's unprecedented attacks on the bureau - and a passionate defense of the men and women who work every day to uphold democratic institutions and the rule of law.

A pioneer in forensic anthropology, Dr. Bill Bass created the world's first laboratory dedicated to the study of human decomposition. Bill Bass' research at "the Body Farm" has revolutionized forensic science, helping police crack cold cases and pinpoint time since death. In this riveting book, the bone sleuth explores the rise of modern forensic science, using cases from his career to take readers into the real world of "CSI".

Delve into the minds of real people whose actions may shock and stun you, but whose stories have the power to challenge your assumptions and the stigma that surrounds mental illness. I Don't Talk to Dead Bodies shines a powerful, emotional, and surprisingly moving spotlight on the fascinating life of a forensic psychiatrist and the people she works with. It goes beyond the sensationalist headlines to show you just what happens in a world where mental illness occasionally makes good people do bad things.

Charged with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. Maintaining his innocence, he read everything on criminal law available in the prison library and persuaded a new lawyer to petition for the then-innovative DNA testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.

In 1984, Jean Road, a 49-year-old mother of three, awakes at home in Bath, Somerset, and wonders where her 17-year-old daughter Melanie can be. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. Just then, Jean and her husband, Tony, hear someone shouting through a loudspeaker: ‘Does anyone know Melanie?’ Jean runs to the police car outside only to discover that her daughter has been murdered in a nearby street as she walked home from a club in the early hours. Britain’s biggest manhunt begins.

No institution in American society generates as much curiosity, fear, and intrigue as the FBI. No institution can obtain so much information and penetrate so deeply into our private lives. And no institution plays a greater role in safeguarding our freedom - or potentially threatening it. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning journalist Ronald Kessler provides a firsthand look at the people who run the Bureau, the methods they use, the powers they wield, and the secrets they hold.

Serial killers: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are often the first names that spring to mind. Many people assume serial killers are primarily an American phenomenon that came about in the latter part of the 20th century. But such assumptions are far from the truth. Serial killers have been around for a very long time and can be found in every corner of the globe - and they're not just limited to the male gender either. Some of these predators have been caught and brought to justice whereas others have never been found, let alone identified.

Después de ejercer como médico forense durante más de treinta años, Philippe Boxho ha cosechado un arrollador éxito internacional con este asombroso recorrido entre bastidores de la morgue. ¡Almas sensibles, abstenerse! Philippe Boxho comparte en su primer libro historias de su día a día y nos permite descubrir el mundo fascinante y poco conocido de su oficio. Al hilo de estas anécdotas sorprendentes e insólitas, Boxho nos invita a acompañarlo a la escena del crimen, a la sala de autopsias y a los demás lugares variados e inesperados donde le han llevado sus investigaciones.

Perhaps no other television show captures our innate fascination with crime and criminals better than the original Forensic Files. Examining true crime cases from murders to insurance fraud, hit-and-runs to kidnappings, every case featured on the show is solved in large part with the help of forensic science like DNA evidence. In Forensic Files Now, author Rebecca Reisner shares her own gripping retellings of 40 favorite cases profiled on the show along with fascinating updates adapted from her popular blog, ForensicFilesNow.com.

From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in "expert witnesses", and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science.

Nowhere is there another lab like Dr. Bill Bass's: on a hillside in Tennessee, human bodies decompose in the open air, aided by insects, bacteria and birds, unhindered by coffins or mausoleums. At the "Body Farm," nature takes its course, with corpses buried in shallow graves, submerged in water, concealed beneath slabs of concrete, locked in trunks of cars. As stand-ins for murder victims, they serve the needs of science, and the cause of justice.

As a forensic psychiatrist, it's Dr Das' job to treat and rehabilitate what the tabloids might call the 'criminally insane', many of whom assault, rob, rape and even kill. His work takes him to high-security prisons and securely locked hospital wards across the country, as well as inside courtrooms, giving evidence as an expert witness.