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Lecture on Forensic Profiling
Nayoung Rim

     On March 27, 2001, Bronx Science invited Raymond M. Pierce to give a lecture about his profession: Forensics Profiling.

     Mr. Pierce started off with a case that got him interested in his profession. One Tuesday morning, a woman was found dead in her apartment above a clinic. There was no forensic evidence to be found, and Mr. Pierce had no suspects. The husband had taken two polygraph tests (lie detector tests) and had passed both of them. During the presentation with the help of a slide projector, Mr. Pierce showed pictures of the crime scene. He gave clues to the crime, to try to get the audience to try and solve the case. With the use of interaction, Mr. Pierce engaged the audience's attention. Mr. Pierce sent a description of the crime scene to the Forensic Lab. The Forensic Profiler sent back a list of suspect's characteristics. The list helped Mr. Pierce to formulate a list of suspects. The list had ten characteristics; nine of the ten characteristics in the end proved to be correct.

     As it turned out the murderer was an old friend of the victim's husband. He visited the couple's home every Monday night for dinner. The friend was in love with the victim's husband, and somehow the wife found out about it. On one Monday night, the friend came over for dinner as usual. The husband, however was not present that night, he was held up as work because of a surgery that he had to perform. That night the wife told the man that she knew about the affection he had for her husband. She told him to never come to their house again. The next, morning the wife was found strangled to death.

     "Social behavior had a lot to do with this crime," said Mr. Pierce. Social behavior is the study of how humans think and the reasons behind their actions. It can tell a forensic profiler quite a bit about the perpetrator. For example, there was a spot of blood on the carpet in the living room. However, the woman was lying in the kitchen floor, in a pool of her own blood. The friend did not want the husband to move out of the apartment; thus he lifted the body from the living room floor and placed her on the kitchen floor after strangling her to death. Another example, the knife was placed in the overflowing bathtub; the way the knife was placed revealed the fact that the murderer was left-handed. Forensic profiling is not as scientific as DNA profiling, and sometimes not as accurate. However, it solved this case, since without forensic profiling the murdered would probably never have been found.

     The lecture that Mr. Pierce presented my class with was extremely interesting, it definitely caught the students attention, and gave them second thought towards a future career in Forensic Profiling.