Without a key piece of evidence, authorities may never solve some crimes like murder. But now, investigators can get that evidence from bugs. There is a relatively new field of investigation that relies on insects to catch criminals called Forensic Entomology. Insects may unlock the secrets to some of the toughest murder mysteries.

     Move over Sherlock Holmes; larva, maggots and flies are the tools for a new type of sleuth, bug detectives. It's not all that different from the movie "Silence of the Lambs." In one of the scenes a medical examiner plucks an insect from the mouth of a corpse. It's then taken to an entomologist for analysis. Just like in the movie, the insect can lead police to the killer. That's because minutes after a death, flesh-eating insects usually flies, colonize a body, laying hundreds of eggs.

     By determining the age of the maggots, entomologists can determine a time of death. That information can help put a killer behind bars. That's how Christine Loyd was convicted of murder. She was accused of killing Virginia Bailey and setting the house on fire to make the murder look like an accident. Prosecutors had no fingerprints, no smoking gun; what they had was a maggot.

     A maggot discovered on the body of the victim was all that Dr. Jeffrey Wells needed to solve the case. Dr. Wells teaches Forensic Entomology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He's one of only a handful of bug experts in the southeast who helps police solve crimes using insects. 
Christine Loyd said she saw the victim alive the night before the fire. But, Dr. Wells testified the maggots on the body were at least two to four-days-old. Dr. Wells said, "This clearly contradicted her testimony because a live person virtually never gets maggots on them!"
Normally insects are taken when a corpse has been brought back to the lab for autopsy but entomologists say the best bet is for these bugs to be collected right from the crime scene. Dr. Wells said, "Because they are growing so quickly that they can reach full size and crawl away." If the bugs crawl away, they take important clues with them like DNA. Using DNA analysis, entomologists can identify thousand of insect species. Those bugs can tell police whether a body has been moved or buried so if you find a body on the surface with the underground species then you would be very sure the body had been buried somewhere and then dug up.

     Just because fingerprints are nowhere to be found, and the murder weapon is missing, it doesn't mean there won't be a bug detective there to solve the mystery. Because a majority of law enforcement agencies don't know how helpful insects can be in solving crimes, very few police departments are using bug detectives.