“Grim Sleeper” serial killer- In A Nut Shell

The "Grim Sleeper" did give some sleepless nights to the Los Angeles County. Being stated as one of the most startling cases to be solved; this case has opened avenues to be considered very seriously by the Forensic Officers.

The Preview: Grim Sleeper is the nickname for a serial killer in Los Angeles, California believed to be responsible for at least 11 murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles since 1985. The attacker was dubbed the "Grim Sleeper" because he apparently took a 14-year hiatus from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.

The Investigation and Arrest: Well the Wikipedia would give you more Information but in brief the investigation took 25years..with the arrest of Lonnie Franklin Jr., 57 The arrest was made on July7, 2010


What is gripping is the way he was caught! Heard of familial DNA??... Well if you haven't its the first Familial DNA Case- Familial coz it is the DNA of a very close RELATIVE!! YES..RELATIVE...NOT YOUR OWN..BUT YOUR CLOSEST RELATIVE...

The familial search in the Grim Sleeper case began at a lab of the state’s Bureau of Forensic Services in Richmond, Calif., where forensic scientists came up with a list of 200 partial DNA matches from a database that contains 1.3 million profiles.

To narrow down their list of 200, they analyzed the Y chromosome, the male sex-determining chromosome that is passed from father to son. One person, a man who had recently been convicted on a felony weapons charge, was an exact match to the Y chromosome of crime-scene DNA. Next, using corroborating information like birth certificates and Google mapping, researchers figured out that the matching person’s father would be a viable suspect.

But the advent of familial searches raises important questions that may be better answered with a more sweeping authority: national mandatory standards governing the method and appropriate use of the technique. But how might these technologies be mis-used in the future?

Want to know more: Check this website exclusively for "Grim Sleeper"
http://thegrimsleeper.com/

LATEST FORENSIC NEWS 26JULY,2010

Woman's long-lost son found buried in 'John Doe' grave



The body of Jacob Whitt was found buried since Sept. 22, 1998, in a "John Doe" grave on the outskirts of Dallas.

His body was identified only recently through DNA sampling, according to his mother, Theresa Freitas, who lives near Grenelefe Golf and Tennis Resort, southeast of Haines City.

"They found him in a wooded area in a sleeping bag, with his work boots and one bullet in his head," Freitas said by telephone Monday, explaining how her son came to be buried without identification. "There was a .44 (caliber) gun lying three feet away from him. He was two weeks shy of his 22nd birthday."

Freitas said a representative of the Ellis County Sheriff's Office in Texas called her June 23 and reported Whitt's DNA match to a DNA swab sample that was taken from her by a Polk County Sheriff's Office detective in October 2008.

"It took a long time for the two (samples) to meet in the system," she said. "DNA is solving a lot of cases. If it weren't for that, we may not know that was my son. That's not the way I wanted, but at least we can bring him home."

Freitas said the Ellis County Sheriff's Office is ruling her son's death a suicide, but she said she does not believe that.

"I'm telling you, my son didn't kill himself, and I'm not a hysterical mother," she said. "There is no way that he walked 30 miles to a wooded area from where he lived, because he didn't have a car, and got in a sleeping bag with his work boots on, and laid on his side and shot himself with a .44.

READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE:
http://www.newschief.com/article/20100713/NEWS/7135042/1021

LATEST FORENSIC NEWS 25JULY,2010

Sharon Bio-Medicine Limited is looking for Head - Toxicology in Navi Mumbai

Employer Name: Sharon Bio-Medicine Limited
Employer Address: C-312, BSEL Tech Park, Sector 30(A), Vashi, Navi Mumbai- 400703
Email:
URL: http://www.sa-ford.com/
Phone: 91-22-67944000
Required Skills:
Required Experience: 7-10 Years
Required Education: UG - Other Graduate - Any Specialization PG - Other
Job Location: Navi Mumbai

Job Description

Candidate would be responsible for supporting of toxicology studies according to GLP, GMP, ISO 17025 and other relevant regulatory compliance guidelines and development of new testing procedures and associated validations and services for the department

About Employer

Sharon Bio-Medicine Limited is a fast growing Indian Pharmaceutical Company which specializes in manufacturing of Intermediates, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and Finished Dosage


First Indo-US Workshop on Forensic Engineering - at NIT - Tiruchirappalli in December 2010

Forensic Engineering is to develop practices and procedures to reduce the number of failures, to disseminate information on failures, and to provide guidelines for conducting failure investigations and for ethical conduct. Due to the increasing concerns of the current state of civil infrastructures and the need to enhance the performance of critical infrastructures through better inspection and repair techniques, there is an immediate need to equip young engineers with knowledge of forensic engineering practices.

The National Science Foundation of USA has awarded a grant to University of North Carolina at Charlotte to conduct the 'First Indo-US workshop in Forensic Engineering' in India at National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli as a coorganiser. The workshop will be organised during the month of December 2010.

Several eminent experts in forensic engineering from India and US will paticipate in the workshop. The people from all over the globe could participate interactively via internet or teleconferencing. The workshop will cover issues related to the practice of forensic engineering, including the investigation process, business aspects, and the legal system with an emphasis on the ethical issues.

Prof. Shen-en-Chen, Department of Civil Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Prof. C. Natarajan, Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli will be the co-ordinators of the workshop.

Forensic Phonetics

Forensic linguistics is a field of applied linguistics involving the relationship between language, the law, and crime.

Area of phonetics that deals with questions in which speaker identification is relevant to solving a crime.

Prominent cases:
• hoax calls to emergency numbers
• sexual herrasment calls
• bank robberies in which robbers are masked but recorded
• telefone calls from kidnappers
• crimes (e.g. rapes) in darkness in which victim cannot see but hear the perpetrator

Links of Forensic Phonetics:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~pf11/Links%20for%20Forensic%20Phonetics.htm

In a New Article in the Economist

Volker Dellwo, a phonetic scientist from University College London, conducted a small study in which he asked an actor to read 25 sentences in either his natural voice or with an accent. Dr Dellwo found that the actor’s fundamental frequency went from 120 hertz to 170 hertz when disguised. Furthermore, phonetic experts found it difficult to say in many cases if the same person was reading the sentence.

Dr Dellwo thinks it would be better to focus on rhythmic aspects of speech, such as the way a person lingers over vowels. He has found that the percentage of speech that is vocalic, as opposed to consonantal, is not only highly idiosyncratic and stable regardless how fast a person is speaking, but also is not perceived by the ear, making it hard to disguise. In the same study he found that this aspect of the actor’s speech did not change much, whether he read in a normal or disguised voice.

This study needs to be replicated with many more subjects and types of speech, but the results hint that speech rhythm could be profitably tapped by voice analysts. One snag is that, at present, the visual representation of the voice has to be tediously annotated manually for its vowel and consonant content.

However, a slightly different approach, measuring the proportion of speech time during which the vocal cords vibrate, could be automated—since software for extracting that feature already exists. If this proves viable it could become useful in police work, prosecutions and courtrooms. Scientists may yet have the last laugh.

CRIME SCENE INSECTS

YES ITS CSI: CRIME SCENE INSECTS..

FROM BADLY DECOMPOSED BODY TO A FRESHLY DECOMPOSING CORPSE..THESE TINY LITTLE CREATURES TELL YOU ABOUT THE TIME OF DEATH AND THE BODY ITSELF...

Forensic entomology is a young subfield, which is the application of this science to medicolegal death investigations. Forensic Entomologists estimate the post-mortem interval (PMI)—the amount of time that passes after the death of the victim. These scientists use insects to make such determinations, as well as to help reveal the probable cause, location, and time of death. Forensic Entomologists are also able to glean other valuable information by studying the insects that live on dead bodies. For example, insect evidence can be used to:


• deduce if a body was disturbed or moved after death
• identify a body by analyzing the DNA of flesh consumed by insects
• determine whether a dead individual used drugs by analyzing accumulated toxins in the insects that fed on the body
• establish whether a suspect was present at the scene of a crime
• ascertain the presence or position of wounds in badly decomposed bodies

Forensic Entomologists have expertise about the life cycle of insects that feed on decomposing flesh. They know that certain insects eat specific parts of bodies at particular intervals. Insects also develop through their life phases from egg to larvae to pupae to adults within a constant timeframe according to each insect species.

CHECK VIDEO ON COOL JOBS: FORENSIC ENTOMOLOGY
http://blip.tv/file/1157050

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Forensic Entomology

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WILDLIFE FORENSICS, LATEST NEWS IN WILDLIFE CRIMES, IN INDIA AND ACROSS GLOBE

Members of the community can discover the field of wildlife forensic science and latest novel research being conducted around the globe and to find new procedures for identifying species, individuals and populations.

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Three held with leopard skins:
Three people were arrested with leopard skins and bones in Dehradun in Uttarakhand, an official said Wednesday.

In a joint operation of the Uttarakhand Forest Department and the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), three leopard skins were seized from Vikasnagar and Kalsi area of Dehradun.

'Bullet holes were found on the skins. It is believed the animals were killed in the nearby forests of Vikasnagar and Kalsi,' a WPSI official said in New Delhi.

Forest officials are looking for a poacher who allegedly shot the animals.

The number of leopards is dwindling fast. In 2008, there were about 12,000 leopards in India.

http://sify.com/news/three-held-with-leopard-skins-news-national-khhtaeigfca.html

Unfair trade: A week in the world of illegal wildlife trafficking


Illegal trade in endangered species continues to grow around the world. How big is the problem? Here are 10 major cases that have hit the media in just the past week:

Six pallets containing 765 kilograms of elephant tusks worth an estimated $1.2 million were seized in Thailand July 13. The shipment contained 117 tusks, plus a single rhino horn. Thai customs blocked an earlier shipment of tusks weighing 1,260 kilograms back in April.

More than 2,000 frozen pangolins were recently seized from a single fishing vessel in China, the wildlife trade group TRAFFIC International announced last week. The shipment contained 7,800 kilograms of the toothless, scaled mammals, which were frozen, along with 1,800 kilograms of pangolin scales. Two of the four pangolin species are endangered, and trade in all four is banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=unfair-trade-a-week-in-the-world-of-2010-07-20


BFAR, NGO ask DOJ to reverse decision on 9 Chinese poachers

THE Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Bfar) and nongovernment organization (NGO) Pampano urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to reverse a resolution issued by former Justice Secretary Alberto Agra which allowed the dropping of a poaching case in Philippine waters against nine Chinese nationals.

Malcolm I. Sarmiento Jr., BFAR director, said his agency and the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development Staff (PCSDS) have filed a motion for reconsideration at the DOJ to set aside the earlier ruling of the former DOJ chief.

“The DOJ decision might be used by future violators as a dangerous precedent,” said Sarmiento in a statement.

The nine Chinese nationals were caught fishing and in possession of endangered marine turtles when they were apprehended sometime in May off Balabac Island in Palawan by a BFAR patrol vessel jointly operated by BFAR, law enforcement personnel, and the Philippine Coast Guard.

http://businessmirror.com.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27962:bfar-ngo-ask-doj-to-reverse-decision-on-9-chinese-poachers&catid=53:agri-commodities

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LATEST CYBER NEWS, CYBER FORENSICS, CYBER CRIMINALS, CYBER EXPERTS, NEWS , INFORMATION IN INDIA AND ACROSS THE GLOBE

A page for budding professionals in the field of cyber Forensics. This is a place where cyber forensics across India can share and gather news, info, new discovery, softwares in field of cyber space.

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The Firefox-maker will now pay out $3,000 for finding a flaw :)

1. Mozilla's bug bounty "keeps IT talent from e-crime"

Mozilla's increased bug bounty could help prevent foreign IT talent from turning to e-crime, claims one security firm.
Mozilla raised the bounty it pays for bugs from $500 to $3,000 last week, as the open-source developer thinks it's wise to keep the payout high to encourage researchers to hand such flaws to them rather than hackers.
"A lot has changed in the six years since the Mozilla program was announced, and we believe that one of the best way to keep our users safe is to make it economically sustainable for security researchers to do the right thing when disclosing information," wrote Lucas Adamski, director of security engineering, in a post on the Mozilla security blog.


Read more: Mozilla's bug bounty "keeps IT talent from e-crime" | Security | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/359605/mozillas-bug-bounty-keeps-it-talent-from-e-crime#ixzz0uF7K7yQs


2. Adobe adding 'sandbox' to PDF Reader to ward off hacker attacks


The next major version of Adobe’s PDF Reader will feature new sandboxing technology aimed at curbing a surge in malicious hacker attacks against the widely deployed software.

The security feature, called “Protected Mode,” is similar to the Google Chrome sandbox and Microsoft Office 2010 Protected Viewing Mode, according to Adobe’s security chief Brad Arkin.


In an interview, Arkin said the sandbox is scheduled for release before the end of this year and is based on Microsoft’s Practical Windows Sandboxing technique. The sandbox will be turned on by default and will display all operations in a PDF file in a very restricted manner.

“Should Adobe Reader need to perform an action that is not permitted in the sandboxed environment, such as writing to the user’s temporary folder or launching an attachment inside a PDF file using an external application (e.g. Microsoft Word), those requests are funneled through a “broker process,” which has a strict set of policies for what is allowed and disallowed to prevent access to dangerous functionality,” Arkin explained.

Read at : http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/adobe-adding-sandbox-to-pdf-reader-to-ward-off-hacker-attacks/6886

3. E.U. Plans to Limit Its Use of Private Personal Data

The European Commission currently oversees a large number of mechanisms designed to combat crime, in particular terrorist activity. The vast majority of these instruments involve the collection, storage or exchange of personal data for law enforcement or migration management.

"Citizens should have the right to know what personal data are kept and exchanged about them," said Cecilia Malmström, E.U. Commissioner for Home Affairs, announcing the new rules on Tuesday.

All future policy proposals will be assessed for their expected impact on individuals' rights and their proposers must prove that the initiatives are necessary, proportionate and safeguard fundamental rights. There must also be a clear allocation of responsibilities, as well as structured review procedures. Compliance with these rules on personal data protection will be subject to control by an independent authority at national or E.U. level.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201467/eu_plans_to_limit_its_use_of_private_personal_data.html



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