Can you find the evidence in this crime scene?

So in this video, your job is going to be to find the piece of evidence that’s in this photograph. Sort of like “Where’s Waldo.” While you’re looking at the photograph, I’m going to tell you the story behind it and then I’ll reveal to you where it is; that is, where the piece of evidence is. But this picture is a bed in a master bedroom.

Off the bedroom was a small bathroom. The person stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, put the pistol up to their head and shot themselves. Now that’s actually pretty common. They stand in the bathroom looking in the mirror while they shoot themselves. I don’t know if they’re trying to make sure the gun is lined up properly. I don’t know if they’re just staring intently at their reflection. I don’t know. I’ve never been there. But that’s what happened here. Now the bullet went through the person’s head.

It was a full metal jacket round, so it didn’t make a big exit wound or anything like that. It went through the wall they were standing next to and it skated across the ceiling in the bedroom. I have only one tech working in the bathroom because it’s a small bathroom and I’m standing in the bedroom just assisting the tech. I’m acting as the clean tech in case they need any supplies off the truck.

I’m just sort of killing time and I think, “Okay, well, they stood there, the bullet went through the head, and it went through this wall. The bullet must have skated across the ceiling. I wonder where it landed?”

Now at that time, I didn’t know that there was a bullet in the room. A spent bullet, a spent round, I mean. I was just sort of looking at the angles and all that. Just sort of a mind game. I followed the path of the damage on the ceiling and sure enough, there it was.

So now that you’ve been looking a while, I’ll show you this picture, which is the evidence on the bedspread. And as you can see now, it’s a spent round. It wasn’t a hollow point, so it didn’t mushroom. It stayed small. And it’s basically the same color and the same metallic finish as the bedspread.

So you can see why a crime scene tech might miss it.

I called Crime Scene unit. They came out and I talked with the tech. He said, “Man, we looked all over for this thing. We were even up in the attic looking for it.”

They just missed it because it was camouflaged on that bed spread.

So, it does happen. Evidence does get missed. We find evidence on a regular basis. And that’s not saying the crime scene techs are doing anything wrong or they’re not doing their job right. It’s just that there are a lot of variables on a crime scene and not everything gets found all the time.

But in this case, this is an example of where we could continue to work in the bathroom since the bullet was in the bedroom. Many times that’s the scenario. There’s no reason to stop the whole job just because you found a piece of evidence in one room. If you find a piece of evidence in the kitchen, there’s no reason to stop working in the bathroom. But now there are jobs where, because of where the evidence is located in the scene, if you do find evidence, you do need to stop all work on the job.

And we’ll talk about that in another video. But you can see how that piece of evidence got missed. And it’s really easy to sit here and look at that picture and judge the crime scene tech for missing it. But we weren’t there on the job at the time. We weren’t there with all the chaos and all people in and out and everything that was going on.

So I’m not going to criticize them at all. But it does happen.