Instructor lectures on solving homicides

February 21, 2014 at 12:00a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

They say first impressions are important. The same is true when trying to solve a homicide, a former detective and now consultant said Thursday.

Dave Newman, a retired Norfolk, Va., police detective, gave representatives of several police departments at the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office tips on collecting evidence and investigating homicides. He works for a company called Inside The Tape, Homicide And Crime Scene Management Training, from Virginia Beach, Va., and he has been giving his presentation most of the week.

Sheriff’s Capt. Steve McGeary said this is the second or third time Newman has lectured at the department, and he is scheduled to come back in October.

Departments taking part in this week’s training are Hubbard, Twinsburg, Summit County Sheriff’s Office, Hermitage, Pa., Austintown, Canton, Salem and Poland village.

Thursday, Newman focused on homicides he investigated during his 15 years as a detective, part of 23 overall years he spent on Norfolk’s police force. He stressed how important it is for patrol officers and other first-responders to play their roles by securing the crime scene for investigators and treading lightly on crime scenes.

“The first people on the scene set the tone for the entire investigation,” Newman said.

Crime scenes are easier to maintain when fewer people have access to it, and that better preserves evidence, Newman said. He said that homicide scenes where a victim is treated and then transported and later dies can be hard to process because of the number of people who have access to it. They leave prints and other things behind — mixing with the evidence.

Newman also stressed the importance of detecting evidence that may not be present. For example, he said in one case he had, the killer used bleach to clean up blood stains. There was no bleach to be found at the crime scene, but investigators could smell it strongly, which meant it was used and had to be somewhere.

He called a place where the bleach might have been taken a “secondary scene,” where evidence from the homicide scene can be found.

“Secondary scenes, for us, can sometimes be more valuable,” Newman said.

He also said circumstantial evidence is important because often it is evidence, like a fingerprint or DNA, that can’t be explained away if it is present. There has to be a reason for it to be present, Newman said.

He had one case where there were no witnesses but there was strong DNA evidence, which he said in a way was better because sometimes a witness can be tripped up during trial. He also said in most cases, a person who is found dead in a home was not randomly murdered, but there was a reason why someone was in there. He said investigators need to know as much about their victim as they can, often before examining the crime scene, so when they see it they can begin to think about why someone was killed and who may have done it.

Newman said seminars such as his are important even for small departments who use detectives from other agencies, such as the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Ohio, because patrol officers have to learn how to secure a crime scene properly for investigators.