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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: This is Alice and Ladermilk, the science editor how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. And this is Robert lamb Signs, writer

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Speaker 1: for how stuff works dot Com. Today we're talking about blood. Blood. Yes,

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Speaker 1: what it can tell us. It turns out, it can

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Speaker 1: tell us a lot. Right. You can tell it's circulating

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Speaker 1: in your blood stream at any given point. Yeah, you

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Speaker 1: can tell you know, what kind of diet you have,

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Speaker 1: what you need to cut out blood pressure. Yeah. Sure,

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Speaker 1: And as it turns out, at a particularly bloody violent

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Speaker 1: crime scene, you can maybe tell how that have that

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Speaker 1: crime happened. Yeah, because as we we all know, when

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Speaker 1: you murder somebody, sometimes blood comes out. And by examining

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Speaker 1: just how that blood came out, you know, you can

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Speaker 1: determine all sorts of interesting facts like what kind of

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Speaker 1: weapon was used, how many lows or shots they sustained, indeed,

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Speaker 1: who where and how right. So it's kind of like

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Speaker 1: maybe you could even figure out the game of Clue. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a lot like Clue that with less reliance

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Speaker 1: on like dice rolling and moving from one room and

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Speaker 1: Parker Brothers, etcetera. Yes, so today we're going to tell you,

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Speaker 1: based on the branch of forensic science called blood stained

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Speaker 1: pattern analysis, that it was Colonel Mustard who murdered the

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Speaker 1: suspect in the library with the candlesticks, and we figured

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Speaker 1: it out with blood stained pattern analysis. That's right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So let's start with the easiest thing first, which is right,

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Speaker 1: that's the library, because that's the room with the blood

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Speaker 1: all over it, right, and and you know that's that's

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Speaker 1: really a crucial thing. It's like how much blood is

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Speaker 1: in there, Like clearly there's a whole lot of blood.

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Speaker 1: There's like a lethal amount of blood in a room.

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Speaker 1: Then you know that that's probably where you know the

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Speaker 1: mess happened, but you could have a little mess tracked

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Speaker 1: elsewhere if said person, you know, stumbled around wander to

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Speaker 1: go right, a less weel and testament. But then another

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Speaker 1: thing that we have in the library is we have

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Speaker 1: blood spray on the walls. We do, yeah, we kind

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Speaker 1: of blood spray. Funny that you should ask that because

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Speaker 1: there are three different varieties of blood spatter that you

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Speaker 1: can find. It's based on velocity. All based on velocity,

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Speaker 1: just how fast the drop is going How how the

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Speaker 1: shape of the blood drop, what holds up to that velocity?

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Speaker 1: And what kind of blow your inflicting? Right right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the weapon you're using, because the faster the blood

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Speaker 1: is traveling, the smaller the droplet, right right, So let's

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Speaker 1: start off with the easy one, low velocity, right, So

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Speaker 1: this is going to be something that force of impact

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Speaker 1: is five ft per second or less. And this is

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Speaker 1: where you're gonna have your big fat drops, although they're

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Speaker 1: not that fat really, they're only between four and eight millimeters. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This is the kind of blood spatter you could just

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Speaker 1: have around the house on just a normal day when

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Speaker 1: you haven't killed anybody, right, Like you're peeling a fruit

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Speaker 1: or something, you cut yourself, sat, you got blood on

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Speaker 1: the kitchen floor. Yeah right, right, So we have a

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Speaker 1: couple of these drops at the scene, but they're not

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Speaker 1: really the bulk. Yeah, this are this is the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that could on a crime scene, falls from

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Speaker 1: the wound, you know, falls off the murder weapon. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: the bulk of this, we're looking at medium velocity spatter. Yeah, alright,

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Speaker 1: so numbers on this this is something and this is

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Speaker 1: this would be incurred with an external force of greater

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Speaker 1: than five ft per second, but less than ft per second.

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Speaker 1: So these, um, these little blood drops are smaller, right,

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Speaker 1: And this is the blood drops involved in this type

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Speaker 1: of spatter are concurrent with something from blunt or sharp trauma,

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Speaker 1: say the clue weapon a candlestick maybe, or the lead

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Speaker 1: pipe or the wrench battle. But this is not really

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Speaker 1: going to be the revolver or the rope or I

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Speaker 1: forget what the what are the other clue weapons there?

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Speaker 1: We have the revolver, the rope, I think, I think,

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Speaker 1: I think it's yeah. Yeah, yeah. So based on this

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Speaker 1: and looking at the wounds on the body, we know

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Speaker 1: that the victim died from blunt trauma. We also know

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Speaker 1: it wasn't the dagger, right because there are no knife wounds. Right,

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Speaker 1: But if had they used the knife, we would it

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Speaker 1: would have been consistent with the medium velocity spatter. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And then you can also get the time kind of

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Speaker 1: spatters from arterial spurts and gushes. Yeah, there's some major

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Speaker 1: veins close to the surfaces of the skin, and you

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Speaker 1: could easily rip those open with a you know, a

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Speaker 1: well placed below to the head. Sounds like experience with this, Robert, Well, so,

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Speaker 1: for our purposes, we mainly have this medium velocity blood spatter.

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Speaker 1: We don't have any of that high velocity blood spatter.

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Speaker 1: And this is going to be your mist right, your

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Speaker 1: finest spray. This is like exit wound from a gunshot

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Speaker 1: or an explosion, I'm sorry, or an explosion or explosive

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Speaker 1: I should say, um, deadly sneeze, deadly sneeze, a bloody cough.

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Speaker 1: But typically gunshot wounds is where you're gonna find this

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Speaker 1: high velocity blood spatter. So now we know, right, it

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Speaker 1: happened in the library with the candlestick for our purposes,

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Speaker 1: although it technically could have been the lead piper some

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Speaker 1: other but it was definitely blunt trauma, definitely blunt. But

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Speaker 1: who was it? Who was it? Indeed, well it was

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Speaker 1: Colonel Mustard of course and that but one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons we uh, we could know this is based on

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Speaker 1: the handedness of the assailant by analyzing the way the

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Speaker 1: blood has flattered from from the what they call the

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Speaker 1: the area of convergence. That's like that's where that's like

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Speaker 1: ground zero for whatever sling and blood all over the library, uh,

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Speaker 1: in this case of wounds or something. If you're to

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Speaker 1: see dexter or something, and you see all those strings.

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Speaker 1: Typically the strings are leading to an area of convergence, right,

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Speaker 1: and that's that's that's the key area. Yeah. And by

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Speaker 1: applying behind like trigonometry and another complicated equations to this,

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Speaker 1: so they can actually figure out what's the assailant right

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Speaker 1: handed or left handed in this case, Colonel Mustard only

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Speaker 1: left handed suspect. Yeah, it's definitely Colonel Mustard. Then there's

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Speaker 1: also something we'd like to call voids comes void. It's

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Speaker 1: like if you're you're standing out in front of a

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Speaker 1: brick wall at night and somebody shins a light on you,

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Speaker 1: maam you the shadow behind you. The rest of the

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Speaker 1: wall is light. Now imagine instead of light, you have

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Speaker 1: like a whole bunch of arterial spray. Right, You're gonna

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Speaker 1: have that one section outlining up, you know, like a

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Speaker 1: cartoon outline where there's no blood. Right. So so they

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Speaker 1: look for that at crime scenes because if you see,

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Speaker 1: if they can see a void in the in the

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Speaker 1: spray and in the spatter, then that could be where

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Speaker 1: the assailant was standing and could even tell us a

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Speaker 1: little a little about the physical characteristics. So for the person,

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Speaker 1: like say if they had a mustache, right, Uh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because Colonel Mustard does have a substantial mustache, though it's

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Speaker 1: possible it could be outlined. Okay, so now we know

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Speaker 1: it is Colonel Mustard in the library with the camel stick.

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Speaker 1: I win, you win, We both winn. Mustard goes to jail.

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Speaker 1: The library is safe again, Yeah, no doubt. Okay, But

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Speaker 1: as you guys can tell, blood stained pattern analysis isn't

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Speaker 1: going to be the only evidence that lawmakers are going

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Speaker 1: to use to prosecute a possible suspect, right, Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: just one tool in an investigator or a prosecutor's a toolbox. Well,

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Speaker 1: this one case, the blood stained pattern elysis might have

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Speaker 1: come in handy. It was the famous do you want

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Speaker 1: to do it? You do it? You're Australia. Didn't go

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Speaker 1: eat my baby? There you go. Yes, they didn't go

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Speaker 1: eat my baby. It's made famous by Seinfeld. Yes, Elaine,

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Speaker 1: thank you Elaine for that and many other things. So

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Speaker 1: what happened in this case, Well, it's Australia. Woman's out

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Speaker 1: in the wilderness to walk about with your family, it

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Speaker 1: really walk about? No, I think she's just camping, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: she's out with her family. And then uh, and she

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Speaker 1: comes back, babies apparently gone. Right, So she puts her

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Speaker 1: kids to bed and baby's gone. Baby's gone. Baby by

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Speaker 1: the name of Azaria area. And according the claim is

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Speaker 1: that whoops, dingo came took the baby away. Well, people

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Speaker 1: didn't believe that, right, and she was prosecuted. They thought

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Speaker 1: that they thought she murdered her baby and it wasn't

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Speaker 1: the dingo. If the authorities investigating the crime had used

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Speaker 1: proper evidence handling techniques and use blood stained pattern analysis properly,

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Speaker 1: they might have had a better time bolstering their case. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think it came down to the amount of blood

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Speaker 1: at the crime scene, in the tent if you in

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Speaker 1: the tent um, that seemed to seem to suggest that

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Speaker 1: maybe that the dingo didn't come in and carry a

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Speaker 1: baby away as much as something violent happened to the

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Speaker 1: baby in the tent right, And and again this isn't

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Speaker 1: This is necessarily a case where oh, if they'd only

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Speaker 1: apply trigonometry to the crime scene. It all comes down

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Speaker 1: to the base basically understanding the properties of blood, the

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Speaker 1: physical properties of blood and how that relates to blood spatter. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so blood stained pattern analysis, it's a bloody business, but

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Speaker 1: you can learn more about it at hous to works

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Speaker 1: dot com. And we have all sorts of creepy other

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Speaker 1: CSS stuff, body farms, forensic dentistry, just tons of bloody articles. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and check out our spefy side stuff blog it blogs

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Speaker 1: that hows to works dot com too. We post on

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Speaker 1: all sorts of creepy stuff there too. Thanks for listening, guys.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,

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