Greetings, my two regular viewers! Any other visitors, welcome to you, as well.
The part of Little Weird business that is hard to convey to a blog is the real work: the classroom lecture. The construction of the Nutshells is wonderful and I enjoy every minute spent crafting the little pieces that go into each one. The payoff for all that work is in the classroom, though. That’s where the Nutshells are explored and interpreted by inquisitive minds pondering the messages received by bits and pieces of crafted evidence. If there was money in Nutshelling, this is where it would be.
I had the opportunity to present the MacDonald house to a group of prospective students and parents over the weekend. While it’s a short presentation, it’s enough for the investigators to get a good look at the scene and also enough for me to present them with enough of the lab work so they can understand how to make a court case out of what they have just seen. Some of the parents are sleuths; you can see it in their eyes as they look over Mrs. MacDonald’s corpse. They ponder the brutalized little girls and, frequently, with the sophistication of a crusty homicide detective born from a thousand hours of CSI shows, come to the same conclusion the FBI did in this case. More and more, however, I’m seeing the same level of critical observation in the prospective students, too. This is the podcast generation and there are so many true crime podcasts! I wouldn’t want to be spending my time a’murderin’ folks with the generation that’s coming forward. They know what they’re doing.
Unattended Death is getting another showing next month to a Criminal Investigations class. The presentation of that scene differs in that there isn’t as much information and it’s all fictional. The MacDonald Case is presented as a series of reports following the inspection of the scene. Unattended Death is the investigation itself, with the investigators responsible for taking the steps to complete the case. They are presented with the scene and a limited number of available choices about where they head next. Some of the clues come from interviews, some from the scene. They are tasked, at the beginning of the class, to answer three questions: Who is the decedent? What is the decedent’s manner of death? Who is responsible? It gets into the details of regular police work. The added responsibility of notification of next of kin is added to this, just so they don’t think it’s all sleuth work. Sometimes you have to deal with the wailing left behind. Since this case is report driven, the investigators are presented with a series of reports from interviews, phone calls, or visits to places and people. Once they have all of that, they are presented with the Medical Examiner’s report on cause of death. While manner of death is usually a part of the ME’s report, in my little world, the investigator has to work with the ME’s office to determine manner.
The new case, currently without a name, is coming along. Building requires new skills all the time so it’s not going as quickly as I had hoped. Details will start to appear here as I finish pieces. I’m almost finished with a wonderfully crafted 1/12th shotgun that I’m pretty excited about. Other furniture is littering my bench, getting ready for a new home.
I’m still hung up on creating quality corpses. I’ve been playing with photogrammetry and trying to upload enough images to be able to 3D print a body. It’s not going well. If anyone of my two loyal readers wants to send me 3D handheld laser scanner, I’d be most obliged as I don’t have the $100,000 needed to purchase one of my own. I’m at a loss as to how I’m going to be able to teach myself to edit the injuries and other details onto my victims if I can’t get a full body into the computer to start with. Bones sure turned out nice, though!
A Little Weird 