Burlap and Forensics

[stillwatersc]

Thread for discussion of burlap, condition of remains, etc. Hopefully LE will give us more clues to discuss soon.

[stillwatersc]

Some victims may have been dismembered, asphyxiated.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/long-island...ry?id=13354893

The serial killer who dumped his victim's bodies in the thick brush along several miles of New York's breathtaking beachfront may have dismembered several of them, law enforcement authorities have told ABC News.

..

Suffolk County police, who are being assisted by Nassau County cops as well as state police and the FBI, have been tight lipped about the investigation. ABC News has learned that at least one of the victims died by "homicidal asphyxiation," which could mean strangulation or being smothered.

[stillwatersc]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_1...36-504083.html

Police on Long Island Friday discovered two teeth not far from where a human skull was located earlier this month in a dense section of underbrush near New York's Jones Beach, where 10 sets of human remains have been found since December.

[nugzter]

Here is an intresting link I found about bone fetish and decomosition using burlap.

http://witchofforestgrove.com/2010/09/28/dem-bones/

[nugzter]

Here is a snippet from an article.

http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/2008/0...und-the-world/



Ocean Burial

The open sea. Since most of our planet is covered with water, burial at sea has long been the accepted norm for mariners the world over.

By international law, the captain of any ship, regardless of size or nationality has the authority to conduct an official burial service at sea.

The traditional burial shroud is a burlap bag, being cheap and plentiful, and long in use to carry cargo. The deceased is sewn inside and is weighted with rocks or other heavy debris to keep it from floating.

[shadowraiths]

By ANDREA CANNING (@andreacanGMA) , JOSH EINIGER, RICHARD ESPOSITO, EMILY FRIEDMAN (@EmilyABC) and JESSICA HOPPER
April 13, 2011

It was revealed on Tuesday that the serial killer who dumped his victim's bodies in the thick brush along several miles of the Long Island beachfront may have dismembered several of them, law enforcement authorities have told ABC News.

ABC News has also learned that at least one of the victims died by "homicidal asphyxiation," which could mean strangulation or being smothered.

video/article link

[KAYTOM]

I wonder if the SK thought of this when he decided to use burlap:

"Human remains do have a detectable thermal signature during decomposition, explains special agent Catherine Sapp of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who wrote a 2008 article on aerial photography for the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. But that does not last long. "Once you have decomposition to the point that it's just bones, then there's not going to be anything to decompose, so there isn't going to be any heat signature," she says. Skeletal remains, on the other hand, are often highly visible to aerial photography. "Bleached-out bones will jump out at you," Sapp says

[goathairjones]

I wonder if the SK thought of this when he decided to use burlap:

"Human remains do have a detectable thermal signature during decomposition, explains special agent Catherine Sapp of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who wrote a 2008 article on aerial photography for the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. But that does not last long. "Once you have decomposition to the point that it's just bones, then there's not going to be anything to decompose, so there isn't going to be any heat signature," she says. Skeletal remains, on the other hand, are often highly visible to aerial photography. "Bleached-out bones will jump out at you," Sapp says

Kaytom,

That may the case with a visible spectrum or infrared spectrum camera, but I suspect the FBI now has more advanced camera technology called hyperspectral which can detect the chemical signature of human flesh and bone. The camera may even be able to find the chemical signature of burlap just by passing overhead.

Here is some info that I posted earlier on one of the other forums. I haven't been able to find much info from the web about that camera in the black hawk, but this is some of the info I did find:

I think the FBI Black Hawk Helicopter may be providing more than just "high resolution" photos. I think there camera will be able to tell you all locations where a decaying body could be found. Here are some articles regarding this technology:

http://kingstonprogressive.blogspot....ad-people.html

http://facss.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/37823

http://www.chem.info/News/Feeds/2010...es-are-buried/

A related method that is currently being developed by the FBI detects living humans, and recently dead bodies lying on the ground, by recognising the chemical signature of human skin. It could be used when trying to locate and rescue people who are lost or missing, and to track down fugitives.

Kerri Moloughney of the FBI Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit in Quantico, Virginia, and her colleagues fitted a helicopter with a hyperspectral camera covering visible and infrared wavelengths in the range 400 to 2350 nanometres to see whether skin signatures could be spotted from the air. They then flew it over a specially prepared site where human and animal remains at various stages of decomposition had been scattered on the ground, and where there were also a number of live human volunteers. The signals it picked up showed a clear distinction between living human skin and the skin of long-dead humans and animals.

Moloughney says the technique could be combined with visual aerial searches and thermal imaging to pinpoint individuals in a landscape. "We hope it will enable us to find so much more than we can currently," says Moloughney, who also presented her results at the AAFS.

Underground heat betrays decaying flesh
So much for stone cold dead. Writhing masses of maggots can raise the temperature of decaying flesh to around 30 °C - and that heat signature could provide a telling clue in the hunt for hidden corpses.

Ian Hanson at the University of Bournemouth, UK, and his colleagues have been using thermal imaging to help detect the bodies of deer carcasses laid out in light woodland. "In many dead bodies you've got a maggot mass of several kilograms feeding away inside, and they like it warm," says Hanson.

"The police view has been that once a body has reached the same temperature as its environment, you can't pick it up with infrared," says Hanson. But his team has now found that as the maggots congregate into a mass, they can raise the temperature inside deer carcasses to 28 to 30 °C. This takes around five days, depending the weather.

When maggots do colonise a body, the heat they generate can be detected by infrared cameras mounted on police helicopters, Hanson has found. This could provide a new tool for identifying bodies in the undergrowth. "Once the maggot mass has developed there's a window of opportunity to find the bodies again," says Hanson.

[KAYTOM]

Kaytom,

That may the case with a visible spectrum or infrared spectrum camera, but I suspect the FBI now has more advanced camera technology called hyperspectral which can detect the chemical signature of human flesh and bone. The camera may even be able to find the chemical signature of burlap just by passing overhead.

Here is some info that I posted earlier on one of the other forums. I haven't been able to find much info from the web about that camera in the black hawk, but this is some of the info I did find:

I think the FBI Black Hawk Helicopter may be providing more than just "high resolution" photos. I think there camera will be able to tell you all locations where a decaying body could be found. Here are some articles regarding this technology:

http://kingstonprogressive.blogspot....ad-people.html

http://facss.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/37823

http://www.chem.info/News/Feeds/2010...es-are-buried/

A related method that is currently being developed by the FBI detects living humans, and recently dead bodies lying on the ground, by recognising the chemical signature of human skin. It could be used when trying to locate and rescue people who are lost or missing, and to track down fugitives.

Kerri Moloughney of the FBI Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit in Quantico, Virginia, and her colleagues fitted a helicopter with a hyperspectral camera covering visible and infrared wavelengths in the range 400 to 2350 nanometres to see whether skin signatures could be spotted from the air. They then flew it over a specially prepared site where human and animal remains at various stages of decomposition had been scattered on the ground, and where there were also a number of live human volunteers. The signals it picked up showed a clear distinction between living human skin and the skin of long-dead humans and animals.

Moloughney says the technique could be combined with visual aerial searches and thermal imaging to pinpoint individuals in a landscape. "We hope it will enable us to find so much more than we can currently," says Moloughney, who also presented her results at the AAFS.

Underground heat betrays decaying flesh
So much for stone cold dead. Writhing masses of maggots can raise the temperature of decaying flesh to around 30 °C - and that heat signature could provide a telling clue in the hunt for hidden corpses.

Ian Hanson at the University of Bournemouth, UK, and his colleagues have been using thermal imaging to help detect the bodies of deer carcasses laid out in light woodland. "In many dead bodies you've got a maggot mass of several kilograms feeding away inside, and they like it warm," says Hanson.

"The police view has been that once a body has reached the same temperature as its environment, you can't pick it up with infrared," says Hanson. But his team has now found that as the maggots congregate into a mass, they can raise the temperature inside deer carcasses to 28 to 30 °C. This takes around five days, depending the weather.

When maggots do colonise a body, the heat they generate can be detected by infrared cameras mounted on police helicopters, Hanson has found. This could provide a new tool for identifying bodies in the undergrowth. "Once the maggot mass has developed there's a window of opportunity to find the bodies again," says Hanson.

I wonder if the trees throw it off much? I did see an article about lifting prints off of fabric. I don't know exactly how it's done, but they material they use bonds to everything but the areas where the body oils are. Hopefully the SK didn't think to use gloves when you placed the bodies along Oak Park Hwy.

[shadowraiths]

Cross posting this from the other thread, since it contains forensic info. Thanks internetgirl101!

Official: Remains' condition delaying IDs

http://www.newsday.com/news/breaking...-ids-1.2859902

"The scattered distribution of human remains, some dismembered, found this year on a South Shore island has delayed genetic analysis and potential identification, a police official said Thursday."

"Forensic experts were forced to take extra samples from the dispersed remains because some of them were incomplete and it was unclear if bones found in separate locations came from the same people, Suffolk police Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone said at a hastily scheduled presentation before the county Legislature's Public Safety Committee."

"Preparation for a potential genetic match "became very time consuming because the manner in which these remains were disposed, it could have been one or more people combined," he said. "So rather than just take one sample from each find, they have to take multiple samples."

"It still is unclear how many victims all the remains represent, but Varrone acknowledged Thursday that some of the incomplete remains may prove to be from the same person or people."

"We absolutely do not have tentative IDs," Varrone said. "We would hope the submitted DNA will produce matches, but right now we don't know if it will or it won't."

[MrsPC]

I was thinking about the forensic evidence specifically with regard to sexual activity...since the killer apparently scheduled really late dates (1:30am, 2:00am, etc) with these girls...obviously he would probably be aware they had serviced other clients before meeting with him. I wonder if that was deliberate, just in case, to make DNA profiling of any fluids even more difficult?

[shadowraiths]

Cross-posting to make this easier to find later. Thanks for the recap, Seaslug44

http://www.newsday.com/news/breaking...ller-1.2865686

Four New Facts Revealed Today

1. Head & hands found on March 29th belong to slain prostitute Jessica Taylor whose body was found in 2003 in Manorville.
2. Head & hands & right foot found on April 4th belong to the other woman victim found in that same stretch of woods in Manorville.
3. The toddlers body found was female about 18 to 24 months. Not ruled a homicide yet.
4. Man's body found on April 4th was Asian, in late teens/early 20's and his death is ruled a homicide but "radically different".

[Seaslug44]

The Summer and Fall is Carnival Season here on Long Island. Was reminiscing with my children today about all of the rides that the traveling carnivals offer and they reminded me about the giant slides that most of the carnivals have and how the riders have to sit on GIANT BURLAP BAGS to slide down the slide!!!

[waltzingmatilda]

Seaslug44, I remember those slides! Good thinking on your part. We have been discussing a seasonal person committing these murders and a carnival worker fits right in, IMO. This could also connect the LI killer to the AC and Daytona murders.

For how long does the carnival stay when it comes to town? And do you recall if the carnival was there on the dates that ALC and MW disappeared last year? If it is verifiable in your mind that the carnival was in town then I suggest you call this in as a tip. Moo tho...

BTW, I finally got my burlap sack and can easily fit inside it in a squatting position as I am 5' tall. It appears to be the same size that is used on those carnival slides.

wm

[Redbird]

When the subject of burlap bags comes up, I keep going back to reading that Karen Gambino, who lives across the street from CPH, was offering burlap bags on her blog. Hmmm.