What if a crime scene could be sampled not only from the objects inside it, but from the air itself?

In this episode of The Forensic Lens Podcast, I examine a new study on airborne environmental DNA, or eDNA, and its potential use in short-duration crime scenes. Researchers staged fifteen-minute residential burglaries and then tested whether intruders could still be detected genetically after they had left. In some cases, air sampling identified the intruder more successfully than swabbing surfaces they had deliberately touched.

The findings are promising, but they also reveal the interpretive challenges of environmental DNA. Air can contain complex mixtures from residents, visitors, researchers, and older biological material resuspended by movement. Dust, surfaces, and air may therefore tell different stories about occupancy, contact, and recent presence.

Airborne eDNA is not yet ready for routine casework, but it expands a familiar forensic principle. Locard taught us that every contact leaves a trace. Perhaps, increasingly, every presence does too.

📖 Read the full article on Agham Road.

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#TheForensicLens #EnvironmentalDNA #ForensicGenetics #CrimeSceneInvestigation #ForensicScience

How much of a person’s life can survive in a single tooth?

In this episode of The Forensic Lens Podcast, I examine a 2026 study showing how one mandibular premolar can preserve multiple kinds of forensic information. Through radiocarbon analysis, amino-acid racemization, stable isotopes, DNA profiling, and toxicology, a tooth can help estimate birth period and age at death, reveal aspects of childhood diet and geographic background, support genetic identification, and preserve traces of drugs or medications.

The episode also explores a deeper forensic problem: evidence is finite. Many of these techniques are destructive, forcing investigators to decide how much of an irreplaceable specimen should be consumed, which tests should be prioritized, and what should be preserved for future analysis. The real advance is not simply extracting more information—it is learning how to recover multiple independent lines of evidence from less material.

A tooth cannot tell an entire life story. But when the body is badly decomposed, burned, fragmented, or skeletonized, it can remain a remarkably durable biological archive.

📖 Read the full article on Agham Road.

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#TheForensicLens #ForensicOdontology #ForensicAnthropology #HumanIdentification #ForensicScience

Serial killers remain fixtures of popular culture, but the historical numbers tell a different story. In the United States, known serial murder peaked in the late twentieth century and has declined substantially since. So what changed?

In this episode of The Forensic Lens Podcast, I examine the changing ecology of serial murder—from demographic shifts, childhood adversity, lead exposure, mobility, and vulnerable victims to the investigative limitations that once allowed offenders to remain invisible across jurisdictions. I then explore how DNA profiling, investigative genetic genealogy, CCTV, mobile-phone records, digital footprints, and better information sharing have tightened the forensic net around repeat offenders.

But extreme violence has not disappeared. As serial murder became harder to sustain undetected, public mass violence has become increasingly visible in different settings around the world. These are distinct forms of homicide, not interchangeable categories—but their changing prominence raises a larger question: how do social environments, technology, opportunity, and detection shape the forms extreme violence takes?

📖 Read the full article on Agham Road.

🌐 Learn more about my work here.

#TheForensicLens #SerialKillers #ForensicScience #ExtremeViolence #CrimeScience