Season 2, Episode 3
Space Forensics
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On this episode I spoke with Det. Zack Kowalske, an expert in bloodstain pattern analysis, crime scene reconstruction, and a pioneer in Space Forensics! We discussed BPA (bloodstain pattern analysis), some concerns in the field (error rates), and Zack's research on bloodstain pattern analysis in microgravity.
Get Zack's new book: "Gaming the Reaper: How to Win at Life and Optimize the Sh#t Out of Your own Potential" https://www.zackkowalske.com/
Learn more about topics we discussed in this episode
The "black box study"
Accuracy and reproducibility of conclusions by forensic bloodstain pattern analysts,
Forensic Science International. R. Austin Hicklin, Kevin R. Winer, Paul E. Kish, Connie L. Parks, William Chapman, Kensley Dunagan, Nicole Richetelli, Eric G. Epstein, Madeline A. Ausdemore, Thomas A. Busey. Forensic Science International, Volume 325, 2021,110856,ISSN 0379-0738,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2021.110856.
ASB TECHNICAL REPORT 033
Kish, Sutton
https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Bloodstain-Pattern-Analysis-Investigations/dp/0849320143
Bevel, Gardener
https://www.amazon.com/Bloodstain-Introduction-Reconstruction-Practical-Investigations/dp/1420052683
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Transcript (The software gets it about 95% correct!)
S2E3 – Space Forensics
[00:00:00] Angela: I think you're the first person to do blood in space.... How did that even come about?
[00:00:04] Zack: ... I read an article a few years ago that's where all this stems from is it's a little nugget that just that gets caught up in my brain and stays and festers until it grows into something. This article ... was talking about, forensic science in the future and ... space and, becoming a multi-planetary species... in this article, they made a statement about BPA and ... knowing what I knew about Newtonian physics, I knew the statement was wrong. I was like, I want to prove that wrong. That, that's not how that would work in space. That would be a great concept, how would BPA really work in space? ... No one's done blood stain pattern analysis in space yet... next thing I know, six months later, my research is on a KC 135 microgravity flight, and we're actually doing bloodstain pattern, data collection in microgravity.
[00:00:46] Angela: Greetings and welcome to another episode of Secrets from the Crime Lab. I'm your host, Angela Swarts. And with me this evening I have Zack Kowalske, or do you prefer Zackary?
[00:00:58] Zack: Zack.
[00:00:59] Angela: Other than that, I'm going to turn it over to Zack because he's much more familiar with his credentials than I am. So please, Zack, would you like to introduce yourself to everyone?
[00:01:09] Zack: Sure. Appreciate that. Yeah. My name is Zack Kowalske. I am with the Roswell Police Department in Georgia. I'm also a PhD researcher with Staffordshire University. I do private casework through Fox and Forensic Laboratories. I juggle a lot of chainsaws that are constantly on fire.
And, but yeah, I specialize in crime scene reconstruction predominantly. And that covers both bloodstain power analysis and shooting reconstruction. And my dissertation, my research focus for the, PhD research is in, BPA and specifically looking at, uncertainty rates and error rates associated with, different BPA aspects for area of origin and stuff like that.
So that's a little bit about me.
[00:01:48] Angela: yeah, definitely areas of contention in the field at the moment. So I reached out to you because I saw a little snippet about some research that you had started presenting some initial findings on in, bloodstain analysis in zero gravity. So can you tell us just a little bit about what the idea was behind that study?
[00:02:10] Zack: Sure. Apart from being a 100%, nerd at what I do. I'm a space nerd too. With a little bit about it is, it was the continuation of the PhD research, just looking at a different environment. And there was a purpose behind that in terms of being able to remove certain variables, ideally gravity, and better understanding accuracy issues. And maybe that's just a little bit tease that I'll have right now for it.
[00:02:36] Angela: Yeah. So we're talking about removing variables and such, and I think it's probably be a good time for us to introduce to the audience exactly what is bloodstain pattern analysis and why would you be interested in controlling those variables.
[00:02:52] Zack: Sure. BPA is the, and I'm going to say bpa, probably most of the time and just abbreviate as opposed to constantly saying bloodstain pattern analysis. But anyways, the discipline, uses mathematics, geometry, physics, biology uses several hard science disciplines, and applies them to understanding the geospatial interrelationships of bloodstains after they have, been deposited onto a surface.
Now what does that mean? That means looking at a bloodstain pattern that may be on a wall or on. A floor or whatever surface and being able to understand the dynamics behind what generated that stain pattern and how it was created. And then from a crime scene reconstruction standpoint, being able to understand that within the context of the incident that caused it.
[00:03:41] Angela: whether that is being able to sequence it or understand just its geospatial relationship to other evidence. Hopefully that kind of answers that. I can often talk in circles Yeah, no, it answers it. So I think that the textbook definition a lot of times on BPA is it's based on the size, shape, distribution, location of the bloodstains. And we use that to determine, you were talking about it as in, reconstruction or sequence of events for, but for people who don't really understand what that is, that's like when the victim was chopped in the neck and their carotid was severed, what was their positioning in the room?
Were they down low? Were they standing up? Were they, and then yeah. So to try to piece together
[00:04:27] Zack: So there are really, so there are, from a, non-practitioner standpoint, there are really two main things. Bloodstain patterns can help us understand in violent incidents. The first one is, understanding specific geolocation information, meaning where within the scene did that blood originate from. And that can be applied mainly with what we call impact spatter patterns or impact stain patterns. And that's because we can take measurements from individual stains and do some basic, trigonometry and backtrack where that stain came from. So that helps us understand specific location information.
The other aspect is looking at like stain classification. And because there are lots of different types of stain patterns other than just impact patterns, every little bit of motion that you may impart within a scene can cause different types of stain patterns. So that's the second aspect is understanding the contextual information of a stain and what that means within the overall story of that crime scene. So you got story information and then you have, your more, specific measurement based information. Okay.
[00:05:34] Angela: right? So if we're like, if we're coming into a crime scene after. All of the bloodshed has happened. We’re basically; we're looking at more of a photograph. We're looking at the aftermath. What happened, what's what the end result was. It's not a movie. We don't know where people were and how the movement progressed.
Nobody was there. We didn't watch it. It wasn't videotaped. Okay, sometimes crimes are videotaped, but most of the time, when they're calling in a BPA expert, they haven't been, or reconstructionist they haven't been. And so you can look at the stain patterns and these locations and make those determinations of when did the violence start, where did the B bloodshed begin?
Where did it progress? And maybe use, like you said before, contextual information. So after you've gone through, you find all the blood, you classify what could have created it and. Then you might look to see, about the victim or suspect's statements or eyewitness statements, injuries from autopsies, and try to match those up with what maybe the bloodstains in the crime scene to figure out what happened, where and when.
[00:06:45] Zack: V, very much I, so there are a few different ways that you can view bpa. Some agencies and some labs, some practitioners just do classification. And that's all they're accredited to do. Some do the entire gamut through reconstruction. Every where’s a little different. I do everything. And you, that contextual information, it, if. The best way to describe it is reconstruction is a holistic discipline. Meaning that I need all of the possible information, whether that's from the forensic medicine and pathology side of the house, the DNA side of the house, so I can understand whose stains those are. And it's combining all of that and synthesizing that data to come to the most probable hypothesis.
[00:07:29] Angela: All right. So when you're doing these, do the, or is this, now you're a detective in the crime scene unit. Are there separate investigators that ask you to do the analysis and do they give you specific questions or is this stuff that as the expert you determine that on your own?
[00:07:48] Zack: All the above
[00:07:49] Angela: Okay.
[00:07:50] Zack: I get cases in a variety of different ways. So through my private case work, I, I am typically being asked specific investigative questions or saying, Hey, can you help us understand what this means? And that's coming through either a prosecutor's office or a defense attorney.
In my government work, it can be, twofold. One, I may get those lead those primary case agents or other detectives that are doing the regular part of the investigation, asking those investigative questions. But as the subject matter expert work in the scene, my methodology is to take it as far as I possibly can.
So if I have stain patterns at this scene, then I want to understand, how they play within the. Overall scene information, so that I can give the best forensic story to my detectives,
[00:08:37] Angela: Yeah. D could you, do you have a simple case example that you could share with the audience? 'Cause not everybody is, in the forensic science field that listens to the podcast. Just an easy one. Not one that was, 200 pages long
[00:08:50] Zack: an easy case example. Sure.
[00:08:53] Angela: Yeah. Something that is pretty, a basic question.
[00:08:56] Zack: Oh, a basic
[00:08:57] Angela: Yeah. Like a basic question someone asked you to do,
[00:09:00] Zack: yeah, absolutely. Basic question might be is, was the victim lying down at the time that they sustained this injury?
[00:09:07] Angela: right. Simple things. Yeah.
[00:09:10] Zack: Yeah. So positions, positions are very much a simple question and quite often my response is, It's possible, but not, it, I won't always give exclusive answers unless I have a lot more foundational information to, to support that, that statement. A lot of times we, the most common one is with suicides.
We work a fair amount of suicides in my agency. And many of them are firearms based. So the question is, a lot of times you may have a victim who has ended up in a very awkward position.
[00:09:40] Angela:
[00:09:40] Zack: and the question will be is, is suicide a supported, cause manner of death?
And that's where stain patterns can really help when you start looking at back spatter patterns on the hands and stuff like that. That’s a very simple. Question that is easily answered based off of stain patterns. Now, that's not guaranteeing that back spatter patterns are always going to be on the hands.
In fact, there's some research out there that supports that it's only 40% of casework that you actually have those kind of stain patterns. But when they are present, they are, very helpful.
Yeah. It's, I'm, it's interesting, as you mentioned, like you get the suicide cases and or you get, and then a lot of times it involves firearms and stuff, and I, most of the BPA cases I work never involved firearms. It always involved a machete, Oh, yeah.
[00:10:20] Angela: or butcher's knife or something. Yeah, definitely different staining patterns.
[00:10:24] Zack: Yeah. Two very different, yeah.
[00:10:27] Angela: So if you're interested in knowing what it looks like. So when someone gets a machete to the neck,
[00:10:31] Zack: Yeah. I, I don't, I think I've maybe worked one machete case, I’ve worked an axe case. I what? I just had something here recently. Oh, I had a, power, like a chop saw. Had that here recently into the head that was fascinating. Yeah, different. It’s fascinating how different tools, and different instruments cause different types of stain patterns, you take a crowbar, you take a machete, and you take, a two by four, all are going to inflict the same type of, result in the same classification of stain pattern, right? They're all going to result in some kind of impact stain pattern, but based off of the overall. Makeup of that instrument changes how the shape, size distribution, of that resulting stain pattern will be.
And when we say shape, size, and distribution, what we're meaning is that resulting, stain pattern; it's going to have individual stains that are of a certain shape and of a certain size. And the distribution within those cases are typically going to be very radial in fashion. And it's the distribution of, of those small stains,
[00:11:32] Angela: and you, one of the, you've brought up a couple of interesting points, and I think that it's important for everyone to understand. B p a, some of the origins of B P A were somebody doing not very nice things to bunny rabbits with different types of tools and looking to see what the staining patterns looked like.
We've advanced from that and now we like to do, dummies or sponges soaked in blood, or rather than bashing bunnies’ brains.
[00:12:01] Zack: Yeah. Or you can be like Celi Rossi actually, shoot cadavers
[00:12:05] Angela: yeah, people do donate their bodies to science. So
[00:12:09] Zack: and, those, that's a very unique and really cool study. So total shout out to Cele cause you know, I don't know of anybody else that has shot a cadaver in the back of a head to look at this kinda, uh,
[00:12:20] Angela: look at it. That's actually pretty fascinating.
[00:12:22] Zack: yeah, it's an awesome article.
[00:12:24] Angela: that's the experimental side of BPA. We conduct experiments, using some kind of a model and an implement that would cause bloodshed, and we examine what happens. So we know through the experimentation if somebody hits someone in the head with a crowbar, we expect to see this kind of pattern, right?
Someone has a nosebleed; we expect to see this type of pattern. But of course, experimentation can't cover every possible scenario. So we go through and we have general characteristics that we expect to see for particular stain classifications. But there's variability out there in the field on how stains are classified.
And there've been a number of studies and reports. Over the years got going back to 2009. The National Academy of Science Report was not very flattering to BPA as a discipline.
[00:13:19] Zack: I would like to point out real quick, since we're talking about the NAS report, out of the 300 something pages that report is, BPA only took up two pages,
[00:13:28] Angela: Okay, fair enough. It was only two pages,
[00:13:30] Zack: it was only two pages. And while it was not, I wouldn't say that it wasn't flattering, I would say that it illustrated, some good points that as a discipline we were not doing ourselves service on. So I don't think it was as critical as it was towards like latent prints or, some of the other different disciplines. But yeah, we were only two pages out of that 300 something
[00:13:49] Angela: I know. Okay. Largely most of BPA was you don't have enough, you don't have enough experimental, you need more research.
[00:13:56] Zack: Right, and which completely agree.
[00:13:59] Angela: Yeah, you're focusing because we do need more research in it. There's just not enough.
[00:14:03] Zack: Yeah. And the same thing as we continued to progress into the PCAST report in 20 15,
[00:14:09] Angela: Right, so the, I can't, I can never remember what PCAST stands for. President's Council of Science and Technology Advisors. Anyways, you guys can Google it. It's PCAST report. It'll come up. It's,
[00:14:23] Zack: PCAST report. Yeah, it'll come up. I want to know how you get on that.
[00:14:26] Angela: I can tell you Yeah. The, I will say the PCAST report was mean to DNA as well, but I think there was a lot of, there was a lack of understanding of some of the fundamentals.
[00:14:37] Zack: So I guess sometimes these panels are important to convene and have these discussions, but you have to make sure that it's comprised of the right individuals. Maybe it was a little lacking on the practitioner's side. I don't know. I don't remember what the makeup of it was, yeah, very much and that's one of the, I think, the biggest problems that we see with the NAS report, the PCAST report. E even within, my experience with the OSAC is that it is, not just educating, the community, the nation in general and the non forensic science community, but it's the panel members is 'cause you have, it's a multidisciplinary team.
So you have lawyers, you have, statistical, statisticians. You have people who don't understand the foundational aspects of B P A or latent prints and stuff like that. You have to educate your team, in addition to continuing to, look at root cause analysis.
[00:15:33] Angela: And that's why these, a lot of times it takes a long time. These groups convene, they meet and everybody's schedules are all over the place and getting together and, coming to some conclusions and sharing their findings. It does, it takes a while for things to progress. Like I said, we, we had that report in 2009, then the PCAST doesn't think was 2015.
And you mentioned the OSAC Committees as the Organization of Scientific Area Committees that NIST, which is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, are responsible for forming, and those largely came from some of the recommendations, I think, out of the PCAST report, the formation of these different groups.
Am I remembering that correct?
[00:16:12] Zack: Yeah, so actually, we can trace it all the way back to the, na NAS report, right? One of the recommendations out of the, NAS report was that there needed to be a governing body, that oversaw forensic sciences. So one of the concepts that came out of that was the, Forensic Science Commission.
The commission was around for a little while, but ultimately what was birthed was the OSAC, and the multiple subcommittees that fall under, OSAC through. NIST or the National Institute of Standards and Technology. So under the OSAC umbrella, you have your different areas, as such as, like physics and patterns.
You’ve got crime scene, so you have all these different subcommittees and, you can go to nist.gov/forensics, and see the organizational structure. And, a little bit about what we do. And so what we do is we, as a subcommittee that you are appointed to, we collaborate to come up with best practices and standards, and we compose standards to.
Help, truly evolve, the different disciplines for the better, right? Because accreditation is not required in the United States, it is definitely encouraged, but there is no federal law that every lab and every unit will have this accreditation. But there are a lot of labs and units out there that are self adopting and that, already practice a lot of these different standards that, go on the registry or, one of the accrediting
[00:17:42] Angela: Yeah. And, I think before the OSACs, 'cause like you were saying it came out of the NAS report. They were the, they were called 'em, the swig groups, the scientific working groups. And so there used to be SWGSTAIN and I remember going, it's oh, I need to double check the terminology on something. And I went to look for SWGSTAIN and then, oh my gosh, SWGSTAIN is gone.
And then it was like, oh, it's 'cause became part of the organization of, standard area committee. So there's always been a push for standards and quality and improvement. And that's what these committees are doing. Like you said, accreditation, a lot of people don't realize this is, it is voluntary, it is not required by and large.
Some jurisdictions do require it. Like some states in the United States actually require laboratories to be accredited in order to get cases from government entities. They don't necessarily, or I don't know if they can force the requirement for laboratories that are only doing private work. But most laboratories, if they're not accredited, I think at this point are hopefully moving towards it.
But it's interesting 'cause BPA and reconstruction and sometimes, things, disciplines like, latent fingerprints, they're kind of, they’re part of the lab system, but they're kind of straddling, straddling both worlds. They're not really in the lab, they're not necessarily police 'cause you're a police officer, but not everyone is, A lot of them are just, lay people
[00:19:12] Zack: I'm just Bill NY with a gun. That’s all.
That's all I really.
[00:19:15] Angela: a gun,
[00:19:16] Zack: I didn't get into, this line of work to, with the intent to become a police officer. That was just one really happy circumstance that happened. And, I've worked in patrol and was a beat cop for a few years and, before I went into investigations, but I got into this line of work because I knew I wanted a career in crime scene investigations and the forensic sciences from a field perspective.
And yeah, we totally do straddle. We str- I often have an identity crisis because I'm practicing both lab work and fieldwork. And how do I best, fine-tune both of them, because both entities require a little bit different aspects. And everywhere does it differently.
If you look at, even. State investigative agencies, so Florida, FDLE, their crime scene is run out of the lab. Whereas with Georgia Bureau of Investigation, their crime scene are agents that are running out of field offices and not the lab. I'm just in the middle.
[00:20:10] Angela: Yeah. I was one of the lab people that used to go out to scenes, For work for a state agency, go out to a lab, or go out to the, from the lab we'd be a team of scientists going out in the middle
[00:20:21] Zack: of the night.
Sure. And so if you continue, like from, since I'm down here in the southeast, you go one more state north, you go to Tennessee and TBI and TBI very much has this really great hybrid blended model that you do have this team of, scientists from the lab that specialize in different disciplines that are going to go out to major scenes in conjunction with agent investigators. And so I think that's probably a great model that this hybrid model, multidisciplinary approach really does I think, give the best bet of both worlds.
[00:20:53] Angela: Yeah. I have to say that it's always been more enjoyable if I'm out there as part of a team working in conjunction with, the law enforcement officers that are there as well. I think that as scientists going out, we don't necessarily understand everything from the policing side, and the police don't necessarily understand every front, everything from the laboratory side.
But collaborating together really does help to make sure that you do a quality walkthrough and documentation of the scene and make sure you capture all of that information in a way that if the case is cold in 30 years from now, someone has to go back to your video or your photographs and do a BPA reconstruction from that, the documentation is there and available for you to use.
[00:21:40] Zack: Yeah. As someone who investigates cold cases and currently has three on my desk, that is something I definitely, am very appreciative of. , My, and that has, that's, I think working cold cases made me a better investigator in that, with my contemporary case work, I never want to be that guy 30 years from now that a investigator who is looking over cold cases is cursing my name 'cause I didn't do something,
[00:22:04] Angela: Could you put a scale in
[00:22:06] Zack: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Angela: one photograph?
[00:22:08] Zack: Right now. So I try and work my modern day cases with the idea, the concept that it would one day become a cold case and that I think gives you a more comprehensive, and just better quality of investigation.
[00:22:20] Angela: right? Yeah. I have to say the cold cases that I've seen that my biggest complaint is the them, is that they, people forget to put a scale in there and there's really. From a bloodstain aspect, if I don't have a measurement, there's very limited things that I can do with that. Oh look, there's a bloodstain. It's elliptical.
[00:22:40] Zack: There is a near circular pattern that is oriented in a direction that I don't know, because I don't know which way's up in this photo.
[00:22:48] Angela: Yeah. So it's and if it's a really cold case, there's prob, there may not even be someone to go back and ask because
[00:22:55] Zack: very much
[00:22:56] Angela: that person is passed away. You can't go ask somebody that's not here anymore.
[00:23:00] Zack: Yeah. I've got a, cold case right now that, we brought to, we made an arrest in last year from May of 1988. And there are several investigators that were in the original investigation that I would've loved to have had an interview with, but they're all since deceased. So that is one frustrating aspect with working cold cases is the longer that you're working it, the more likely that original investigators or even witnesses, are likely to not be around for an interview.
[00:23:26] Angela: Yeah. So I want to jump back a little bit to when we were talking about, one of the things that you said earlier was you go through and you make a determination, if you can, based on what's left at the scene. If you have enough supporting evidence for that, right? You can't just say something. You have to have, you have to consider what could, all of the possibilities that could have created a particular stain pattern. And then you have to find supporting evidence for whatever your interpretation of that pattern is. And if in the absence of that, contextual information or at least contextual information from the scene. Not necessarily suspect victim statement type contextual information, but that overall view of the scene itself. Like you can't zero in on one little bloodstain. You have to look at the overall picture, the overall pattern that's before you. And there was a study that was published this year, and forgive me, I can't recall which journal it was in at the moment, but it is an open access article.
So I'm going to link it, I'll link it in the show notes for anyone that wants to read it. And they were really only looking at one aspect of what you do as part of a full analysis of things. And they focused in on the stain classifications and the error rates associated with it. And I think that it was, forgive me if I'm looking, going to go flip over that page and see what it said, but they, it was like an 11% overall, on average, 11% of the time the conclusions were wrong. So how familiar are you with that study and is there any commentary you would like to make about it?
[00:25:03] Zack: We refer to it as the black box study, and it is currently a, large topic of conversation, this year within the discipline within, I was just at the IABPA conference in October. And we had an entire session, discussing, this because, the researchers who conducted the study are very respected, examiners and, I, so there is merit to understanding certain aspects of the study.
And, I definitely encourage everyone listening to go into the show notes and definitely check out the article. There are several recommendations that it is an incomplete study right now. And when I say incomplete, meaning that there were several, aspects that were identified that warrant further investigation.
So truly getting into that root cause analysis of why do you have, within this particular set of circumstances, this 11%, right? And, a lot of kind of what we talked about is terminology and that I may describe this stain, uh, a certain way that is not standardized in terms of terminology. Whereas I may say it is an elliptical stain, you may call it, an oval stain or whatever.
And how just the mere how we describe stains, how we describe patterns can affect, so our terminology, our verbiage that we're using, not even for terminology of classification, but in terms of description, how that can almost, cause bias, and so where we now we'll go in terms of talking about, contextual information and how can, contextual information can cause investigative bias and examiner based bias.
And that's why we try and go towards, linear sequential unmasking aspect of, work in a stain and classifying a stain. All that to say, sorry. Like I said, I'll often talk myself and check my tail. It is a really important study because we absolutely have to figure out and be on the same page as a discipline, what we're calling stuff, because words matter.
[00:27:05] Angela: and yeah, so terminology is a huge topic of discussion, in the BPA field right now. And, I was saying a lot of it comes from whom you learned from.
[00:27:15] Zack: Absolutely. So really, when I was growing up in the discipline, there were two different, schools that you either came from, you either came from the Bevel Gardener School, or you came from the, Kish Sutton School, of thought.
[00:27:27] Angela: I'm a Bevel Gardener,
[00:27:29] Zack: See, I'm a Kish Sutton. It’s funny cause examiners know exactly what you're talking about when you talk about this.
And really there's this, now as an examiner, now that I've been in it for years now, I have this blended approach because, Tom and Ross got, on a lot of really specific points that I really like that, that they coined or their, reconstruction side of it.
Whereas I really liked the taxonomy and classification aspects that, that Kish- Sutton, evolved. What I would truly appreciate and one of the reasons that I really wanted to take a more active in leadership, approach in the discipline is we shouldn't have these questions anymore. Uh, it, it is, you know, we are going into 2023 and we still can't determine what we're going to call certain types of stain patterns.
And we have to move on, from what we're going to call something, make a decision to move on, is my concept right now with it. Because there are other aspects of research that warrant, the discipline’s, attention, right? And that goes into looking at, black box studies like this or looking at uncertainty rates and being able to truly, get more into it and get beyond the words. 'Cause the words you can become a quagmire.
[00:28:36] Angela: Yeah. I don't think that issue is isolated to just BPA. I think it's definitely an issue right now with BPA, but I know in the DNA n a field, we still argue about, no, we are going to call this a type one mixture, not an indistinguishable mixture. I mean it; you just have to know there's all this different jargon…
[00:28:55] Zack: It's the same thing. Latent Prints, Latent Prints Friction ridge patterns. I don't care what you call them, let's just ultimately pick a terminology and move on. Right. You know, and, and really terminology, going back, so we talked about the SWG, about SWGSTAIN, right? So SWGSTAIN came around in 2001, and was around for many years before, the OSAC and SWGSTAIN originally came up with their set terminology.
And then when OSAC took over, they came out with the, ASB 33 report, which is our current standard terminology in BPA.
But that's, yes. Slightly different. And now we're working on possibly slightly, slightly different, version, whatever point "O". You, I think, there are people who enjoy terminology and taxonomy.
But can be distracting, I think at the end of the day
[00:29:42] Angela: Yeah, I do think you're definitely right. I think that, I mean I, when I was, I used to just attach the SWGSTAIN terminology to my report. So if somebody wanted to know what I meant by a word, it was right there in the report. Which I think is a good practice 'cause even if you're not using the ASB terminology and you're using something else, as long as you're referencing it in your report so that the recipient of the report understands it.
And the, if somebody is doing a review, if you've worked for the prosecution and you've got a defense, somebody's working for the defense and reviewing, and then they know what you used. So even if you're not using the same terminology in your own off, on your own, at least on, if you issue a report, somebody knows, okay, they're using this set and this is what they mean by this.
So you can of come to a sort of consensus. I know experts coming to a consensus isn't a big thing in the United States.it is in other jurisdictions.
[00:30:41] Zack: Yeah, so one, I’ve recently had, a little bit more insight into like how things work in Belgium, and over in Europe, with the court system. And, I am coming from the very, defense side, prosecution side, the very adversarial criminal justice system that the United States is. I think it does more disservice, than anything.
I dream of this day where, both the Opposing sides BPA expert and I can sit down, go through our reports and come to a consensus. 'Cause then it is a peer reviewed opinion, right?
That, that should be the model that is strived for, because that is rooted in science, that is factual with no other, prejudice put in. but we're in the United States where, you know, it, it’s a circus.
[00:31:28] Angela: Well, I actually really agree with you. That's one of the things that I think we should push for from the scientific side to say, look, we're all scientific experts in, in these disciplines. We should be coming to the same conclusion. And if we're not coming to the same conclusion, then we need to go back and review all of the data and see was something not right because we should be, we shouldn't be having such different opinions on things.
And I know they call it in, in England a lot of time they call it hot tubing when you're, you sit down with the other expert and, yeah, you're hot tubing with them and
Knowing
[00:32:03] Zack: some of the experts that I've gone had opposing casework.
[00:32:06] Angela: tub with
[00:32:07] Zack: want to get a hot tub with them. No, I'm good. I'll pass. Thanks.
[00:32:10] Angela: but it is because they'll enter in, they'll enter in joint reports.
[00:32:14] Zack: that's, and that's an incredible concept to me
[00:32:16] Angela: Right.
Because ultimately we're just there to help the court understand the scientific evidence. Yeah. And it, our purpose in the United States isn't any different. We're still there just to help the court understand the scientific data. It doesn't matter who's who asks you to do the analysis, the result should still be the same. But anyways, getting off on a tangent there too, but
[00:32:38] Zack: abso absolutely. It’s a great tangent, because I can think of, the first time that I ever had a, case where I was on the prosecution, and Ross Gardner was the defense expert, and this was fairly young in my, my BPA career. So I was super nervous.
Um,
[00:32:52] Angela: Not intimidating at all.
[00:32:54] Zack: no, not intimidating at all. The fact that I am literally citing his book in my report, so a, as an, as a young examiner, that was super intimidating. But it was also one of the most rewarding reports I, that I had to read in the beginning part of my career, was because at the end of his report, he said, in conclusion, I'm in agreement with de Detective Kowalske's findings.
You want to talk about going, oh, thank God I'm doing something right. And, that was a good confidence boost for me as a young examiner, was that I, here's this person who I do admire and this role model. And same thing with Tom Bevel, man. These are giants; these are pioneers in the BPA field. That, I just want to have as much of a, impact on the discipline as they've had because I, that's I'm passionate about.
[00:33:40] Angela: Yeah. I think you're the first person to do blood in space,
[00:33:44] Zack: I think I am, um, su that was, super exciting, about it and, yeah, did not think that was actually going to happen. We can totally talk about.
[00:33:51] Angela: okay. So how did that, yeah, how did that even come about?
[00:33:55] Zack: Yeah. Like I said, my, my doctoral research is in looking at how, environmental and elemental factors affect the accuracy of your angle of impact and your area of origin estimations. So to boil it down with the environmental aspect, how does surface roughness affect those measurements and affect those calculations? And what kind of range are we ending up with? What's your uncertainty? Because I, in, in Georgia, when I went through my first BPA class, I was always taught that, your angle of impact is plus or minus five degrees. . Okay. Where did plus or minus five degrees come from? Why is that being taught to me in this class? You know, I'm, and, and so as I explored that con, that concept more, I found that there is a variety of opinions on range. And what is acceptable accuracy and that concept of what's acceptable, right? Well, you know, your area of origin is going to be about the size of volleyball, or 30 centimeters. Okay, how, where are we getting that from? How does your environment alter that? And so that's where I started diving in. And so I started doing, stains with, sand, concrete snow, and then I did air currents and extreme air currents, and how extreme air currents, can affect those, measurements.
And same thing with fire incidents. As I was going through all this, I read an article a few years ago that's where all this stems from is it's a little nugget that just that gets caught up in my brain and stays and festers until it grows into something. Read this article a few years ago that was talking about, forensic science in the future and how it will look and how things will actually work in the future in terms of, space and, becoming a multi-planetary species.
And I'm a futurist. I am a, space nerd. I very much tried to look forward, at where we're going. So in this article, they made a statement about BPA and and I can't, I wish I could tell you what the statement was. I've tried going back to find this article, I can't find it. 'Cause it was a magazine article and, the statement was wrong.
Knowing what I knew about Newtonian physics, I knew the statement was wrong. I was like, I want to prove that wrong. That, that's not how that would work in space. That would be a great concept, how would BPA really work in space? So I'd approached my, advisor at the time. I said, Hey, crazy theory. Hear me out. I would like to do just a thought.
Do
[00:36:12] Angela: you have a spaceship I could borrow?
[00:36:14] Zack: Right? So crazy idea. Hear me out. I'd like to do a thought experiment as the last part of my dissertation and in this thought experiment I would collate through available data, through NASA, and videos and space medicine literature, and fluid dynamics and postulate how stain patterns would actually be deposited in different issues that you may have in, a zero gravity environment or a microgravity environment, space. He said, yeah, that sounds fascinating, and I said, you're okay with a thought experiment? He said, yeah. You don't have to have research as long as you're extrapolating from, research that's been done in you’re, synthesizing it into a new concept,
[00:36:54] Angela: easy new concept. No one's done bloodstain pattern analysis in space yet. Yeah. So that's kind of where it started was it was just a literature review and synthesizing through this lit review. And I ended up reaching out to, a NASA partner researcher out of the University of Louisville. And said, Hey, I read your study on hemorrhage control in microgravity and have a few questions for you. If you have time for a phone call. I would really appreciate it. I'd if you have video of your research, 'cause he had done, parabolic flight research.
[00:37:24] Zack: And so what parabolic flight is, KC 135 or the vomit comet. It’s one of the ways that we can create microgravity. So basically you're on this big space plane, not space plane. You're on this big plane that takes a series of parabolas, as it's, flight mission. And during the free fall, ascent you, you create, microgravity, you create zero gravity 'cause you're in free fall.
And so he said, yeah, actually I'll be traveling through Atlanta next month on my way down to Cape Canaveral, for my next research flight. Would you like to have coffee? Sure. Would love to have coffee. One thing led to another. Next thing I know, six months later, my research is on a KC 135 microgravity flight, and we're actually doing bloodstain pattern, data collection in microgravity.
That's so cool.
Yeah. And it all started with a cold call. Yeah. So I very much am the believer if you can dream it, you can do it. And to not take no for an answer. Anyone who limits his or her concepts of, I'll never be able to do that, then you are correct. You won't because you don't have the right mindset. If you believe that nothing is impossible, then you will achieve pretty much anything. And so yeah, that's very much my mindset. I actually just finished writing an, an a, a short eBook that whole concept of mindset and, yeah. So space first, forensic space researcher, I don't know. I'm trying to decide if I want to call astro forensics or space forensics.
[00:38:44] Angela: Um,Astro Forensics. You didn't get to go on the vomit comment though. They collected the data for you.
[00:38:50] Zack: correct. Yeah. So those research campaigns are super expensive. On average it'll cost anywhere between 40 grand and up just for one research flight campaign. Yeah, I didn't have a whole lot of time because I was piggybacking, and incredibly grateful for the opportunity. which is fine because I hate flying in general.
Angela: Okay. So maybe that ride wouldn't have been the best for you.
Would not have been the best. I would've probably been so excited to be doing it, but I'd just be in the way. And what's really cool from a, researcher standpoint is the concept of experimental design and what is the investigative question that you were asking? And I can tell you that for my research, my overall doctoral research, I have all these big impact rigs that I've made and all this very elaborate equipment when I had to boil it down to something that can fit in a cubic square foot. So you, you learn to boil down your principles really quickly, when you're dealing with, any kind of microgravity research because weight is expensive, and takes up space. Pun intended,
[00:39:50] Angela: ha. Takes up space. So when did they do the flight? It's recent
[00:39:54] Zack: uh, it was at the beginning of May 2022
[00:39:56] Angela: so you probably are still going through the data.
[00:40:00] Zack: very much so I'm currently still sifting my way through. I can tell you that based off of what I'm seeing and what I have seen so far is that, essentially what I'm, what we're doing is we have validated, a 90 year old equation, which is super cool. So the idea is that we're taking that arc sign formula of the width, divide by length, and you're taking the inverse sign of that, or the arc sign of that. And that gives you your angle of impact. That, that equation, that Balthazard, presented in 1939,that was taken in a vacuum, that did that equation, does not take into account air drag and gravity, which are the two predominant terrestrial forces that affect stain flight. So the best way to validate it is that you have to do it in the absence of gravity. And in doing so, not only. The question, the answer I usually get, or the statement I usually get is, why are you doing space research? Are you doing it for, the first murder in space? No, not really. You know, there are several applications too. You know, I in jest, sure. Because wherever humanity goes
[00:41:00] Angela: Hey, there's going to be a colony on Mars.
[00:41:02] Zack: and, and there will eventually, wherever mankind goes, violence is soon to follow. We are a violent species. And so yes, but not in the near future. In understanding, how things work in the absence of gravity, we have a better understanding of the driving factors here, terrestrially. So what we see in microgravity is that surface tension is the driving factor of stain formation and deposition. , We can apply that here. Now. We kind of already understand that, but we see it amplified in microgravity 'cause things move a lot slower and we can have a better understanding of how those stains oscillate and then interact with whatever substrate.
[00:41:40] Angela: Fascinating. It really is, and I love that you didn't take what people were teaching you and saying it's plus or minus this at face value. You're like, how do we know that? Where does that uncertainty come from? What is the actual uncertainty? What are the variables that are going to affect it? Because one of the things that a lot of the pattern disciplines are grappling with, having difficulty with is measurement uncertainty. It’s not as hard for us to do in toxicology analysis. It's not that hard for us to do. Okay, the math is not fun, necessarily. It gets really complicated in DNA, but we have that measurement uncertainty in there. We understand what the weight of our evidence is EAs more easily than we do in the pattern disciplines.
[00:42:27] Zack: We won't see. I don't think, you know, I would love to have some type of likelihood ratio that we could apply in BPA and in crime scene reconstruction, in general. The problem is its just there are too many variables. We are nowhere near there. I think that in the next probably 30 to 40 years with, the progression of artificial intelligence, AI will be what ultimately gets us through that.
Uh,
[00:42:53] Angela: the, it's a very complex model to have to build
[00:42:56] Zack: very much so. And it won’t be until you have quantum computing that is regular. And see this is where we'll go into futurism. With the ability to, [compute] a lot more variables with quantum computing and AI, that's where we will start to see actual models that can be of better predictive value.
[00:43:13] Angela: And I'm just wondering where the, crime laboratories or police agencies are going to get the budget to afford quantum computing and an AI
[00:43:22] Zack: Oh, that, that's why I think it's going to be, 30 to 40 years 'cause that it has to be something that becomes commonplace by far. If you think about it, think about where we
[00:43:30] Angela: when everyone has one.
[00:43:31] Zack: Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, so, I had the wonderful opportunity, in 2021 last year, 2021, to talk about this, to talk about the future of BPA, at the IABPA conference in Colorado. And, and that's kind of where I think, Uh, I've got a researcher, colleague who is finishing up his PhD at Staffordshire, and he was looking at classification with AI and some of the work that his AI has developed is incredible. We’re talking about, accuracies that are accuracy percentages that, that are pretty awesome that I would that rival any examiner. Because the AI is able to, synthesize a stain pattern and see characteristics that we don't necessarily understand yet. And that's the problem is that we don't understand, we're not focusing enough on, foundational, scientific, principles, Newtonian physics principles of understanding stain formation. And not until you get really into the weeds of the discipline, that that's not a concept we talk about in a basic 40-hour BPA class. You have to...
[00:44:31] Angela: Definitely not.
[00:44:33] Zack: no. You have to be an examiner for, several years until you really start grasping the importance of the, those principles and how they really do have this interplay, of stain formation.
[00:44:45] Angela: Yeah.
[00:44:45] Zack: more you get into it, the more you realize you don't know, which is terrifying.
[00:44:49] Angela: Well, it's what it is with everything, right? The more you know you, the more you realize you don't know. So I think that, one of the things I recall from when I was going through all three levels of the BPA training, especially in the first two courses, it's definitely for me, I. Probably one of only two or three scientists in the class and everyone else was, CSI law enforcement related. And they did not have a scientific background, at all. Some of them would've had a bachelor's degree, but not all of them, 'cause it was a mix from all sorts of different jurisdictions. And I think that it was harder for them because they just didn't, they didn't have the basic trigonometry, they didn't have any calculus background. And even as, as simple as the math would seem to people that are in the scientific field, it's not to somebody who didn't study those things. And so there's a lot of people in some of the fields that don't have that scientific background. I think you're probably a pretty rare individual that, an active police detective. And also working on, your doctoral research in the, in this field there's not a lot of, police officers out there with PhDs,
[00:46:03] Zack: no, I actually, I had to have our city policy changed so that I could actually pursue it. um,
[00:46:09] Angela: They have to call you doctor Detective when you're done. Or Detective Doctor
Hey, you, what’s your face? ,
[00:46:15] Zack: astronaut
[00:46:16] Angela: Space. Space Nerd
[00:46:18] Zack: space nerd. Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:20] Angela: So the first ever as Astro BPA scientist
[00:46:24] Zack: Yeah. What do you think Astro forensics? Space forensics. I'm figuring space forensics 'cause I, a lot of the, lit research that I, true research that I dove into, was based out of, space medicine. And I found that apparently I have a intense love for reading about space medicine. And that's the actual discipline's title is space medicine.
um,
[00:46:44] Angela: didn't even know it was a thing, but it, it makes sense
[00:46:47] Zack: we're, we're just going to call it Space forensics, you know, a lot of cool, there's a lot of really neat things that happen to the human body as soon as you, leave this, rock, of a planet, and get in the absence of gravity, how your fluids start to shift in the body and all the strange things that happen, you end up with, a syndrome called, chicken leg, puffy face syndrome,
[00:47:06] Angela: okay,
[00:47:07] Zack: which legitimate name of the syndrome, which is fascinating. But yeah, there, it's neat.
[00:47:12] Angela: Well, you know, it's, it's interesting, you're setting the foundations of some, some information that will probably be useful when there's a colony on Mars.
[00:47:21] Zack: Yeah. So even if we had to, you know, kind of talk about how these principles could be applied today, picture, if you will, there is some type of catastrophic accident, onboard the ISS or onboard whatever type of, either low earth orbit, space station or wherever, you have a catastrophic accident. If we look at
[00:47:40] Angela: space elevator when that's built.
[00:47:42] Zack: elevator. Yeah, there we go. God, I would never, I hate elevators as it is 'cause I've gotten
[00:47:46] Angela: You're not going to take the space elevator up,
[00:47:48] Zack: no, I've been stuck. So we have an elevator in our lab that literally goes two floors and I've been stuck on it several times before. So if I, if humanity can't master a literally two floor elevator, I'm not getting on a space elevator
[00:48:03] Angela: you'll take the space stairs; you'll get there eventually
[00:48:05] Zack: Yeah, 100%. That can get on a whole ‘nother topic,
[00:48:10] Angela: catastrophic thing in the space elevator.
[00:48:12] Zack: Yeah. Yeah. So looking at like accident analysis, right? Being able to understand where, crewmembers were at the time of certain incidents where it became a blood shedding event. So, you know, it's, it's not just criminal acts, it's understanding, analysis or, fault analysis stuff.
[00:48:28] Angela: I mean that you do that on the ground with this stuff too.
[00:48:31] Zack: Yep. We, but we often, we forget that BPA is just looking at blood and bloodstain patterns. And that is not exclusive to somebody getting, a machete to the face. It can also be, was this person wearing a seatbelt at the time of this accident? Something much more simpler.
[00:48:49] Angela: Yeah. Zack, I've really enjoyed this conversation. It was a lot of fun. We could probably keep talking for another three hours, but
[00:48:56] Zack: We probably could.
[00:48:57] Angela: so we're already at an hour, so we should probably wrap it up.
[00:49:00] Zack: Well, I, I appreciate you uh, having me on to
[00:49:04] Angela: Well, it was my pleasure. Thank you for accepting my random request on LinkedIn to, hey, you want to come talk about your space stuff,
[00:49:11] Zack: and if you haven't noticed, I'll talk about it with just about anybody at this point.
[00:49:14] Angela: So do you have any closing thoughts that you'd like to share? I know you mentioned you'd written an eBook as well, and of course you've got a lot of research, so I'm happy to link those in the show notes. Anybody that's interested in reading up a little bit more about you and
[00:49:29] Zack: Sure. Yeah. So like literally just putting the final touches on that eBook, should hopefully be coming out relatively soon by the end of the year. In terms of, you can find me on LinkedIn at Zack, Z a c k, Kawalske, K O W A L S K e. I stay pretty active on there. And then you can go over to my private casework at foxenforensics.com.
That's F O X E N forensics.com. And if you have ideas, hey, hit me up. I love collaborating and my closing part is, don’t. Don't get discouraged from people telling you No. That’s the biggest thing is I've never really taken a note for an answer and I like to dream big and it's putting big dreams into action that's how you change the world. That's how you actually make an impact in a discipline. Don’t be afraid to rock the boat.
[00:50:16] Angela: Sound advice. I agree completely. So if you don't ask, you don't get
[00:50:21] Zack: Correct.
[00:50:22] Angela: Thank you again. I really appreciate you taking time to have a chat and I'd love to have you on again once you finish putting that, final touches on those, that research paper.
[00:50:33] Zack: Yeah. And then we can talk about the actual results.
[00:50:35] Angela: Yeah. Rather than just I did this really awesome thing,
[00:50:38] Zack: cool thing.
[00:50:38] Angela: Thanks and have a good night.
[00:50:40] Zack: Thank you. Thank you everybody for listening.