Hold My Sweet Tea
Where True Crime collides with chilling ghost stories and Southern folklore. Join us, sip sweet tea, and uncover shocking tales of murder, mystery, and the supernatural, all with a healthy dose of Southern charm and a touch of sass!
Hold My Sweet Tea
Ep.5-Forensics and the Art of Water-Based Evidence
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Can water really wash away all traces of a crime, or is it just another myth? Join us on Hold My Sweet Tea as we unravel this mystery, one splash at a time. We kick off with an amusing exchange about our feline companions before diving headfirst into the uncharted depths of forensic science, exploring how water impacts crucial evidence like DNA and fingerprints. Backed by research from the NIH and National Library of Medicine, we uncover how different water types, temperatures, and bacterial presence can accelerate evidence degradation. Yet, fear not—advancements in forensic techniques mean criminals can't fully rely on water to erase their deeds. We underscore the need for swift and meticulous handling of water-exposed evidence, potentially turning the tide in solving cases once thought cold.
Venture with us into the innovative world of forensic research, where artificial streams are the latest tool in studying the resilience of forensic traces like polyester fibers. These controlled environments may just revolutionize police investigations, offering a fresh glimmer of hope for cold cases. Hear about the resilience of fibers and the preservation of bodies in natural settings such as peat bogs, dismantling common misconceptions about evidence destruction. As we wrap up, we invite you to appreciate the complexities of forensic science and explore Southern folklore with us. Send us your stories and keep the conversation flowing, just like our love for sweet tea and captivating mysteries.
Source Material:
Study shows forensic evidence can survive underwater for weeks, by Staffordshire University, www.phys.org/news/2023-10-forensic-evidence-survive-underwater-weeks.html
Evaluation of Storage Conditions and the Effect on DNA from Forensic Evidence Objects Retrieved from Lake Water, Shahzad, M, De Mayer, H., Salih, G, et. al www.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10969804U0dxv515TErFb3McNjdP
Water in Crime Scene Investigations
Speaker 1Hey y'all, I'm Pearl and I'm Holly, and this is Hold my Sweet Tea. Welcome, welcome to Hold my Sweet Tea, the podcast where we sip tea and uncover hidden secrets and chilling crimes lurking beneath the surface of Southern hospitality.
Speaker 2That is right, along with spooky tales and haunted history that give the South its eerie charm straight that give the south its eerie charm.
Speaker 1We've been, we've been playing around with our microphone to give you guys a little more quality sound. So we've been having some, some jokes and some fun with our introduction so we get it right yeah, we're goofing off this morning yes, I think it's. Uh, due to my delirium of having a six-month-old kitten, and he keeps waking me up at three and four o'clock every morning.
Speaker 2He's doing that with the door open. Yeah, he has like free range.
Speaker 1He has free range of the house, but still he's like I think you know my mom needs to get up and pay attention to me, so he just like parkours off of me and everything in the room.
Speaker 2I saw a reel. Did I send it to you? No, I sent it to you and it was hilarious and the cat's like get up.
Speaker 1He's like I was doing fine at the shelter. You're the one that adopted me. Yeah, you can't got me from that shelter Right and I'm like that's how I feel and I was like I'm taking you back to the shelter? No, I'm not. I love you Silly kitty. He'll grow out of it, hopefully.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean. Well, yeah, you have a cat. I have a cat that's almost four and she literally it's a little later, it's like five, right. But then she comes and lays on my chest and starts making biscuits. Yeah, and I'm like, can you do it?
Speaker 1without the claws, like even if he would make biscuits would be fine, but he just wants to jump on me constantly. But she's a weirdo, right, and she'll lay there and she'll make the biscuits.
Speaker 2And then if you don't wake up and like start petting her, then she gets up there and she starts licking you on the chin, yeah, or on your nose or an eyelid somewhere weird and then she starts clawing you with the biscuits.
Speaker 1Wake up, those are the murder biscuits, yeah those are.
Speaker 2I'm gonna kill you in your sleep if you don't wake up and pet me right biscuit all the biscuits.
Speaker 1So I'm hoping you know when we, when we change the time for springing forward, that'll trick my cat and to wait until at least 4, 30 or 5, 30 to wake me up every morning.
Speaker 2Yeah, then maybe you'll have some uh sleep. I just need sleep well, I mean I spent my day yesterday driving eight hours, before I ever even started my work day two and a half hours, sleep the night before I know I felt so bad for you and in the rain, which was gross yeah, I didn't eat. I didn't eat dinner last night I was just like but I'm going to sleep straight to bed. It's like taking my shoes off and I'm going, you know no I'm not eating food I grabbed a bottle of water, put my pjs on and went and passed out.
Speaker 2Good idea, yeah. So today I'm gonna talk about, for this little mini-sode water, affecting evidence in a crime situation.
Speaker 2Ooh interesting, yeah, so obviously everybody's going to consider oh, water's going to wash it all away. I mean there is significant degradation and contamination. I mean there is significant degradation and contamination and it can rapidly break down crucial components like DNA, fingerprints and other trace evidence. But there's been lots of advancements and stuff. So I feel like it's important to talk about those because I don't want anybody thinking that just because they put their crime in the water, they're not going to get caught.
Speaker 1They're like this is just going to wash everything away, it'll be fine. No fingerprints nothing. Right.
Speaker 2Exactly Like no, no, no, we still checking this stuff, all right. So I mean, obviously it does make it more difficult to collect and analyze useful information from the scene. The longer it's submerged, the more compromised it does become. This is especially true for environments that have, like bacteria and organic matter present. So, depending on the type of water, the effects can vary as far as how degraded or contaminated the evidence may be. Obviously, stagnant and contaminated water will rapidly degrade DNA molecules, so it adds a challenge to the extraction of usable DNA to create a profile from like bodily fluids or blood. Water can smudge fingerprints and distort latent fingerprints, making them difficult to lift and analyze. The trace evidence can be dispersed, which could make it difficult to collect those fibers and hairs and other particles and even harder to link it to a suspect, only because you know, like the flow of the water.
Speaker 2So, like you get put in. You know all this stuff is in a rushing, like you throw a knife away from the crime and it had maybe some fibers from clothes or something on it from when you were stabbed at the person. It literally could just get like rushed off of the knife and be like further down the stream than even the knife is at this point. So I mean some of it gets lost that way. So I mean some of it gets lost that way.
Speaker 2The quality of water, like fresh versus salt, the temperature and obviously, like I've said, the presence of bacteria can further affect the rate of evidence degradation. It's important for law enforcement to understand how to manage water-exposed evidence. Perfect world, it would be great if you could. It would be like immediate collection, yes, because the faster you get it out, the better you are. But it's also important to know the proper containers. Some of the things will require special drying techniques before analysis. There's also like special techniques used for collection and preservation. So, according to the NIH and the National Library of Medicine, a study was conducted on retrieval and storage methods of evidence found in water my tongue is twisty, okay, we all stumble over words I do it all the time.
Speaker 1So if you see a body in the water, stop, walk away, call the police. Don't try to remove it. Yeah, definitely don't, because then you know you just disrupted the entire crime scene.
Speaker 2Yeah well, not just that. Have you ever seen the, those people that do like magnet fishing? Yes, and they constantly are like pulling up guns and all that stuff and having to call the cops immediately for that stuff? But it's like, yeah, crazy, yeah, you don't want to disturb it, but that is also a disruption to the gut, like how now it's just lost a bunch of stuff because this magnet Right, and you're yanking it up out of the water. So who knows that stuff is interesting, the junk they find in there and also ew.
Speaker 1Exactly. I was like ew, like that's gross. I know I've seen them pull a um, a cauldron out of a lake one time. It looked like a cauldron and it was like packed with stuff and like kind of sealed and I'm like bro, you better put that back right now yeah, I know, do not touch it.
Speaker 2Cursey curse amongst that right no no, no, leave it in the water, right. The study showed that extracting the evidence from the water as soon as possible and immediate storage through air drying or freezing before dna analysis is beneficial for the outcome of d of the dna profiling and crime scene investigation that's interesting yeah you never would think like let's freeze it, yeah, freeze it and then yeah.
Speaker 1So it kind of like seals it in its state of where it was, so you can examine.
Speaker 2Which I thought was kind of neat. It was kind of neat, yeah. Yeah, the DNA used in the study was from three male individuals and they used epithelial cells or touch DNA, fingerprints, blood and some plucked hairs. I'm sure they enjoyed that part, right? The objects that they used for this study were smartphones, knives, garbage bags, packing tapes and duct tapes, because of the glue being a little bit different. They just kind of wanted to try both kinds.
Speaker 2All the objects were cleaned, they can, and decontaminated by submersion in a surface disinfectant that I'm not even about to butcher the name of because it's long and weird, right, um, but anyway, yeah, they, they put it in that for 20 minutes and then it was rinsed and air dried. Before they deposited the biological materials, they were submerged in a lake in Stockholm and they were submerged for different times and once they were retrieved, they used four different storage methods. So they air dried at room temperature, the freezing at like negative 30 degrees Celsius, they dried some things in a container with nitrogen gas and then they even just left some of it submerged in the lake water from the dive site.
Speaker 1So they just like took some of it with them and left it in there, so kind of like the body farms, like the one that started in Tennessee and now they've got several all over the place. They're using this as a testing ground for forensic.
Speaker 2It showed, most of the DNA recovered from air dry or freezing method were close to the same amount using both methods. So basically those two methods were the best methods, methods to use to preserve what was there. The longer the items were in the water, it became more difficult to collect the DNA, but it was still best recovered, despite being degraded when air dried or frozen. So the article that I read is on physorg.
Speaker 2The article that I read is on physorg. It's an article that shows that forensic evidence can survive underwater for weeks. They literally think, like it's been common practice, that stuff couldn't survive longer than seven days as far as like the DNA and all of that, than seven days as far as like the dna and all of that. But this study that was done shows that it actually survives longer in the water than previously thought. So a lot of times, like if it were in water for longer than seven days, they could tell it was in there for longer than seven days. Right, they just wouldn't even try they would just not try to pull anything from any of it.
Speaker 2They were like, no, this is no, it's been seven days yeah, there's no way I'm getting anything out of this, but this study was done and they're like, oh no, no, you should still do it. This study was led by Staffordshire University's Center for Crime, justice and Security and they found that fiber evidence, especially, can survive on fabrics underwater for several weeks. Claire Gwinnett, professor of forensics and environmental science, explained evidence such as a weapon or a victim's body are often found in aquatic environments, including rivers and lakes. However, if items have been submerged in the water for more than seven days, then many forensics examiners believe that any valuable trace evidence will be gone and won't seek it out. To date, very few studies have investigated fiber persistence on fabric submerged underwater.
Forensic Evidence in Water Studies
Speaker 2The dynamic nature of aquatic environments means that the studies are difficult to conduct and variables such as water flow rate are not possible to control. So in this study they used artificial streams so that they had some control of flow and things of that nature, despite you know how in nature. Obviously we're not in control of those things, but they wanted to kind of just see different flow rates and the persistence of like polyester fibers on different fabric types over like a four week exposure time. So they're looking at stuff that sat in the water for a month. Oh wow, so that's significantly longer.
Speaker 1Absolutely, because I mean you might find this missing person that you're looking for a month later in the water, so, or something close to it.
Speaker 2I mean much like my Chandra May case. I mean 22 days later.
Speaker 1Right almost a month.
Speaker 2We don't know how long she was in the water, because I mean obviously that evidence got all.
Speaker 1Got all messed up, messed up.
Speaker 2But there could have possibly been a lot of stuff there still at that point. So this is actually like the first time they've ever used these artificial streams for studying forensic evidence. Yes, they're usually used for ecological research. So they did like just two flow velocities, they did like a really high flow and a low flow and they use like woolen nylon mixed carpet, 100% polyester fleece and 95% polyester slash, 5% elastin sports vest. Initial loss rates were highest for the first hour of submergence for the carpet fleece and the sports vest. However, persistent rates remained mostly constant after 24 hours. So basically the flow rates didn't affect it after the initial loss. Oh, okay, so it was still viable. Evidence yes, and there was no change in it for 24 hours.
Speaker 1So it's kind of like the surface part where it can get it off there. So it's kind of like when you have a bowl in the sink and you're trying to rinse it out and it gets that one stuck piece in there and you just keep rinsing it and rinsing it, and rinsing it. No matter what you do, it won't come out until you like literally touch it and make it move with like a scrubby pad or something. So that's basically the surface part's rinsed off and then whatever's left just sticks there right.
Speaker 2So even after four weeks, the lowest percentage of remaining fibers was 33.4 percent. This clearly indicates that it's extremely valuable to research, you know?
Speaker 1yeah all situations on other stuff.
Speaker 2So hey, you can still test the evidence yes a month later, professor gwinnett said our findings could change how police direct investigations and help to uncover forensic evidence that was previously thought to be lost. We hope this will help investigators to identify more suspects and ultimately lead to more convictions. She also said the study also highlights the benefits of using artificial streams mimicking realistic aquatic environments in a controlled setting. This is the first time that artificial streams have been used to look at forensic evidence and we hope it will pave the way for further studies to investigate different types of trace evidence, such as gunshot residue, pollen, fingerprints or DNA.
Speaker 1Wow, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2I mean it's crazy to know.
Speaker 1Yeah, unless you live in Northern Europe and you have peat bogs, because they found human remains that have been naturally preserved in those peat bogs and, like all of their soft tissue and everything is completely intact, they still kind of look the same and their bodies and their hair get this red tint because of the peat moss and everything. And the bodies are preserved by the cool, acidic and low oxygen environment in the bog. That's cool, I know I was like somebody throws you in a peat bog. It's all preserved.
Speaker 2Right, they are in trouble, Exactly. It kind of mummifies them pretty much, yeah, but it's just crazy to think that this is an article from 2023. So up until now we've only been going oh it's, it's too late. It's too late Not looking at it. I mean, I'm sure there are investigators who are like tested anyway, tested anyway. I have no doubt that that's happening. But to think that there are investigators out there going it's been longer than seven days, it's worthless to us.
Speaker 1You know, if we can find something on the land and try to get something from that a shoe or a glove or something you know but it's in the water. We can't do anything about it.
Speaker 2Yeah, a glove or something you know, but it's in the water, we can't do anything about it. Yeah, anybody who thinks like all hope is lost, Right, because it's a. You know, you were found in water or it was found in water or whatever. It is not Right. There is hope.
Speaker 1So murderers, beware, just by throwing it in the water, a body or evidence.
Speaker 2All is not lost. No, all is definitely not lost.
Speaker 1I think they think the same premise with fire yeah, you just burn something and it's gone, but yeah no, no, still not gone. It's crazy to me that, yeah, the amount of things that you can still find and I'm sure they've done tests on that too, like burning certain things, like cadavers and things like that, to see how things take place. And then you get like a forensic anthropologist in there that can test the bones and see and maybe that can be another mini-soda. Yeah, it could be, we have someone fire yeah.
Speaker 2We can research that yeah.
Speaker 1We research it for you, so you don't have to juggle everything.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's kind of the point of these little things. They're just like little tidbits of cool info, not encouraging words for the land of crime.
Speaker 1Not at all. We're trying to decrime you. Yes, behave.
Speaker 2Give me nothing to talk about. Exactly Behave.
Speaker 1Stop being a. See you next Tuesday.
Speaker 2A TW Ott yes.
Speaker 1Give that to you. We're hoping that you know this is our second mini-sode, so we're hoping that you're really enjoying these and we're not writing any certain like thing on them, we're just winging it and kind of getting it out there. So you know we might ramble a bit but we're we're just trying to, you know, get some knowledge in your knowledge educate and entertain.
Speaker 2Yes, yep absolutely, yeah, and I uh like I made notes for this one, but, and that's why I said, I'm gonna read from that article on fizzorg and you, I'll put the link in show notes so that anybody else who wants to go read the whole thing can. I didn't, I just took the pieces out that I felt like were the most important. Yes, and there's plenty more in there, so go read it, yeah, if you're interested in that.
Speaker 2Yeah or don't. I mean, I told you everything that was super important in there, but you're welcome to read it anyway, you know, if you've got time on your hands, if you've got some time.
Speaker 1We have no time, but we, yeah, we're, we create extra time somehow Because we're wizards and or we don't sleep, or we just don't sleep because you know, we want to entertain and get some, get some cool cases out there and I mean it's cool, it's fun for us. We like we like yeah, this is something we definitely are enjoying and it's not like one of our little ventures where we're like working our behinds off and not making any progress.
Speaker 2This is like you know so definitely, definitely, make sure you guys tell us what you think, because we don't want to do anything that seems like boring to anyone else because if we don't have listeners. What's the?
Speaker 1point absolutely like get on our, get on our website and let us know email us yeah, comment on something, but just don't be mean. Yeah, if you get on the website, I'll I'll activate.
Speaker 2There's like a little thing I can put on there for fan mail. Yes, so If you get on the website, I'll activate. There's like a little thing I can put on there for fan mail yes, so if you get on the website, you can definitely use the fan mail option. I'll make sure that that's up today.
Speaker 1You know what I'm going to cry and I never cry If we have fans. I'm going to be like, oh my God.
Speaker 2We have fans.
Speaker 1And not the kind that blow air on you exactly. Oh my god, I swear I'm an idiot. No, we always laugh.
Podcast Promotion and Contact Information
Speaker 2It's fine, right so thank you for joining us on hold my sweet tea. All sources used to create this episode can be found in the show notes. The music for this episode was created by Patty Salzetta at Salzetta Music. I think that's what she uses for that stuff. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook Hold my Sweet Tea Instagram at HoldMySweetTea underscore podcast TikTok. Hold my Sweet Tea podcast review. You can follow us on facebook. Hold my sweet tea instagram at hold my sweet tea underscore podcast tiktok. Hold my sweet tea podcast the interwebs. Hold my sweet teacom youtube at hold my sweet tea podcast. We are all over the spotify apple music amazon now.
Speaker 2Go like us. There you have no excuses.
Speaker 1You like, just subscribe there.
Speaker 2Waiting for Pandora approval, so it'll be on Pandora also, so like it's spreading like wildfire.
Speaker 1Not like a disease, no, like wildfire, wildfire Right, oh like wildfire, wildfire.
Speaker 2Right, oh, my sweet tea. The disease podcast, catch it. It's not like herpes. No, you can choose to get rid of it.
Speaker 1Exactly.
Speaker 2If you have a case you would like to be covered, or even a ghost story or a cool piece of Southern folklore, please email us at steeped S-T-E-E-P-E-D at holdmysweetteacom.
Speaker 1I just love the way you enunciate. It's amazing. So follow us everywhere so you don't miss a single thing. Hold, my sweet tea is a drunken bee production. I'm still gonna laugh at that. Y'all remember to stay safe out there, and just because we're dipping doesn't mean you can't keep sipping. Bye. Thank you, hey.