WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

Millions of "CSI" fans think forensics is sexy. Real-life investigators don't. But they love it anyway.

By Karen Feldscher

Ask Carl Selavka, Liz Ziolkowski, William Graziano, or Paul Zambella how they got into forensics, and they will say, purely by chance.

When Selavka was an undergraduate in Indiana, his girlfriend sent him a postcard she’d ripped from a bulletin board at her North Carolina college, which advertised Northeastern’s master’s program in forensic science.

Ziolkowski learned about forensics when she was looking for a field that combined lab work and interaction with people. (Today, her kids tease her, “You mean, like, dead people, Mom?”)

After Graziano got a flyer about the Northeastern forensics program in the mail, he says his first thought was “Hmm, fifteen months for a master’s.” And Zambella investigated the field at a friend’s suggestion. “I didn’t have a clue what a crime lab did,” he admits. “When I found out, I thought, Wow, that could be interesting!”

Selavka, Ziolkowski, Graziano, and Zambella went on to earn degrees from the graduate program in forensic science Northeastern offered from 1977 to 1986. Back then, the average Joe didn’t know much about forensics.

These days, everyone does, partly because television programming is awash with it. There are the CBS megahits CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spinoff, CSI: Miami. The HBO series Autopsy. The Discovery Channel’s The New Detectives: Case Studies in Forensic Science and The FBI Files.

Turn to almost any channel, and you’ll see someone lifting fingerprints, analyzing bloodstain patterns, tweezing hair or fibers from a crime scene, or peering through a microscope at tiny bits of evidence.

“These crime programs have done for forensics what Jacques Cousteau did for marine biology,” says Ed Jarroll, director of Northeastern’s biotechnology program.

News coverage of the O. J. Simpson and the D.C. sniper cases and other high-profile crimes, along with the vastly increased use of DNA evidence to convict or exonerate suspects, have also made forensics “sexy,” says Zambella, MJ’81, who works at the Massachusetts State Police crime lab. “People are enthralled by all the technology. They just can’t get enough of it.”

To accommodate the rise in student interest, and in anticipation of future growth in the field, Northeastern is considering reviving a forensic science degree program. Jarroll is the chair of a committee looking at one that spans the Criminal Justice, Arts and Sciences, and Bouvé colleges.

Barry Fisher, director of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department crime lab and past president of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, acknowledges that some question where the growing numbers of forensics graduates nationwide are going to work.

“State and local crime labs are generally under-resourced,” Fisher says. “There’s just not enough money to do all the things we’re capable of doing.” But he’s optimistic about the future: “I have every belief this [lack of funding] is going to turn around.”

Susan Ballou, a National Institute of Standards and Technology program manager who helps identify the areas of forensic science that need funding most, concurs. “With the D.C. sniper incident, everybody saw you have this capability of investigating crimes with just a little bit of information,” Ballou says. “Things like that will help the forensics area dramatically.”

Washington is clearly taking forensic science seriously. In March, Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed devoting $1 billion of federal funds over five years to help reduce a backlog of some 350,000 DNA samples awaiting analysis in rape and homicide cases.

And earlier this year, a group of educators and crime-lab experts brought together by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) drafted much-needed forensics education guidelines, designed for crime labs looking to hire and train scientists, institutions offering or seeking to offer forensic science programs, and individuals interested in the field.

Forensics emerged as a discipline in the late 1800s, fanned by the popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories as well as some key scientific discoveries, such as the uniqueness of fingerprints and the existence of four blood types. The first U.S. forensic science lab opened in California in 1923. Nine years later, J. Edgar Hoover established the FBI’s national lab, now the largest forensic science facility in the world.

The U.S. forensics field blossomed during the late 1960s and 1970s, largely in response to Supreme Court decisions that required police to place greater emphasis on scientifically evaluated evidence and less on interrogation.

Today, Selavka, MJ’85, PHD’87, director of the Massachusetts State Police crime-lab system—which has a central lab in Sudbury and satellite labs in Agawam and Danvers—says the latest jump in interest has been great for the field, not to mention his operation. “We get the cream of the crop now, which is definitely a new trend,” he says. “We have dozens and dozens of applicants.”

One of just two to earn a doctorate in forensic science at Northeastern, Selavka is a member of the committee looking at bringing forensics back to Huntington Avenue. Currently on loan to the NIJ, where he’s managing all federal grants for crime-lab improvements, he believes Northeastern is a perfect spot for a forensic science program.

“Northeastern has some of the best researchers in mass spectroscopy, chromatography, hard sciences, biological sciences, engineering, computers,” Selavka says. “What a launching pad for forensic disciplines.”

And the university’s historical expertise in forensics doesn’t hurt, either. The earlier program started with a grant from the now-defunct Law Enforcement Assistance Administration at the U.S. Justice Department. It linked a new research institute in analytical chemistry (now known as the Barnett Institute) with the Chemistry department and the College of Criminal Justice. But when the Justice Department grant wasn’t renewed, and graduate stipends and research funds dried up, the program died before its tenth anniversary.

However, through the Barnett Institute, Northeastern still offers an annual lecture in forensic science, drawing some of the field’s top names. And students can still get a taste of forensic science through individual courses—including a University College course taught by Zambella—and co-op jobs.

Junior Steven Viola had a co-op at the Boston Police Department’s crime lab last year. The meticulous nature of the work impressed him. “That was the most amazing thing to me, to see how intricate the crime-lab staff gets,” Viola says. “The things they go through to get the smallest piece of evidence. A normal person would walk by it a thousand times, and unless you’re specifically looking for it, you would never see it.”

James Hurley, spokesman for the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, knows how much hard work and scientific rigor underlie what forensics experts do. “Television makes it glamorous,” he says. “But a toxicologist would never be out there running up and down the street. This is one of the most serious and most sober professions.”

And one of the most varied. For a look at what really happens in the lab, the field, and the courtroom, here are some real-life forensics tales from five insiders, all Northeastern grads:

Liz Ziolkowski, MJ'87
Irene Wong, BHS'01
William Graziano, MJ'80
Robin Smith, MJ'84
Paul Zambella, MJ'81