Bloodstains and blood spatter are a common occurrence in crime scenes and provide plenty of evidence for investigators to analyze. Blood may help to paint a picture as to what happened when the crime occurred. It can be analyzed to track the movements of the victim (and possibly the perpetrator) to get an idea of what went down from the beginning to the end of the scenario. But blood can only get you so far. There are many factors that affect the behavior of blood and it may affect the analysis in the crime scene.

The objective in this experiment, is to compare the error rate of impact spatter at different heights: laying, sitting, and standing. The purpose is to determine at which height does the impact of blood have less specificity in where it lands on the wall.

The procedure is done by applying force to a pool of blood at the assigned heights and calculate individual bloodstains to find area of origin. The calculated values will be compared to the expected values to find the error rate. If the conditions were perfect, and the procedure was followed to a T, then it should be expected that all bloodstains calculated would have precise values. But since that is never the case, the goal is to determine at which height is it least precise to measure and calculate.

The results show that the sitting position had the highest error rate at 22.7% while the other two positions had around 10%.

Maren Angala would like to thank faculty sponsor Erik Hall for their support with this project.