Murder Mystery Lab

Murder Mystery Project:

Description:

On January 11, 2020, Carelton Comet was celebrating with six of his old friends: Nancy Normal, Theresa Terra, Fred Flimmer, Sam Sophomore, and Glen Glee. Suddenly, at 7:35 the sky darkened and a glass was dropped as Carelton slumped over forward with a steak knife in the back of his neck. The police were called at 7:40, and they arrived at 7:55. Nancy Normal had her hand cut on a piece of broken glass when the sky darkened. The police determined there were two types of blood on the knife, one belonging to Carelton Comet. Later, a note was found with the words, “you are a dead man” written in pen. Our job was by using the evidence found at the crime scene to determine which one of the six suspects killed Mr. Comet. We looked at six main pieces of evidence; they are listed below:

  1. Fingerprints: The first piece of evidence looked at was fingerprints found on a piece of broken class found at the crime scene. The way we found the fingerprints was by lightly dusting the oily print with black powder. Then placed a clear peace of tape to extract the fingerprint from the surface. We used that fingerprint show up at left. The other six suspects fingerprints can be seen at right. The fingerprint found at the crime scene had a whorl pattern with ridges going up both sides of it. There was only one other fingerprint that matched this distinct pattern which belonged to Nancy Normal.

2. Ink Chromatography Results: A note saying "You are a dead man" was left behind at the crime scene, written in a black pen. All six of the suspects were found with pens, but they were shared, so only three pens were truly there. Using Ink Chromatography, which basically splits up the ink, we were able to see which pens ink matched the pen at the crime scene. All three pens ink can be seen at left. The middle one, Pen 2, was the one which matched from the one at the crime scene, which can be seen at right. Pen 2 belonged to Nancy Normal and Sam Sophomore.

3. Blood Types: Two blood types were found at the crime scene. We took blood samples of all six suspects. At Crime Scene #1 blood type O was found. This blood matched with Sam Sophomore and Carelton Comet. Though, the blood was Carlton's because he was the one stabbed in the neck. At Crime Scene #2 type A blood was found. This matched with Glen Glee and Nancy Normal's blood type who also had type A blood. Though, it is most likely to be Nancy Normal's blood because she cut her hand on the glass and Glen Glee had no evidence of bleeding.

4. Pedigree Findings: The pedigrees helped us look at everyone's connections withe each other. They showed what diseases everyone had. some blood types and who was alive, dead, etc. The main reason the pedigree was important was because it showed possible motives for Sam and Nancy, who were the two most suspected suspects, on why they killed Carlton Comet, just by looking at their connections to Carlton. The Pedigree we made can be seen at right.

5. Karyotypes: Two Karyotypes were found at the crime scene. Looking at all the suspects karyotype's showed us what diseases they had and if their blood was present at the crime scene. The first one matched with Nancy Normal and the second one matched with Sam Sophomore and Carelton Comet. It is most likely Carlton's because he lost blood at the crime scene. The two ones found at the crime scene can be seen at right.

6. DNA Fingerprinting Results: The colors, red, blue, yellow, were everyone fingerprint's. Only BRY (blue, red, yellow) and RY (red, yellow) were found at the crime scene. At Crime Scene #1 the result was BRY which matched with Sam Sophomore and Carlton Comet. This shows evidence of their fingerprints was present at the crime scene. At Crime Scene #2 the result was RY which matched with Nancy Normal. This shows that her fingerprints were also found evident at the scene.



Content:

  1. Fingerprints: an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Arches, loops and whorls are the three main types of fingerprints.

  2. Ink Chromatography: Chromatography is a method for analyzing mixtures by separating them into the chemicals from which they are made. It can be used to separate mixtures like ink, blood, gasoline, and lipstick. In ink chromatography, you are separating the colored pigments that make up the color of the pen.

  3. Blood Type: A blood type (blood group) is a classification of blood, based on the presence and absence of antibodies and inherited antigenic substances on the surface of red blood cells. The blood types are: A, B, O and AB.

  4. Pedigree: A pedigree chart is a diagram that shows the occurrence and appearance of phenotypes of a particular gene or organism and its ancestors from one generation to the next. Women are represented as circles, men squares, a dash through that means they are dead, etc. Basically a more detailed family tree.

  5. Karyotypes: Karyotyping is the process by which photographs of chromosomes are taken in order to determine the chromosome complement of an individual, including the number of chromosomes and any abnormalities.

Evidence:

Using all of this evidence we put it into a slideshow explaining it way more in depth. We also identified who we think murdered Carelton Comet, the evidence supporting that and their possible motives. Our final claim was that Nancy Normal killed Carelton Comet and tried to frame Sam Sophomore. The slideshow we created can be seen at left.

Murder Lab

Reflection:

The first positive aspect of this project was that our group worked very efficiently to get everything done. We only had a certain amount of time to get tasks done and we managed out time very well to make sure that we got everything done. Some days it was very time crammed and we would not finish everything we needed to that day. Then the next day, because of this, we worked extra hard to finish earlier and have time to work on completing what we did not finish the first day. Though, most of the time we got our projects done the day of to keep us on a steady pase to finish in time with no hurry or fear of not being done. Another thing our group did really well was communication. When someone needed help with something, all of us were able to help. For example someone would need help with one part of the project and someone would help them, while the other person was getting help by another person. It just helped us move quickly.

Something our group could have done better was equalize the workload a little bit. A lot of the work was done but mainly by a couple people. If everyone helped more we could have gotten the project done much faster and it would have been so much easier. Plus it would be a lot less stressful for the people who did most of the work. Another issue we had was the group not being here for the project. Some days we had two members, other days we had four. It was just a hard setback trying to do the work for four people when there was only two of us. Then we would have to explain it to the other members which took a lot of time, when we could have been working. The hardest part about that was presenting with two people. We had a great four person presentation, but last minute my partner and I had to learn six more slides because our group members were not present. Besides that I think our project came out really well and we all worked very well and efficiently to get the job done.