Forensic researcher creates ‘bone lab’ in bathroom

A Staffordshire University PhD student has turned her bathroom into a bone lab as part of her research into finding better ways to identify burned bodies.

Emma Morgan, who works as a Specialist Trained Officer with Thames Valley Police, was motivated to embark on a part-time PhD after working with forensic recovery teams at Grenfell Tower.

Currently, bone fragments are recovered from fire scenes by manually filtering through debris. Emma is investigating whether Alternative Lighting Systems – usually used by forensic scientists to detect bodily fluids and fibres at crime scenes – can be used in identifying bodies.

The 31-year-old, who is originally from Usk in Monmouthshire, South Wales, explained: “Working at Grenfell Tower was a turning point for me. Considering technology is getting so much more advanced, we spent many hours each day sieving through the debris and I thought there must be a more efficient process. I considered whether bones fluoresce and so, I started looking into whether we could use crime lights for the purposes.”

Due to coronavirus restrictions, Emma has been unable to use specialist dark rooms on campus or to access fire facilities through a collaboration with Merseyside Fire and Rescue, so created a lockdown lab in the "smallest and darkest” room in her house – her bathroom.

Working with her supervisor Professor John Cassella and supervisory team in the School of Law Policing and Forensics, Emma built relationships with suppliers of specialist forensic equipment including SceneSafe, CopperTree Forensics, ForenteQ and Attestor Forensics in Germany who have loaned her industry standard lighting systems for the project.

Emma has collected preliminary data from her experiments by creating a scoring system for how effectively different light waves fluoresce bone fragments.

She said: “The whole family has been helping out. My parents have been collecting bones on dog walks in the woods and the local butchers have also provided bones which I burned in my fire pit in the garden. I will need to repeat the experiments in a controlled lab environment, but this has given me a good start.”

Emma presented a paper at international conference Forensics Middle East & Africa 2020 and submitted a poster to the Charted Society of Forensic Science based on these results.

Ultimately, she hopes to pinpoint the most efficient wavelength for identifying burned remains so the technique could be used to quickly identify the location and number of bodies at fire scenes and help to speed up investigations.

“These lights are something that a Crime Scene Investigator would have as standard in their toolkit so there wouldn’t be any additional costs for police forces to use them.” 

She added: “It could also be beneficial when presenting a fire scene to court. It is often very difficult even to someone who is trained to pick out what is in an image. But if you can illuminate that evidence then it is obvious to the judge, to the jury and anyone else what is going on.”

Amy Platts

Media Communications Officer

t: 01782 292702

m: 07799 341911

e: amy.platts@staffs.ac.uk

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