October 15, 2025 • 42 mins
He was the first to use PCR testing on crime-scene DNA, inspiring a practice that has freed thousands of wrongfully convicted people. Edward T. Blake passed away due to pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. He is credited with being THE forensic expert that sparked the Innocence Movement using PCR to help set wrongfully convicted people free. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack go behind the scenes of the life of Forensic Scientist Edward T. Blake and explore how the technology he helped develop showed up on the big screen as Jurassic Park but showed up in courtrooms across the country as a way to prove a convicted person innocent of the crime as charged.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.03 Introduction
02:12.96 Edward Blake has died, led to exoneration of more than 50 people
06:26.42 Peter Neufeld calls Edward Blake the Ted Williams of DNA
09:53.90 What is a "forensic prostitute"
15:16.69 using fragmented DNA
20:08.12 DNA Replication and Jurassic Park
25:08.04 Blake was a problem solver
30:12.93 Work as a forensic scientist
35:07.77 Testing methodology
40:01.81 Blake set the standard
42:07.71 Conclusion
D
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Doors with Joseph's Gotten More. I don't get to
watch movies like I used to, or at least let
me rephrase that I don't have the ability to watch
movies like I used to. For one, most of the
stuff that comes out is a repeat of something else
(00:22):
that's already been done. It's not much effort put into it,
relative for writing. And secondly, I fall asleep. I just can't.
I can't avoid it. I'll sit there and I will
try and watch a movie and I just can't stay
awake anymore. I don't know. It's an odd thing, because boy,
(00:47):
I used to really enjoy watching films, and I watched
a variety of things, you know. Plus I had small kids,
so I was introduced into the Marvel universe or Leon.
I wouldn't walk across the street to watch one of
those movies now. But you know, I like, I liked
(01:08):
you know, more intellectual things as well over the years.
Room with a View. You know, I don't know, uh uh,
let's see what else.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I guess probably Kelly's Heroes that that's that's really intellectual.
But anyway, today we're going to talk about a man
who utilized a particular type of technology that actually comes
up in a very very famous and well known Steven
(01:43):
Spielberg movie. Of course, I'm talking about Jurassic Park. And
the reason that it's significant is that this methodology that
this man worked on has led to the exoneration, to
(02:07):
the best of my knowledge, of at least fifty people
that were in prison wrongly convicted, and now this man
has in fact passed on. Of course, I'm talking about
doctor Edward T. Blake. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(02:33):
is Bodybags. Hey, Dave, I'm going to do something right
now that I have never done with you, and it
may fall flat. I have no idea, but I've got
to tell you. I've got to tell you a joke.
Are you ready? And that this is, you know, a
career ending decision potentially, you know, because my timing is
(02:57):
not that good. But this is an old corner joke
about a corner that is on the stand, and it's
been through the years. I've heard it because it's either
a corner or forensic pathologist. So let me go ahead
and give this a whirl and just just see. So
imagine you're in a courtroom and there's a corner you know,
(03:19):
seated in the chair adjacent to the bench, you know,
judge in their stately robes, and there is this fast
talking lawyer that is there and questioning the corner. And
it goes like this, lawyer, did you check for a
(03:40):
pulse before you perform the autopsy? Corner? No? Did you
check for a blood pressure no? Did you check for
breathing No? So then it is possible that the patient
was a lot when you began the autopsy. No, how
(04:04):
can you be so sure, doctor, because his brain was
sitting on my desk in a jar. But could the
patients still have been alive? Nevertheless, corner staring into the
eyes of the attorney, it's possible that he could have
(04:25):
been alive in practicing law somewhere. So when we talk
about Blake, doctor Blake, though he was not a corner
or a pathologist, he's a forensic scientist, a DNA guy.
He took a very contemptible view of lawyers in particular.
(04:49):
And here's why. And you encounter this many times with
people that are scientists that have to undergo cross examination.
And because you know a scientist is not I would
say that they're not as inclined to be a fan
(05:10):
of theater, all right. And the courtroom, as we all know,
is is a you know, it's a location for theater.
You have a lot of bombastic people that are in there,
you know, making proclamations and that sort of thing. Scientists
tend to be very black and white people, you know,
(05:32):
they kind of look it straight down the line and
and what's the popular term they use now? All conversations
are very nuanced when it comes to attorneys. And I'm
being very kind there because you know, you can take
a set of circumstances and kind of uh, you know,
twist the language a little bit, and you come out
with a different result, and of course that result influences
(05:55):
the decision makers that are you know, impaneled on the jury.
And Blake didn't have a lot of time for that.
He was not that guy. And he crossed swords for
a number of years with attorneys, and I would imagine
there were attorneys out there saying, oh no, he's on
the witness list.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You know, it's funny when you and I when you
mentioned Blake and his passing last week, when we were
just talking about doing upcoming shows, and I thought, Okay,
well who is this guy? And when you do a
quick look, it pops up immediately about the Innocence Project
and how Peter Neufeld referred to him, You am a
(06:35):
co founder of the Innocence Project, and he compared to
a baseball analogy, and it was that Major League Baseball,
there are a lot of three hundred hitters and then
there's Ted Williams. Right, Edward Blake is the Ted Williams
of DNA. But I look at the credibility and accountability
of character in these individuals that you mentioned going to
the courtroom to testify, Because if one thing has been
(06:59):
prove and over time, is you can, with the right
amount of money by an expert, to tell your side
of the story from the witness stand and actually tell
it without lying. You know, that's something that can be done.
Science is a very interesting thing like that, and how
you talk about science in different aspects, in particular with DNA.
(07:20):
But when Edward T. Blake was brought into the discussion
about being on OJ Simpson's dream team in at trial,
he was actually on their witness list and then removed.
Blake was removed from the witness list for OJ Simpson,
not because he was going to contradict the DNA evidence,
(07:42):
or that he was going to say anything about it
at all. They being the defense, they were picking apart
the prosecution case step by step, and one of those
was to pick apart the lab in Oakland that the
Justice Department runs, that was used by the Loss Angelo's
Police department when they were getting the DNA test run
(08:05):
on the blood and stuff, and they wanted to testify,
wanted him to testify as to the actual lab and
how it was run. And the problem with that was
that Blake would not give them the testimony they wanted.
He wouldn't. He couldn't be bought. And you know, that's
(08:26):
an actual real opinion. It's kind of like you could
look at my desk and Joseph Scott Morgan's desk and
say that Dave mac is a slob, his desk is
a mess. Look at Joe's. Joe's desk is perfect. You know,
everything's right where it needs to be. That's the right
way to run a desk, and they'd be actually one
hundred percent accurate. Blake wasn't willing to do that. And
(08:46):
it's not just because the guy that ran the lab
was a former student of his. It's just he couldn't
be bought to tell a story that he did not
believe in.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, here's I'm going to take you back in tom
a little bit. And I was being mentored by the
man that you know, I credit with my career, really, uh,
the finest forensic scientist I ever knew. He's passed on now,
God rest his soul. My friend Bill, Bill threw a
(09:18):
term up at me at one point in time, and
I'd never heard it, and I was, you know, I
was in neophyte. I mean, you know, I knew nothing,
and he had he had taken several trips around the
sun in the world of forensics. He was not reural old,
but he had. Bill was one of these people that
had just completely uh you know, submerged himself in the
(09:42):
world of forensics and was so well read. And he
threw a term out to me, Dave that uh for
the first time, and it was called uh hm, forensic prostitute.
And you've and over the years I've heard this. Now.
Bill took exception to that term because he is His
idea was that, well, if you work in forensic science,
(10:07):
you should be able to go out and make a living,
you know, for you and your family, and he was
saying it from the perspective of anybody. They would tag
this an individual, anybody that would go and testify for
the defense, regardless of the you know, their level of
(10:31):
morality or whatever it was. They were just blanketed with
this term. And he really took exception to it that
that there were people out there that just assumed that
because you were testifying for the defense, that you had
prostituted yourself in some way, that you were paying that
the defense was paying for your testimony to validate, you know,
(10:53):
whatever theory it is that they had, And of course
that's not always the case, because you can take you
can take a bit of science that your task was
examining whatever the scientific evidence is, and you can look
at it and you can arrive at a different conclusion
than maybe somebody that's working working for the prosecution. And
(11:21):
you know, Blake is a perfect example of this in
since that he would not prostitute himself. But as years
went by, I think he recognized that there were multiple
problems in system and this kind of secuitous route that
he took to where he wound up and being, you know,
(11:44):
kind of in the pantheon of forensic scientists out there.
He saw how many people were incarcerated that should not
have been incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Dave, and is so scary to media.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
It's terrifying. I mean, it really really is. And how
many I think that personally, I think that you and
I ought to do an entire series on bodybacks of
individuals that have been wrongfully you know, convicted, and particularly
as it applies to the victims, you know, because still
the individual that is the victim doesn't you know, they
(12:18):
still don't have a voice. You know, they're left and
there's no one to answer for their deaths many times.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
But you know what, in the case of Edward T. Blake, Yeah,
that big case, the Gary Dotson case, when you actually
do a Google search of Edward Blake, Gary Dotson, that's
what comes up. That was like the first big case
that he was involved in where a man is sitting
in prison for a rape he didn't commit. And one
(12:51):
of the things that really bothers me about that case,
because I have seen it play out before, is the
girl who accused him of rape recanted her story fairly quickly.
You know, he didn't do it. I made it up.
And that wasn't enough. Now, I understand recanning and all that,
(13:11):
but bottom line here is that Gary Dotson was in prison.
He was sentenced to twenty to fifty years for the
rape of a teenage girl, and even though the girl
had confessed to fabricating the evidence, he still was sitting
in prison until they were able to get Edward Blake
(13:34):
involved and actually looked at the DNA evidence and the
seamen found in the girl's underwear, and it showed that
it was not Gary Dotson.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
No, it actually your boyfriend. Yeah, I'm sorry, didn't mean
to step on you, but yeah, I mean, I just
it was so striking. And this man has been robbed.
You know, he's been robbed of all this time, Dave,
think about all the Christmases and Thanksgivings and you know,
or the potential for your life, not that you don't
(14:05):
have potential if you're incarcerated. Don't misrepresent what I'm saying here.
It's the idea of those things that you are prevented
from doing because someone, as it turns out, was either
very lazy or just downright malevolent. We have to think
(14:41):
about what is it that really drew Edward Blake into
this world. Blake was actually working in the same building
where there was a lab. It was a medical lab
that was using DNA to achnologies such as it was
(15:02):
back in the mid eighties to make diagnoses in specific diseases,
and a lot of this had to do with cancer
treatments and these sorts of things, and what they were
focused on was the utilization of fragmented DNA, and Blake
(15:24):
it was related that there was a geneticist that he
would run into periodically in the hallway and they'd have
coffee and they'd just sit in the break room and
just kind of chat about the utility of different types
of DNA technology that existed at that point in time.
He discovered that they were actually using PCR polimerase chain reaction,
(15:50):
which is where you're taking fragmented bits of DNA and
amplifying it. So you would take take these bits of
the fragmented DNA and extend it or replicate it in
order to come back and specifically identify an individual without
(16:14):
having a full on robust sample of DNA in the past.
Prior to that, he had to have a significant amount
of DNA sample in order to you know profile an individual.
You go back to Alec Jeffries, who did the first
(16:35):
work in in DNA technology as it applied to criminal cases.
He's in Great Britain, but he was using a completely
different type of methodology in order to arrive at these conclusions.
And you know what the light bulb went on with
(16:56):
with Blake is that a lot of these cases that
I'm across in the field, first off, it's going to
be something that's partial, It's going to be something that
is potentially degraded. You think about all of these rate
kits over the years, Dave, you know that have been
sitting on shelves and have been essentially kind of riding away,
(17:21):
and you know, what are you going to do with that?
Is there is there anything left that we can actually use?
And you know, with PCR, he said, wow, this is
this has got real potential, real utility here because if
you can find something that goes back years and years
and suddenly that becomes a touchstone where you can utilize
(17:43):
all that remains in order to literally peel the peel
the pages back, go back in time and look where
we are today. You know, you think about the stuff
that's being done, you know, just with our friends at
author them and these it's a boy you talk about
brave new world, it's it's a place that we you
know that back then, at that particular time, no one
could have even had fancied this, and Blake was literally
(18:06):
on the cutting edge of this technology day.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
You know, you talked about Steven Spielberg in your opening
and the movie is Jurassic Park. If you could explain
for me how that fits in with PCR, because I
think for most of us, if for those who have,
if you haven't seen the movie Jurassic Park, it's not
too late. Watch the first one. Now, I don't care.
I don't know anything about any of the sequels or
anything like that, but watch the first one because it
(18:30):
is a scientific breakdown of what goes talking about on
screen in an entertaining way.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, and so when you I'm glad you brought me
back to it because it's kind of an amazing bit, right.
And the main character in here are the scientist. I
think who played that I can't remember who played that
part anyway. I know he's a famous British director, but
he actually played the role of the of the of
the scientist in this. Remember, for those of you that
(19:00):
have seen the movie if you haven't seen it. They
find a piece of amber, which essentially comes from the
sap of a tree. That's where you know, amber is generated,
and they actually, I think they show up image of
this happening where a mosquito who had actually gone onto
(19:24):
a dinosaur, extracted the blood from a dinosaur and then
gets caught up into the sap of a tree. It
created a you know, over a couple of million years,
it created this chunk of amber. They were able to
burrow down into the amber and extract the contents contained
(19:47):
within the mosquito, specifically the dinosaur blood, if you will,
which of course would be fragmented, and with what they
were hinting at, there is this PCR technology where they
were able to go back in and replicate you know,
the the genomic sequencing for a dinosaur and they built
(20:09):
this thing out. Now that's very fanciful, all right, I mean,
this is but it's just the idea of seeing this
and how it played out, and that's that's literally you know,
how this kind of ties back to what we're talking
about that you've got something in this case, you know,
you're talking about millions of years relative to a sample,
(20:31):
but it goes back. It paints with a very broad
bush brush this idea of the world that we're in
right now regarding technology, where we're actually seeing some of
these things have life.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
That's what I thought it was interesting is that it
happened the movie came out in ninety three. Okay, think
about that, we actually had this huge hit movie. By
the way, Richard Attenborough is the yeah yeah, great voice,
by the way, Yeah, a great actor as well as director,
great escape. He directed Chaplain. Actually he was doing the
(21:06):
movie Chaplain with Robert Downey Jr. And actually using his
acting on Jurassic Park. It became an issue. But anyway,
Joe and I are actual movie buffs, and we go
back and forth on different things, just so y'all know,
it's like everything comes back to remember and Tommy boy
when you know. Anyway, so if you go back and
watch Jurassic Park now and watch the DNA and how
(21:28):
it's pretty you know, portrayed on screen, it's fascinating. But
they actually do explain a lot of those things that
we then heard two years later in the O. J.
Simpson trial. And that's what's fascinating to me is how
Hollywood was getting info that again you're talking. In eighty
eight is when Blake actually was able to go into
(21:50):
court and get a man released from prison who wrongly convicted,
you know, for a rape he did not commit, and
use this DNA, this type of PCR DNA or the
process that developed it. Anyway, and they're showing it in
a movie five years later, in this fanciful way of
(22:10):
bringing back dinosaurs from the dead from extinction rather And
it's just incredible to me, Joe, how this whole science
becomes facto or fiction so many times.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
It's fascinating it does, and it gives you an idea that, uh,
you know, you wonder about some of these and I
don't think that. You know, when you're a scientist and
you're working in a lab, you're necessarily a what do
they call it, a futurist. You're not sitting here thinking that, Okay,
the technology I'm working on right now, I'm looking you know,
(22:45):
decades and decades out in the future. They're not doing that.
They're not they don't they don't have the time to
be again using this term again, that fanciful. They're trying
to solve the problem that's in front of them, isn't
it interesting how we can developed methodologies and science like
you know, our applications will say that like doctor Blake did,
(23:07):
where you can take this and you use this for
a springboard into something else, you know, and this is
another interesting bit to this. You know, there have been
a couple of hearings recently in uh in Lisk, the
Long Island serial killer case, and I'll never forget you know,
the uh they were protesting, I say protesting. They were
(23:29):
arguing that the DNA technology and I'm being I'm paining
with real broad brush here the technology that was being
utilized in Heureman's case. His defense counsel was saying, uh
that the DNA. Uh, the DNA science that they're using
is it's like magic. And I described it one to interview.
(23:52):
Uh uh as you know, the defense attorneyers are acting
like they've you know, they've discovered fire, you know, for
the first time. Well that's that's not the truth, because
you know, they were saying that the technology has never
been used this way. What's been used for years and
years in medical sciences, in the medical sciences for diagnoses
(24:14):
and treatments and these sorts of things. It's just it's
now being applied in in you know, crime science at
this point in time, in forensic science, and so yeah,
it has utility all the way. You know, people that
develop the stuff, they don't sit there and think, well,
gee whiz, maybe someday, you know, uh, there'll be a
(24:35):
movie you know that's based upon this, or you know
it's it's the Jetsons or something like that. They don't
think that way. They're thinking about what can I do
in order to solve the problem. And of course when
you look at doctor Blake, that's what he was. He
(24:57):
was a problem solver, particularly regarding problems that seemed so
complex to many, they seemed unanswerable, but for him, he
literally has taken the keys to the jail and unlocked
those cell doors, and many have gone free because of
(25:18):
this technology. I had a friend of mine many years
ago that had worked in Morgues, you know, up in
(25:40):
the Northeast, had been a pathology assistant or actually a deaner,
an autopsy assistant, and he had really gutted it out
all those years and was non degreed. He didn't have
a degree. Eventually went on to get one, but he
(26:00):
was saying, you know, well, people you know that are
successful they get degreed or credentialed, and then they pull
the ladder up behind them and they don't create a
path for everybody else, and that that academic status becomes
a status that everybody should adhere to. And there's many
different ways to become validated in forensic science. Some of
(26:27):
it does come through academia, and a lot of it
comes through trial and error and spending long, long hours
either in a Morgan laboratory or at the field, you know,
working cases. Some of the most brilliant crime scene investigators
that actually go in the field that I've worked had
nothing more than a high school high school degree and
they've picked up on the job training. But you know,
(26:49):
Blake is a very interesting character because back in the
sixties he had gone to Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
He was at UC Berkeley Joe in nineteen sixty eight. Yeah,
all the protesting that was being done at Berkeley in
the late sixties.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think Blake was really
probably deeply involved in that because he showed up at Berkeley,
which listened for all of that stuff that went on there,
and I think to a certain degree still continues it
is one of the most rigorous academic environments you can
be in. You know, he started out as a physics major. Wow,
(27:31):
and it didn't hold his attention, and so he literally
switched to forensic science.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
How smart are you to be bored by physics?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Well, I don't know. I used to have a buddy
of mine that I would eat lunch with at my
previous university, and he was this guy was country's butter.
And this guy had a doctorate in astrophysics. Gone to Yeah,
you gone to Clemson, and I would I would go
and eat lunch with him, and you know, he sounded
(28:04):
like he had straw hanging out of his team, you
know when he would speak. But then you get him
on a role and it was always humbling when I
would eat with him, because I would realize how stupid
I really am. And he's such a general soul. Yeah,
he was brilliant, you know, off the charts. But Blake,
for his part, changed over as an undergraduate to forensics
(28:33):
and wound up, you know, starting a career I think
primarily probably working in labs and then becoming a consultant.
Went back and of all things, got a doctorate in criminology,
not in criminalistics, but criminology, which is the study of
the criminal mind and the behaviors of criminals. And I
(28:57):
think he got that, Like in nineteen seventy six, you've
got a guy that's that has a doctorate, but he
is not the doctorate is not in forensic science. So
he's kind of this multifaceted guy. And I think that
was probably shortly thereafter he founded his consultancy, which was
(29:20):
located in the Bay Area called Forensic Science Associates. I
I think when you begin to marry up what he
was seeing in the lab and then probably what was
what he was witnessing in in the culture at the
(29:41):
same time, because you know, the criminology is gonna have
more of a cultural view, you know, as as opposed
to you know, that kind of hard line scientific black
and white. It's an interesting combination when you think about it.
I think a lot of people would think that it's uh,
that it's probably oil and water on one level. But
you know, for him, he's kind of a renaissance guy
(30:02):
and that you know, you move forward, and that was
in seventy six. He's working cases or consulting on cases
as a forensic scientist primarily I would imagine in erology,
which you know, was how we used to type blood,
where we're trying to understand, you know, what blood type
(30:25):
an individual may have left behind. But that is about
as far as you could take it. But you know,
as time went by, Dave, he winds up becoming involved
in the O. J. Simpson case, of all things. And
I think that's that's kind of an amazing point you
were discussing when this would me off air. He's involved
(30:50):
in the case, but yet Dave, he's not involved in
the case. And I think that that presents a real interesting,
interesting bit about Blake's life, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I thought it was incredible because DNA became such a
big issue in that trial, and when they were calling
on Blake to testify, he was on the witness list
to testify about specifically the crime lab in Oakland that
was used by the Los Angeles Police Department. It's a
crime lab run by the Justice Department. And when Blake
(31:27):
was asked to testify, he basically said, I'm not going
to be able to give you what you want. You know,
he's not a hired hand. And that's the part about this.
You know, oftentimes we hear people joking about experts can
be hired. You know, I can get an expert to
say I'm crazy. You can get an expert to say
I'm saying And when it comes to this, he would not.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I've got an interesting little side story here about some
of the stuff. And this is kind of an example
some stuff that was going on out in LA and
it probably approximates about the time of OJ Simpson. This
gives you an idea about the condition of laboratory facilities
(32:11):
when we have a death. Did you know that there's
a a special forensics clothes dryer. Did you know that, Dave,
no idea. And it's not a tumble dryer. There is
actually a device. It's like a big glass box, okay
that when you get a bit of clothing that's super
(32:34):
saturated with blood, you put it on a hangar and
you hang it inside the dryer, okay, and you shut
the door and it literally dries the blood in place.
And it's rather complex, but it is a location where
these items are secured. They're free from cross contamination, one
(32:57):
of the problems they ran into in l A. And
I guess they saw this as a cost cutting measure, Dave.
They were using Uh, you know, what is this? What
do they say in uh in mommy dear's no wire hangers.
They were using wire hangers. They were using wire hangers
(33:18):
to hang clothes on. And get this. After they would
use them on one case, they would take them and
use them on another case. So you're talking about yeah,
and they justified by saying that. I think, and I
might be getting my story mixed up here, but I
remember this. I had a conversation with somebody at one
(33:40):
point in time about this that was from LA. They
would put these wire coat hangers into a bucket that
had bleach inside of it, had bleach in it, and
they would let them sit and I guess they'd rinse
them off to save you know, their safe saving money,
you know, by using the same on our coat hangers.
(34:01):
And so that that gives you an idea. You know,
this is an this is an environment where you have
to keep it so pristine, and it's a it's a
difficult environment to be pristine in because it's so riddled
with filth and you know, you come up all the
stuff that you drag in from the streets. These cases
(34:21):
are not clean cases, and so you have to take
an extra effort to be that to do this, and
a lot of this about the coat hanger thing that
was actually discovered by defense attorneys, and of course immediately
they wanted to know how many cases in the past had,
you know, where they'd use these contaminated, contaminated clothes hangers
(34:41):
to hang these things up with. He knew this, Blake
knew this. He knew and that's just one small example.
And that's something that for all of my friends that
work in labs. A big part of working in a
lab is is quality assurance. You have a quality a
specific person that is designated as your QA person that's
(35:05):
going to go through and they're not just checking the
methodologies which they have to like what testing methodologies are
you using? Are they accepted by the courts? Okay, but
they're also going around seeing if the stations are clean,
you know, if they're meeting the standard that's set forth
by their certifying organization. And I guess you fall into
(35:29):
the trap of any other kind of governmental organization, you
know that's that's doing things. You shortcut things, and you know,
you make excuses and all this. He knew this, He
had the inside track on this, and you compared I
remember you used the example of Van Adder, you know,
with with Oj, and for you know, for our friends
(35:53):
refresh our memory about van at or with this blood.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
It's something we were talking about before we began taping
today because it in the case, in the OJ Simpson case,
the reason some of us that followed I've watched that
trial almost every day, and the reason so many of
us had issues with the blood wasn't because of the
diffen It wasn't because of the experts that testified about
(36:20):
the DNA. It was the way the blood was handled
from the time it was drawn. If you remember, during
the trial, there was an extremely long period of time
where they had the guy on the stand who draws
blood from suspects at the county jail, and he draws
a certain amount every time. And in the case of
(36:40):
OJ Simpson, whereas he'd always sit loud to choose the number, say,
every time he draws between you know, right around fifty,
between forty nine to fifty one, right there at fifty,
that's what he normally draws. But in OJ's case, for
some reason, he only drew thirty five. It was substantially
less than normal. And the guy that drewid said I
always draw the same amount. You know, this is wrong.
(37:03):
There shouldn't have been thirty five, there should have been fifty.
It became a big deal. But because there was no
picture taken, no, you know, they were able to argue.
The defense was that something was done with that blood,
that blow was used. And the thing is, we find
out that one of the detectives been at Her, had
that blood tube and had it along with some shoes
(37:25):
and had it in his vehicle when he went to
the crime scene at Bundy and the crime scene at Rockingham,
so and in all the places where this blood was found.
He bent at Her had taken it there after, after
the crime, after it was and that became a real problem, Joe.
(37:46):
And again that's before you even look at all the
DNA issues. Before you look at that, you got to
you have a problem with crossing it with contamination. And
for a lot of just people who don't I'm not
a scientist been around crime stuff for a long time, Joe,
but looking at that one example, it takes every other
(38:07):
piece of evidence they've got related to that blood and
throws it into question.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, it taints it. It taints it significantly, It really does.
And you know, you're you're you're blowing apart the rest
of anything else that was valid. Uh maybe with valid
science that you're you know, you're working hard. Think about
was it Fong? Dennis Fong? I think was yeah, the
kriminalist that was out seen. Yeah, I'll never forget the
(38:35):
image of him walking around in a taivek suit and
you still got detectives walking around out there in street
shoes with It was just it was such, it was
such buffoonery.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And grabbing a blanket from inside the house to govern Nicole.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, and it just it, you know, the process
of how everything worked. And look, I'm assuming that things
to date have you know, probably gotten better, we hope. Uh.
And but I do know this, I do know that, uh,
that how that case was handled, those cases, it had
(39:13):
a direct impact on my profession and medical legal in
the medical legal world. As a matter of fact, it
was one of the elements to us, you know, beginning
to look at how can we standardize the practice for
people in my field nationwide? And it's from that that,
you know, American Border Medical Legal Death Investigators was formed,
(39:35):
really and yeah, yeah, the genesis of that part of
it was relative to the O j. Simpson case and
how it was handled. Wow. And so concurrently you look
at Blake and the world of and I think, personally
my field we've come along ways. I think in Blake's
field certainly has because not only do you have the
(40:01):
the clarification of duties, but you also have the standards
that are set forth. And this guy, you know, this
guy is was a litmus test for them early on
and continue to be. He's the person that you'd go
back and you'd look at, how are you going to
process scenes with very fragile evidence? You've got rape kits?
Is there anything that we can that we can still salvage?
(40:23):
I have a rape kit even with degraded DNA in
old cases off of clothing that's packed away somewhere. Is
there any kind of DNA we can source off of that?
How we handle things and then how we examine things,
what methodologies are being used. And here's the thing his legacy,
I think with Blake is because the benchmarks that Blake
(40:46):
established early on in his practice from a scientific perspective,
that are going to move us forward in the future
relative to this technology. We don't know how many other
people there are out there that will be identified. How
many perpetrators will be will be put in jail, how
(41:10):
many people will be set free, We don't know, but
I do know that his impact on the practice of
DNA science will ring for many years to come. But
most importantly, beyond the science, Blake actually took a stand
(41:33):
where many people may have sat back and maybe have
cashed the check, if you will, He decided not to
do that. He decided to be a man of integrity.
And of course, at the end of the day, if
you're in forensics, that is your currency. Can you be believed?
(41:56):
Can you be trusted? We count doctor Blake as one
of those that could be rest in peace. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags
Body Doors with Joseph's Gotten More. I don't get to
watch movies like I used to, or at least let
me rephrase that I don't have the ability to watch
movies like I used to. For one, most of the
stuff that comes out is a repeat of something else
(00:22):
that's already been done. It's not much effort put into it,
relative for writing. And secondly, I fall asleep. I just can't.
I can't avoid it. I'll sit there and I will
try and watch a movie and I just can't stay
awake anymore. I don't know. It's an odd thing, because boy,
(00:47):
I used to really enjoy watching films, and I watched
a variety of things, you know. Plus I had small kids,
so I was introduced into the Marvel universe or Leon.
I wouldn't walk across the street to watch one of
those movies now. But you know, I like, I liked
(01:08):
you know, more intellectual things as well over the years.
Room with a View. You know, I don't know, uh uh,
let's see what else.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I guess probably Kelly's Heroes that that's that's really intellectual.
But anyway, today we're going to talk about a man
who utilized a particular type of technology that actually comes
up in a very very famous and well known Steven
(01:43):
Spielberg movie. Of course, I'm talking about Jurassic Park. And
the reason that it's significant is that this methodology that
this man worked on has led to the exoneration, to
(02:07):
the best of my knowledge, of at least fifty people
that were in prison wrongly convicted, and now this man
has in fact passed on. Of course, I'm talking about
doctor Edward T. Blake. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(02:33):
is Bodybags. Hey, Dave, I'm going to do something right
now that I have never done with you, and it
may fall flat. I have no idea, but I've got
to tell you. I've got to tell you a joke.
Are you ready? And that this is, you know, a
career ending decision potentially, you know, because my timing is
(02:57):
not that good. But this is an old corner joke
about a corner that is on the stand, and it's
been through the years. I've heard it because it's either
a corner or forensic pathologist. So let me go ahead
and give this a whirl and just just see. So
imagine you're in a courtroom and there's a corner you know,
(03:19):
seated in the chair adjacent to the bench, you know,
judge in their stately robes, and there is this fast
talking lawyer that is there and questioning the corner. And
it goes like this, lawyer, did you check for a
(03:40):
pulse before you perform the autopsy? Corner? No? Did you
check for a blood pressure no? Did you check for
breathing No? So then it is possible that the patient
was a lot when you began the autopsy. No, how
(04:04):
can you be so sure, doctor, because his brain was
sitting on my desk in a jar. But could the
patients still have been alive? Nevertheless, corner staring into the
eyes of the attorney, it's possible that he could have
(04:25):
been alive in practicing law somewhere. So when we talk
about Blake, doctor Blake, though he was not a corner
or a pathologist, he's a forensic scientist, a DNA guy.
He took a very contemptible view of lawyers in particular.
(04:49):
And here's why. And you encounter this many times with
people that are scientists that have to undergo cross examination.
And because you know a scientist is not I would
say that they're not as inclined to be a fan
(05:10):
of theater, all right. And the courtroom, as we all know,
is is a you know, it's a location for theater.
You have a lot of bombastic people that are in there,
you know, making proclamations and that sort of thing. Scientists
tend to be very black and white people, you know,
(05:32):
they kind of look it straight down the line and
and what's the popular term they use now? All conversations
are very nuanced when it comes to attorneys. And I'm
being very kind there because you know, you can take
a set of circumstances and kind of uh, you know,
twist the language a little bit, and you come out
with a different result, and of course that result influences
(05:55):
the decision makers that are you know, impaneled on the jury.
And Blake didn't have a lot of time for that.
He was not that guy. And he crossed swords for
a number of years with attorneys, and I would imagine
there were attorneys out there saying, oh no, he's on
the witness list.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You know, it's funny when you and I when you
mentioned Blake and his passing last week, when we were
just talking about doing upcoming shows, and I thought, Okay,
well who is this guy? And when you do a
quick look, it pops up immediately about the Innocence Project
and how Peter Neufeld referred to him, You am a
(06:35):
co founder of the Innocence Project, and he compared to
a baseball analogy, and it was that Major League Baseball,
there are a lot of three hundred hitters and then
there's Ted Williams. Right, Edward Blake is the Ted Williams
of DNA. But I look at the credibility and accountability
of character in these individuals that you mentioned going to
the courtroom to testify, Because if one thing has been
(06:59):
prove and over time, is you can, with the right
amount of money by an expert, to tell your side
of the story from the witness stand and actually tell
it without lying. You know, that's something that can be done.
Science is a very interesting thing like that, and how
you talk about science in different aspects, in particular with DNA.
(07:20):
But when Edward T. Blake was brought into the discussion
about being on OJ Simpson's dream team in at trial,
he was actually on their witness list and then removed.
Blake was removed from the witness list for OJ Simpson,
not because he was going to contradict the DNA evidence,
(07:42):
or that he was going to say anything about it
at all. They being the defense, they were picking apart
the prosecution case step by step, and one of those
was to pick apart the lab in Oakland that the
Justice Department runs, that was used by the Loss Angelo's
Police department when they were getting the DNA test run
(08:05):
on the blood and stuff, and they wanted to testify,
wanted him to testify as to the actual lab and
how it was run. And the problem with that was
that Blake would not give them the testimony they wanted.
He wouldn't. He couldn't be bought. And you know, that's
(08:26):
an actual real opinion. It's kind of like you could
look at my desk and Joseph Scott Morgan's desk and
say that Dave mac is a slob, his desk is
a mess. Look at Joe's. Joe's desk is perfect. You know,
everything's right where it needs to be. That's the right
way to run a desk, and they'd be actually one
hundred percent accurate. Blake wasn't willing to do that. And
(08:46):
it's not just because the guy that ran the lab
was a former student of his. It's just he couldn't
be bought to tell a story that he did not
believe in.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, here's I'm going to take you back in tom
a little bit. And I was being mentored by the
man that you know, I credit with my career, really, uh,
the finest forensic scientist I ever knew. He's passed on now,
God rest his soul. My friend Bill, Bill threw a
(09:18):
term up at me at one point in time, and
I'd never heard it, and I was, you know, I
was in neophyte. I mean, you know, I knew nothing,
and he had he had taken several trips around the
sun in the world of forensics. He was not reural old,
but he had. Bill was one of these people that
had just completely uh you know, submerged himself in the
(09:42):
world of forensics and was so well read. And he
threw a term out to me, Dave that uh for
the first time, and it was called uh hm, forensic prostitute.
And you've and over the years I've heard this. Now.
Bill took exception to that term because he is His
idea was that, well, if you work in forensic science,
(10:07):
you should be able to go out and make a living,
you know, for you and your family, and he was
saying it from the perspective of anybody. They would tag
this an individual, anybody that would go and testify for
the defense, regardless of the you know, their level of
(10:31):
morality or whatever it was. They were just blanketed with
this term. And he really took exception to it that
that there were people out there that just assumed that
because you were testifying for the defense, that you had
prostituted yourself in some way, that you were paying that
the defense was paying for your testimony to validate, you know,
(10:53):
whatever theory it is that they had, And of course
that's not always the case, because you can take you
can take a bit of science that your task was
examining whatever the scientific evidence is, and you can look
at it and you can arrive at a different conclusion
than maybe somebody that's working working for the prosecution. And
(11:21):
you know, Blake is a perfect example of this in
since that he would not prostitute himself. But as years
went by, I think he recognized that there were multiple
problems in system and this kind of secuitous route that
he took to where he wound up and being, you know,
(11:44):
kind of in the pantheon of forensic scientists out there.
He saw how many people were incarcerated that should not
have been incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Dave, and is so scary to media.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
It's terrifying. I mean, it really really is. And how
many I think that personally, I think that you and
I ought to do an entire series on bodybacks of
individuals that have been wrongfully you know, convicted, and particularly
as it applies to the victims, you know, because still
the individual that is the victim doesn't you know, they
(12:18):
still don't have a voice. You know, they're left and
there's no one to answer for their deaths many times.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
But you know what, in the case of Edward T. Blake, Yeah,
that big case, the Gary Dotson case, when you actually
do a Google search of Edward Blake, Gary Dotson, that's
what comes up. That was like the first big case
that he was involved in where a man is sitting
in prison for a rape he didn't commit. And one
(12:51):
of the things that really bothers me about that case,
because I have seen it play out before, is the
girl who accused him of rape recanted her story fairly quickly.
You know, he didn't do it. I made it up.
And that wasn't enough. Now, I understand recanning and all that,
(13:11):
but bottom line here is that Gary Dotson was in prison.
He was sentenced to twenty to fifty years for the
rape of a teenage girl, and even though the girl
had confessed to fabricating the evidence, he still was sitting
in prison until they were able to get Edward Blake
(13:34):
involved and actually looked at the DNA evidence and the
seamen found in the girl's underwear, and it showed that
it was not Gary Dotson.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
No, it actually your boyfriend. Yeah, I'm sorry, didn't mean
to step on you, but yeah, I mean, I just
it was so striking. And this man has been robbed.
You know, he's been robbed of all this time, Dave,
think about all the Christmases and Thanksgivings and you know,
or the potential for your life, not that you don't
(14:05):
have potential if you're incarcerated. Don't misrepresent what I'm saying here.
It's the idea of those things that you are prevented
from doing because someone, as it turns out, was either
very lazy or just downright malevolent. We have to think
(14:41):
about what is it that really drew Edward Blake into
this world. Blake was actually working in the same building
where there was a lab. It was a medical lab
that was using DNA to achnologies such as it was
(15:02):
back in the mid eighties to make diagnoses in specific diseases,
and a lot of this had to do with cancer
treatments and these sorts of things, and what they were
focused on was the utilization of fragmented DNA, and Blake
(15:24):
it was related that there was a geneticist that he
would run into periodically in the hallway and they'd have
coffee and they'd just sit in the break room and
just kind of chat about the utility of different types
of DNA technology that existed at that point in time.
He discovered that they were actually using PCR polimerase chain reaction,
(15:50):
which is where you're taking fragmented bits of DNA and
amplifying it. So you would take take these bits of
the fragmented DNA and extend it or replicate it in
order to come back and specifically identify an individual without
(16:14):
having a full on robust sample of DNA in the past.
Prior to that, he had to have a significant amount
of DNA sample in order to you know profile an individual.
You go back to Alec Jeffries, who did the first
(16:35):
work in in DNA technology as it applied to criminal cases.
He's in Great Britain, but he was using a completely
different type of methodology in order to arrive at these conclusions.
And you know what the light bulb went on with
(16:56):
with Blake is that a lot of these cases that
I'm across in the field, first off, it's going to
be something that's partial, It's going to be something that
is potentially degraded. You think about all of these rate
kits over the years, Dave, you know that have been
sitting on shelves and have been essentially kind of riding away,
(17:21):
and you know, what are you going to do with that?
Is there is there anything left that we can actually use?
And you know, with PCR, he said, wow, this is
this has got real potential, real utility here because if
you can find something that goes back years and years
and suddenly that becomes a touchstone where you can utilize
(17:43):
all that remains in order to literally peel the peel
the pages back, go back in time and look where
we are today. You know, you think about the stuff
that's being done, you know, just with our friends at
author them and these it's a boy you talk about
brave new world, it's it's a place that we you
know that back then, at that particular time, no one
could have even had fancied this, and Blake was literally
(18:06):
on the cutting edge of this technology day.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
You know, you talked about Steven Spielberg in your opening
and the movie is Jurassic Park. If you could explain
for me how that fits in with PCR, because I
think for most of us, if for those who have,
if you haven't seen the movie Jurassic Park, it's not
too late. Watch the first one. Now, I don't care.
I don't know anything about any of the sequels or
anything like that, but watch the first one because it
(18:30):
is a scientific breakdown of what goes talking about on
screen in an entertaining way.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, and so when you I'm glad you brought me
back to it because it's kind of an amazing bit, right.
And the main character in here are the scientist. I
think who played that I can't remember who played that
part anyway. I know he's a famous British director, but
he actually played the role of the of the of
the scientist in this. Remember, for those of you that
(19:00):
have seen the movie if you haven't seen it. They
find a piece of amber, which essentially comes from the
sap of a tree. That's where you know, amber is generated,
and they actually, I think they show up image of
this happening where a mosquito who had actually gone onto
(19:24):
a dinosaur, extracted the blood from a dinosaur and then
gets caught up into the sap of a tree. It
created a you know, over a couple of million years,
it created this chunk of amber. They were able to
burrow down into the amber and extract the contents contained
(19:47):
within the mosquito, specifically the dinosaur blood, if you will,
which of course would be fragmented, and with what they
were hinting at, there is this PCR technology where they
were able to go back in and replicate you know,
the the genomic sequencing for a dinosaur and they built
(20:09):
this thing out. Now that's very fanciful, all right, I mean,
this is but it's just the idea of seeing this
and how it played out, and that's that's literally you know,
how this kind of ties back to what we're talking
about that you've got something in this case, you know,
you're talking about millions of years relative to a sample,
(20:31):
but it goes back. It paints with a very broad
bush brush this idea of the world that we're in
right now regarding technology, where we're actually seeing some of
these things have life.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
That's what I thought it was interesting is that it
happened the movie came out in ninety three. Okay, think
about that, we actually had this huge hit movie. By
the way, Richard Attenborough is the yeah yeah, great voice,
by the way, Yeah, a great actor as well as director,
great escape. He directed Chaplain. Actually he was doing the
(21:06):
movie Chaplain with Robert Downey Jr. And actually using his
acting on Jurassic Park. It became an issue. But anyway,
Joe and I are actual movie buffs, and we go
back and forth on different things, just so y'all know,
it's like everything comes back to remember and Tommy boy
when you know. Anyway, so if you go back and
watch Jurassic Park now and watch the DNA and how
(21:28):
it's pretty you know, portrayed on screen, it's fascinating. But
they actually do explain a lot of those things that
we then heard two years later in the O. J.
Simpson trial. And that's what's fascinating to me is how
Hollywood was getting info that again you're talking. In eighty
eight is when Blake actually was able to go into
(21:50):
court and get a man released from prison who wrongly convicted,
you know, for a rape he did not commit, and
use this DNA, this type of PCR DNA or the
process that developed it. Anyway, and they're showing it in
a movie five years later, in this fanciful way of
(22:10):
bringing back dinosaurs from the dead from extinction rather And
it's just incredible to me, Joe, how this whole science
becomes facto or fiction so many times.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
It's fascinating it does, and it gives you an idea that, uh,
you know, you wonder about some of these and I
don't think that. You know, when you're a scientist and
you're working in a lab, you're necessarily a what do
they call it, a futurist. You're not sitting here thinking that, Okay,
the technology I'm working on right now, I'm looking you know,
(22:45):
decades and decades out in the future. They're not doing that.
They're not they don't they don't have the time to
be again using this term again, that fanciful. They're trying
to solve the problem that's in front of them, isn't
it interesting how we can developed methodologies and science like
you know, our applications will say that like doctor Blake did,
(23:07):
where you can take this and you use this for
a springboard into something else, you know, and this is
another interesting bit to this. You know, there have been
a couple of hearings recently in uh in Lisk, the
Long Island serial killer case, and I'll never forget you know,
the uh they were protesting, I say protesting. They were
(23:29):
arguing that the DNA technology and I'm being I'm paining
with real broad brush here the technology that was being
utilized in Heureman's case. His defense counsel was saying, uh
that the DNA. Uh, the DNA science that they're using
is it's like magic. And I described it one to interview.
(23:52):
Uh uh as you know, the defense attorneyers are acting
like they've you know, they've discovered fire, you know, for
the first time. Well that's that's not the truth, because
you know, they were saying that the technology has never
been used this way. What's been used for years and
years in medical sciences, in the medical sciences for diagnoses
(24:14):
and treatments and these sorts of things. It's just it's
now being applied in in you know, crime science at
this point in time, in forensic science, and so yeah,
it has utility all the way. You know, people that
develop the stuff, they don't sit there and think, well,
gee whiz, maybe someday, you know, uh, there'll be a
(24:35):
movie you know that's based upon this, or you know
it's it's the Jetsons or something like that. They don't
think that way. They're thinking about what can I do
in order to solve the problem. And of course when
you look at doctor Blake, that's what he was. He
(24:57):
was a problem solver, particularly regarding problems that seemed so
complex to many, they seemed unanswerable, but for him, he
literally has taken the keys to the jail and unlocked
those cell doors, and many have gone free because of
(25:18):
this technology. I had a friend of mine many years
ago that had worked in Morgues, you know, up in
(25:40):
the Northeast, had been a pathology assistant or actually a deaner,
an autopsy assistant, and he had really gutted it out
all those years and was non degreed. He didn't have
a degree. Eventually went on to get one, but he
(26:00):
was saying, you know, well, people you know that are
successful they get degreed or credentialed, and then they pull
the ladder up behind them and they don't create a
path for everybody else, and that that academic status becomes
a status that everybody should adhere to. And there's many
different ways to become validated in forensic science. Some of
(26:27):
it does come through academia, and a lot of it
comes through trial and error and spending long, long hours
either in a Morgan laboratory or at the field, you know,
working cases. Some of the most brilliant crime scene investigators
that actually go in the field that I've worked had
nothing more than a high school high school degree and
they've picked up on the job training. But you know,
(26:49):
Blake is a very interesting character because back in the
sixties he had gone to Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
He was at UC Berkeley Joe in nineteen sixty eight. Yeah,
all the protesting that was being done at Berkeley in
the late sixties.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think Blake was really
probably deeply involved in that because he showed up at Berkeley,
which listened for all of that stuff that went on there,
and I think to a certain degree still continues it
is one of the most rigorous academic environments you can
be in. You know, he started out as a physics major. Wow,
(27:31):
and it didn't hold his attention, and so he literally
switched to forensic science.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
How smart are you to be bored by physics?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Well, I don't know. I used to have a buddy
of mine that I would eat lunch with at my
previous university, and he was this guy was country's butter.
And this guy had a doctorate in astrophysics. Gone to Yeah,
you gone to Clemson, and I would I would go
and eat lunch with him, and you know, he sounded
(28:04):
like he had straw hanging out of his team, you
know when he would speak. But then you get him
on a role and it was always humbling when I
would eat with him, because I would realize how stupid
I really am. And he's such a general soul. Yeah,
he was brilliant, you know, off the charts. But Blake,
for his part, changed over as an undergraduate to forensics
(28:33):
and wound up, you know, starting a career I think
primarily probably working in labs and then becoming a consultant.
Went back and of all things, got a doctorate in criminology,
not in criminalistics, but criminology, which is the study of
the criminal mind and the behaviors of criminals. And I
(28:57):
think he got that, Like in nineteen seventy six, you've
got a guy that's that has a doctorate, but he
is not the doctorate is not in forensic science. So
he's kind of this multifaceted guy. And I think that
was probably shortly thereafter he founded his consultancy, which was
(29:20):
located in the Bay Area called Forensic Science Associates. I
I think when you begin to marry up what he
was seeing in the lab and then probably what was
what he was witnessing in in the culture at the
(29:41):
same time, because you know, the criminology is gonna have
more of a cultural view, you know, as as opposed
to you know, that kind of hard line scientific black
and white. It's an interesting combination when you think about it.
I think a lot of people would think that it's uh,
that it's probably oil and water on one level. But
you know, for him, he's kind of a renaissance guy
(30:02):
and that you know, you move forward, and that was
in seventy six. He's working cases or consulting on cases
as a forensic scientist primarily I would imagine in erology,
which you know, was how we used to type blood,
where we're trying to understand, you know, what blood type
(30:25):
an individual may have left behind. But that is about
as far as you could take it. But you know,
as time went by, Dave, he winds up becoming involved
in the O. J. Simpson case, of all things. And
I think that's that's kind of an amazing point you
were discussing when this would me off air. He's involved
(30:50):
in the case, but yet Dave, he's not involved in
the case. And I think that that presents a real interesting,
interesting bit about Blake's life, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I thought it was incredible because DNA became such a
big issue in that trial, and when they were calling
on Blake to testify, he was on the witness list
to testify about specifically the crime lab in Oakland that
was used by the Los Angeles Police Department. It's a
crime lab run by the Justice Department. And when Blake
(31:27):
was asked to testify, he basically said, I'm not going
to be able to give you what you want. You know,
he's not a hired hand. And that's the part about this.
You know, oftentimes we hear people joking about experts can
be hired. You know, I can get an expert to
say I'm crazy. You can get an expert to say
I'm saying And when it comes to this, he would not.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I've got an interesting little side story here about some
of the stuff. And this is kind of an example
some stuff that was going on out in LA and
it probably approximates about the time of OJ Simpson. This
gives you an idea about the condition of laboratory facilities
(32:11):
when we have a death. Did you know that there's
a a special forensics clothes dryer. Did you know that, Dave,
no idea. And it's not a tumble dryer. There is
actually a device. It's like a big glass box, okay
that when you get a bit of clothing that's super
(32:34):
saturated with blood, you put it on a hangar and
you hang it inside the dryer, okay, and you shut
the door and it literally dries the blood in place.
And it's rather complex, but it is a location where
these items are secured. They're free from cross contamination, one
(32:57):
of the problems they ran into in l A. And
I guess they saw this as a cost cutting measure, Dave.
They were using Uh, you know, what is this? What
do they say in uh in mommy dear's no wire hangers.
They were using wire hangers. They were using wire hangers
(33:18):
to hang clothes on. And get this. After they would
use them on one case, they would take them and
use them on another case. So you're talking about yeah,
and they justified by saying that. I think, and I
might be getting my story mixed up here, but I
remember this. I had a conversation with somebody at one
(33:40):
point in time about this that was from LA. They
would put these wire coat hangers into a bucket that
had bleach inside of it, had bleach in it, and
they would let them sit and I guess they'd rinse
them off to save you know, their safe saving money,
you know, by using the same on our coat hangers.
(34:01):
And so that that gives you an idea. You know,
this is an this is an environment where you have
to keep it so pristine, and it's a it's a
difficult environment to be pristine in because it's so riddled
with filth and you know, you come up all the
stuff that you drag in from the streets. These cases
(34:21):
are not clean cases, and so you have to take
an extra effort to be that to do this, and
a lot of this about the coat hanger thing that
was actually discovered by defense attorneys, and of course immediately
they wanted to know how many cases in the past had,
you know, where they'd use these contaminated, contaminated clothes hangers
(34:41):
to hang these things up with. He knew this, Blake
knew this. He knew and that's just one small example.
And that's something that for all of my friends that
work in labs. A big part of working in a
lab is is quality assurance. You have a quality a
specific person that is designated as your QA person that's
(35:05):
going to go through and they're not just checking the
methodologies which they have to like what testing methodologies are
you using? Are they accepted by the courts? Okay, but
they're also going around seeing if the stations are clean,
you know, if they're meeting the standard that's set forth
by their certifying organization. And I guess you fall into
(35:29):
the trap of any other kind of governmental organization, you
know that's that's doing things. You shortcut things, and you know,
you make excuses and all this. He knew this, He
had the inside track on this, and you compared I
remember you used the example of Van Adder, you know,
with with Oj, and for you know, for our friends
(35:53):
refresh our memory about van at or with this blood.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
It's something we were talking about before we began taping
today because it in the case, in the OJ Simpson case,
the reason some of us that followed I've watched that
trial almost every day, and the reason so many of
us had issues with the blood wasn't because of the
diffen It wasn't because of the experts that testified about
(36:20):
the DNA. It was the way the blood was handled
from the time it was drawn. If you remember, during
the trial, there was an extremely long period of time
where they had the guy on the stand who draws
blood from suspects at the county jail, and he draws
a certain amount every time. And in the case of
(36:40):
OJ Simpson, whereas he'd always sit loud to choose the number, say,
every time he draws between you know, right around fifty,
between forty nine to fifty one, right there at fifty,
that's what he normally draws. But in OJ's case, for
some reason, he only drew thirty five. It was substantially
less than normal. And the guy that drewid said I
always draw the same amount. You know, this is wrong.
(37:03):
There shouldn't have been thirty five, there should have been fifty.
It became a big deal. But because there was no
picture taken, no, you know, they were able to argue.
The defense was that something was done with that blood,
that blow was used. And the thing is, we find
out that one of the detectives been at Her, had
that blood tube and had it along with some shoes
(37:25):
and had it in his vehicle when he went to
the crime scene at Bundy and the crime scene at Rockingham,
so and in all the places where this blood was found.
He bent at Her had taken it there after, after
the crime, after it was and that became a real problem, Joe.
(37:46):
And again that's before you even look at all the
DNA issues. Before you look at that, you got to
you have a problem with crossing it with contamination. And
for a lot of just people who don't I'm not
a scientist been around crime stuff for a long time, Joe,
but looking at that one example, it takes every other
(38:07):
piece of evidence they've got related to that blood and
throws it into question.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, it taints it. It taints it significantly, It really does.
And you know, you're you're you're blowing apart the rest
of anything else that was valid. Uh maybe with valid
science that you're you know, you're working hard. Think about
was it Fong? Dennis Fong? I think was yeah, the
kriminalist that was out seen. Yeah, I'll never forget the
(38:35):
image of him walking around in a taivek suit and
you still got detectives walking around out there in street
shoes with It was just it was such, it was
such buffoonery.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And grabbing a blanket from inside the house to govern Nicole.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, yeah, and it just it, you know, the process
of how everything worked. And look, I'm assuming that things
to date have you know, probably gotten better, we hope. Uh.
And but I do know this, I do know that, uh,
that how that case was handled, those cases, it had
(39:13):
a direct impact on my profession and medical legal in
the medical legal world. As a matter of fact, it
was one of the elements to us, you know, beginning
to look at how can we standardize the practice for
people in my field nationwide? And it's from that that,
you know, American Border Medical Legal Death Investigators was formed,
(39:35):
really and yeah, yeah, the genesis of that part of
it was relative to the O j. Simpson case and
how it was handled. Wow. And so concurrently you look
at Blake and the world of and I think, personally
my field we've come along ways. I think in Blake's
field certainly has because not only do you have the
(40:01):
the clarification of duties, but you also have the standards
that are set forth. And this guy, you know, this
guy is was a litmus test for them early on
and continue to be. He's the person that you'd go
back and you'd look at, how are you going to
process scenes with very fragile evidence? You've got rape kits?
Is there anything that we can that we can still salvage?
(40:23):
I have a rape kit even with degraded DNA in
old cases off of clothing that's packed away somewhere. Is
there any kind of DNA we can source off of that?
How we handle things and then how we examine things,
what methodologies are being used. And here's the thing his legacy,
I think with Blake is because the benchmarks that Blake
(40:46):
established early on in his practice from a scientific perspective,
that are going to move us forward in the future
relative to this technology. We don't know how many other
people there are out there that will be identified. How
many perpetrators will be will be put in jail, how
(41:10):
many people will be set free, We don't know, but
I do know that his impact on the practice of
DNA science will ring for many years to come. But
most importantly, beyond the science, Blake actually took a stand
(41:33):
where many people may have sat back and maybe have
cashed the check, if you will, He decided not to
do that. He decided to be a man of integrity.
And of course, at the end of the day, if
you're in forensics, that is your currency. Can you be believed?
(41:56):
Can you be trusted? We count doctor Blake as one
of those that could be rest in peace. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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