[gentle music] - Norman Gilliland: The Wisconsin State Crime Laboratories operate under the Department of Justice.

Their primary mission is to perform error-free forensic analysis capable of withstanding rigorous challenges in court, which sounds like a high bar.

I'm Norman Gilliland, welcome to University Place Presents.

We'll look at some notable Wisconsin cases involving the lab with Robert Block, who worked at the Wisconsin State Crime Lab for 34 years.

Welcome to University Place Presents.

- Robert Block: Thank you.

- There's a lot to cover here.

We're going to scamper through some of it, I'm afraid, because there are so many details we could go into before we get into the cases, but hands-on, practical, day-to-day work that you did there for those 34 years, what did you see as your mission?

- I was head of the Drug Identification Unit, so my primary responsibilities were overseeing the daily operation of the Controlled Substances Unit.

The crime lab as a whole, the purpose of the lab is to provide to law enforcement forensic services in a number of different areas and to collect evidence, analyze that evidence, interpret the results of the evidence, and make those findings available to law enforcement and state prosecutors in the state of Wisconsin.

- And what was your actual role then in the involvement in a case from beginning to end?

- Well, in a drug case, the drug evidence would be submitted by law enforcement.

We would then analyze that material for the presence of controlled substances.

Controlled substances are those which by definition are illegal to possess or to sell.

And then we would, based on the data generated, create a report of our findings and submit that to the submitting agency and to the prosecutor of that county that submitted that evidence.

- Did that involve you then as an expert witness in these cases?

- Yes, all of the forensic analysts would go to court testifying as experts within their field of analysis.

- Would that be for the prosecution?

- Most of the time it would be for the prosecution, although we would be available for-- to be called as a witness by the defense.

That only happened, I think, two times for me.

The rest of the 500 times, I would testify for the prosecution.

- And just to clarify our terminology here, there are how many state crime labs?

- There are three state crime labs, one in Madison, one in Milwaukee, and one in Wausau.

- Norman: Do they specialize each one, or are they more generalized in their region?

- Robert: There is duplication of many of the areas in each of the three laboratories.

There are a couple of special areas that are handled by only one laboratory.

So, Milwaukee is the only one that handles physical chemistry.

- Although you're involved in identifying illegal drugs involved in cases and that kind of thing, it sounds like you get into pretty quickly can get involved in murder investigations.

- Yes, the crime lab provides field assistance or crime scene assistance to all the law enforcement agencies.

And while the analysts are not part of law enforcement, we have no authority to make arrests, to do investigations.

The way we get involved in a crime scene is upon the request of a law enforcement agency.

We will then respond.

We will photograph and process that crime scene, collect evidence, and take the evidence back to the crime lab for purposes of analysis.

That's part of our field response, and we have volunteer teams.

When I was at the crime lab, they now actually have designated units that respond to crime scenes.

- What's the sequence of arrivals at a crime scene?

- Well, typically, law enforcement would be notified.

They would be the first to respond to a crime scene.

If they are not a large enough agency to handle that crime scene themselves, they will then make contact with the crime laboratory.

And the field response, there would be a field response leader.

They are on call.

They would be the one who would get the call from the law enforcement agency.

Periodically, it would be routed, it made-- the call may actually go, say, to the attorney general's office and then come to the crime lab.

But typically, they'd call directly to the crime lab 'cause we have a 24-hour phone number.

The-- That would then be routed to the field response leader.

He'd contact the rest of the team and they would respond to the crime scene.

- And what kind of evidence are you looking for in the context of this team?

- All the field response scenes that we go to are essentially homicide crime scenes.

So, the first thing we would do is record that scene by means of photography, primarily any bodies that may be at that crime scene so they can be removed to go to autopsy.

We would then proceed to photograph the rest of that scene inside and outside, to make a record of everything that is seen temporary to that crime scene.

You only get one opportunity to record that crime scene.

And so, our instruction was you take as many photos as is necessary to record that scene for future use.

- We're all familiar with a crime scene, hopefully not too familiar, with the yellow tape and that kind of thing defining the perimeter.

But how do you define the perimeter of a crime scene?

- The perimeter of the crime scene is initially defined by law enforcement.

They'll use that yellow tape to mark off the boundaries, and normally they'll go well beyond where they think the evidence may be located.

We will work initially within those boundaries.

If we find anything indicating that it may be leading to something else, then that crime scene may get expanded and continue in a different direction.

But primarily, we would be starting with the-- within the confines of that marked-off area by law enforcement.

- And then you go back to the lab and what happens?

- We will take the evidence that has been collected.

It will be sealed at the crime scene.

It will be documented to begin the chain of custody.

We'll take that evidence back to the lab.

It will then be distributed to the various sections.

In other words, blood would go to DNA.

If there are any drugs, it would go to the Controlled Substance Unit.

If there are any prints, it would go to the fingerprint unit.

Weapons would go to the firearms.

It would be distributed to the appropriate units for analysis.

- We've talked about DNA evidence.

And although you're primarily in your 34 years dealing with drugs, did you ever cross paths with DNA then in a case?

- By the time I was getting towards the end of my career at the crime lab, we were doing DNA on a routine basis.

And that was something we'd always be collecting, samples, blood samples, hair, and anything that was of biological material that could be analyzed for DNA.

So, that was a necessary process at a crime scene.

What changed over the years for me in terms of going to crime scenes, when I first started, when you went to a crime scene, you wore your grubbiest tennis shoes, jeans, and shirt because if it got contaminated, you just threw it away.

When HIV came along, now we had to start taking more precautions.

So, now we'd have coveralls, wear gloves.

Now with DNA, they have to go fully suited because they can't leave any sweat or hair, or anything at that crime scene that may contaminate the DNA.

- Norman: Like some kind of a hazmat suit?

- Yeah, they wear a total hazmat suit and mask, so they leave no, none of their own DNA to contaminate the crime scene, and it gets pretty warm working in one of those suits for several hours.

DNA changes the whole world of forensics when it's developed.

- Norman: Sure, yeah.

- 'Cause initially, the only way we could make a unique identification was via fingerprints.

Now comes DNA.

Now we have a second way to make a unique identification.

- In terms of DNA and the repercussions that it has... it really has revolutionized in the last-- how long has it been, since the late '60s, I guess?

- DNA began in private laboratories.

Then the FBI started doing DNA, probably late '70s, '80s, and then the FBI gets involved, and then eventually the state labs start getting involved.

But we probably weren't involved with DNA until somewhere in the '90s would be the start of the DNA at the Wisconsin Crime Lab.

- Was there anything like a DNA bank, like there is a fingerprint bank?

- There is.

The state has one.

If we don't have a suspect or we don't find the DNA, we find DNA, but we don't have a suspect, then we will go to our data bank.

These are hundreds of thousands of DNA profiles in a computer system submitted by law enforcement.

If you're charged with a misdemeanor or a felony crime in the state of Wisconsin, you must submit a DNA sample to the crime lab, and that DNA profile will be developed and put into the database.

If we can't find it in our database, then we will go to-- we'll submit it to the FBI and their database, and they have access to every state DNA database.

- But that DNA is collected through some high or low-level infraction of the law?

It's not like they can just get it off of anybody and under any circumstances?

- Right.

You would-- You have to have been charged either with a misdemeanor or a felony crime for them to require you to submit a DNA sample, yeah.

If you're picked up on a speeding charge, they will not collect a DNA sample.

- Not yet.

[chuckles] - Yeah.

- Norman: Were you dealing at all with fingerprints?

- Only in terms of collecting them at crime scene.

- So, oh, so you were collecting them?

- Yeah, as part of the field response team.

And routinely, of course, my fingerprints would be on record for-- with the crime lab and even the FBI, 'cause it may happen that I get a plastic baggie filled with cocaine.

I do my analysis, and after I've done my analysis, say, "Oh, by the way, we want that checked for fingerprints."

So, the bag would have to go down to the ident unit.

So, they have to have my prints on record to eliminate my prints on that bag.

- Norman: Of course, yeah.

What sort of firearm collection does the lab have?

- They have a very large one.

[Norman chuckles] The Milwaukee and Madison lab would have a larger handgun collection.

The Wausau lab would have a larger rifle collection.

- Just because of the greater likelihood that there's gonna be hunting over that way?

- Correct, correct.

- You wouldn't have thought of that.

- We have some pretty unique guns in our collection as well.

[clears throat] They'll keep those weapons for purposes of if one comes in and it's missing a part, we can take the part off of our gun, put it onto the suspect gun, and test fire it.

- Norman: Test the gun.

- Once we don't have a use for those, those guns tend to be destroyed.

- That would be the same for bullets.

You must have quite a bullet collection then.

And how do you make these collections?

- Well, they're collected over the years, but we have limited space and storage for these.

And after a while, if they get old enough, they're of no use anymore at that point.

And they would just be historical.

Initially, when I started 34 years ago, we had very little room for storage, so we would periodically be getting rid of things like that.

- Getting into your specialty, it was drugs, drug testing.

How does that work in terms of a crime scene?

What is there to test to determine drugs?

- Well, most of the drugs that we get, essentially all the drugs we get, would come from law enforcement, and they'd either take that from somebody that had it in their possession, or perhaps it was an undercover investigation where there was a sale and law enforcement came across that, maybe a vehicle stop, and they find drugs in the car.

They'll submit that to the laboratory.

We will do the chemical analysis to determine what controlled substance may or may not be present and, again, file a report and return that to the law enforcement.

- Who does the autopsies?

- The autopsies, most of the autopsies when I was there were done by Dr.

Huntington at the UW hospital here in Madison.

I don't know who does their current autopsies for them.

But generally large, again, large agencies in Milwaukee County would have their own forensic pathologist to do autopsies.

But most state agencies used Dr.

Huntington and the UW hospital.

- And they then relay the information to the crime lab, or what's the track of it?

- No, we would actually, if it's a homicide or a suspected homicide autopsy, they would request the services of the crime lab.

We would go to those autopsies, photograph the autopsy.

The pathologist would typically collect the samples, turn them over to us at the autopsy.

We'd again seal those samples, take them back to the laboratory, and distribute them for analysis.

- Every now and then, and you mentioned this earlier, I believe, chain of custody for evidence, every now and then that seems to come into question in a case.

- Yeah, defense will typically challenge the chain of custody.

It starts from the minute that evidence is collected, even before that.

The police have to verify that they had custody of that scene, and in sense, custody of any evidence that may have been collected.

Once it's collected, it is sealed, and it is recorded and documented.

And then, there is a written, recorded document of that evidence every time it moves from one location to another until it is eventually returned to the submitting agency.

- What kind of experiences have you had with drug testing in terms of the way they have affected cases?

- Well, the most common drugs we had back when I was doing analysis, probably still true today, would be for the presence of THC, the biologically active material from marijuana.

That would be the number one case in terms of number, type of items submitted.

And then cocaine, heroin, and the whole board of drugs that you can imagine.

And I would end up going to court and testifying in drug identification about 500 times.

- Give us some examples of what specifically you would be finding in some of these cases, THC in particular.

I mean, you wouldn't think ordinarily that marijuana would play large in a homicide case.

- Well, typically in drug, in homicide cases, you don't find a lot of drugs involved.

I've only had, of the more than 50 crime scenes I went to, I probably only had a handful in which drugs were actually found at the crime scene, which may or may not have anything to do with the homicide.

They could have been under the influence of drugs.

Maybe not.

If there were drugs there, I would again identify what the controlled substance was.

Toxicology might be responsible for determining if that person was under the influence of those drugs during the time of that homicide or crime scene.

- You in your 34 years had experiences where, well, let's check this seemingly harmless piece of evidence and see what we find.

- I had-- Dane County Metro brought in a big black plastic bag, a garbage bag, and I said, "What do you have?"

And they opened it and it was filled with sticks and leaves.

- Okay.

- And I said, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

And they actually wanted it checked for drugs.

- Why?

- And I said, "Really?"

And they said, "Well, yeah."

They thought or they had heard it contained heroin.

Again, who would think of having a garbage bag thrown on your porch with sticks and leaves that it would contain heroin?

And I did the analysis on that.

And sure enough, it actually contained heroin.

- Well, you have kind of piqued my interest in the-- in the pizza and the cocaine.

What was the outcome of that?

- The interesting one on that was they brought a pizza in and the-- the case was an individual bought this pizza at a convenience store, took it home and cooked it, ate it and got sick and goes to the hospital, and he-- They do a drug screen and it comes back positive for cocaine.

So, he wanted me to analyze it for the presence of cocaine.

And then, he wanted to know if cocaine had been put on the pizza prior to or after it had been cooked, 'cause he was going to file a lawsuit against the convenience store and the pizza manufacturer.

So, I did the analysis, showed that it was cocaine, and even before the, I did the analysis, I told him that it was put on the pizza after it had been cooked, and he didn't know how I knew that.

And when I looked at the pizza, I could see solid white chunks of white material on the top of the pizza.

That was crack cocaine.

I knew that crack cocaine melts at 97 degrees centigrade.

When you cook a pizza, you cook it at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit... - Right.

- ...which is 212 degrees centigrade.

If it had been put on the pizza prior to it being cooked, it would have been totally melted into the pizza.

But the fact I could still see the solid, slightly melted into the pizza meant the pizza was hot, but cocaine had been put on after it had been cooked.

- So, there goes the-- - Needless-- Yeah, needless to say, there was no lawsuit filed in that case.

- What form did your evidence that you presented take?

Did you-- Were you testifying in that case or it probably wouldn't have gotten to that point?

- No, that one never-- That one never went to court.

Nor did the one in-- with the leaf material ever go to court.

Many of those-- I probably would work somewhere in the area of 5,000 to 6,000 drug cases a year.

And we'd only end up going to court maybe on 50 of those in the year.

- What other court cases in which you actually testified come to mind in those instances?

- I had some.

Some of the larger drug cases that I worked, testified on, would be, like, two kilos delivery of cocaine here in the Madison area, large samples of LSD.

It was 16,000 tablets of LSD.

Heroin cases, some of the more-- not the common ones.

The common ones where you went, marijuana, cocaine, those were just routine cases of going to court.

But you would periodically get these very large quantities of drugs.

And then, I ended up not going to court, but actually analyzing evidence of a police officer who had drugs in his possession.

And I did that on behalf of the Milwaukee lab because it was a Milwaukee police officer.

- Well, let's look at some cases then that involved the crime labs during your 34-year tenure and whether related specifically to drugs or not.

- The only crime scene that I can say directly that the drug unit played a major role in, in fact, the only role was-- were clandestine labs, which we would go and process.

I spent four days, four or five days at a clandestine lab in northern Wisconsin, which was a methamphetamine lab.

And at the time, it was the second-largest methamphetamine lab in the United States.

We found 400 pounds of finished methamphetamine.

Two hundred at the scene, and a year later, the other 200 in a dry, abandoned well in the next county over.

- Was that coincidental, that well discovery, or was there some kind of clue that led you to it?

- Well, what led to it was a law enforc-- The power company notified the sheriff that there was a non-working farm using an excess amount of electrical power.

- Uh-huh.

- And there happened to be a deputy who was also a licensed electrician.

And he saw this excessive amount, and he goes out to investigate, and he essentially stumbles across this huge clandestine laboratory.

- That must have been one of your easier cases to determine, though.

You have 400 pounds of methamphetamine.

- Yeah, that was the-- The difficulty of that one was not processing it, but we actually had to dismantle it.

And between the processing, the recording, and the dismantling, that took us over four days and we were working 10 to 12 hours a day.

And so, we had this huge amount of material that we had to store and retain.

Fortunately, the crime lab didn't have to do that.

The Department of Criminal Investigation had to do that.

And after three or four years later, they said, "We wish we had just destroyed it instead of storing it," because it was running up a pretty big bill just for the storage.

- In some of these other cases, you're... you've got a lot of evidence that's in your custody for some period of time, and then that you're-- then you're issuing a report based on your findings to law enforcement.

Anyone else?

- No, typically it's just gonna go to law enforcement and the county prosecutor for purposes of court.

We will hold on to that evidence essentially for quite, quite a while and then eventually, we'll return it to the submitting agency and they can hold on to it.

If we have very large amounts, say we had a marijuana field, we would take samples and then we would get a court order to destroy any remaining material.

- And now, let's get into some of the Wisconsin cases... - Sure.

- ...that we mentioned at the beginning.

Some of these made headlines for spectacular reasons.

And you were involved in a fair number of these.

Which are the ones that stand out in your experience?

- Well, the one that stands out, not for me, but for the crime lab, it is the one that is probably most remembered in the state of Wisconsin.

And that was in 1957 with Ed Gein, in which he murdered two women up in the area of Plainfield, Wisconsin.

- Norman: What was the crime lab's involvement in that?

- Robert: We were called in to help process that crime scene.

We had two analysts that went up there.

They would process, photograph, and collect evidence of that crime scene and bring it back for purposes of analysis.

- Norman: I think we're looking at the kitchen in that crime scene now, aren't we?

- Robert: Yeah, that was the kitchen of Ed Gein's house when the crime lab showed up to process that crime scene.

- Norman: Where could you begin?

- Robert: Well, that, that's where it becomes significant when we say a photo is worth a thousand words.

You can't describe a scene like that.

Because if I say that this kitchen is a mess, for somebody that might mean that they left their dishes in their sink and didn't clean off their counter.

And so, interpretation can mean many things just by words.

And therefore the photography becomes very important for crime scene investigations and testimony.

- How did the Ed Gein case proceed then from the crime lab standpoint?

- We would analyze the evidence.

I'm not sure how much of that evidence was actually used.

Because we didn't have DNA back then, so we couldn't do DNA analysis.

They may have done some blood typing.

He was ruled insane in 1958.

He was-- I should say he was ruled not capable of acting in his defense.

And he was ruled insane and sent to Central Mental Hospital in Waupun.

Ten years later, in 1968, he was ruled competent to participate in his defense.

And he will admit that he did kill one of those two.

He was never charged with the second murder, although he admitted he killed the second woman as well.

And then ultimately, he was found innocent by reason of insanity.

- Wasn't he at least implicated in the death of his brother, too, or was that pure speculation?

- There is speculation not only for his brother, but for his father as well.

- There were some other notable cases too, that are... Are they still pre-DNA by the time we get to, for example, the Barbara Hoffman case?

- That would still be DNA-- pre-DNA.

In fact, I think most of the ones that I went to would be pre-DNA.

DNA didn't come around until the early 2000s or so.

So, we would not have had DNA during the Barbara Hoffman case.

- And how did that proceed?

That... Getting back to television and perceptions having to do with crime labs and definite solutions to cases.

This one got to be a little tricky.

- Yeah, it-- this one-- This would be the first homicide trial to be televised statewide.

And she was charged with the murder of two men, Harold Berge and Gerald Davies.

And upon her trial, she was found guilty of killing Harry Berge but not guilty of killing Gerald Davies.

- Norman: What was the evidence?

- Well, the evidence was Gerald Davies' testimony that he gave during preliminary hearing and other evidence.

She used cyanide poisoning to kill both Gerald Davies and Harry Berge.

And so, the evidence there was done based on toxicology at the laboratory.

It determined that Gerald Davies had two and a half times the lethal dose of cyanide.

And Harry Berge had 35 times the lethal dose of cyanide.

Of course, that was determined a year after he had been killed, because they will find Gerald Davies dead in his bathtub.

And upon the analysis of Gerald Davies, they find the cyanide, which then leads back to the reanalysis of Harry Berge and the finding of cyanide there as well.

- Do you have a sense of why she wasn't convicted of both if we're talking cyanide?

It seemed to have been the big clue, the big deciding factor in one death.

Why not both?

- I don't really know, because the ironic thing here is she had taken out a life insurance policy of $35,000 on Harry Berge and $750,000 on Gerald Davies.

I once had a judge who said to me that "There are two things you never know: "What a jury is going to do or what is on their mind.

"What is on their mind, and how they will rule in a case."

And that seems to be the situation here.

Now, Barbara Hoffman did make a very interesting statement following her conviction, and I didn't know about this until just recently.

She was asked if she had any statement to make about her conviction.

And she will say that "I am not guilty of the crime I have been charged with and been found guilty of."

Which led to many questions as to what did she mean by this statement that she had made.

- What is the motive in those slayings or the purported motive?

What's the whole backstory that led us up to these cyanide poisonings?

- She was a biochemistry major at the University of Wisconsin, and she drops out her last semester and goes to work at a massage parlor on the west side of Madison.

She had access to cyanide as a biochemistry student.

But she also had ordered cyanide and supposedly had it sent to the residence of Gerald Davies.

So, she had access to this cyanide.

And of course, as a biochemist, she would know what toxins would cause death, such as cyanide.

- Apparently wasn't concerned, though, with detection.

- The first one with Harry Berge, it was never detected until later, after Gerald Davies, because the tests had never been run when it was never suspected that she may have used cyanide.

- So, the state crime lab didn't test for poison at all, or just-- - Not initially with Harry Berge.

No, they did not.

Harry Berge had some beatings around the head, and the initial analysis was he may have died from the beating of the head and there was no suspect of cyanide.

Now typically cyanide, when they do an autopsy, they may be able to smell that cyanide 'cause it has a smell of almonds.

- Norman: Yes, famously.

- Nobody reported any of that.

So, that test was never actually run.

Where it happened, where it came about, which is kind of interesting, is after they did the toxicology, initial toxicology on Gerald Davies, there was a bottle of Valium sitting on the tub that he is dead in.

The toxicology indicates there is Valium in Gerald Davies' body, but not in sufficient quantity to have caused death.

After that, another analyst at the lab happened to go past the toxicology unit and asked if he'd determined the cause of death of either one of them.

And he said, "No."

And he just offhandedly said, "Did you check for cyanide?"

[Norman chuckles] And the toxicologist said, "No, I never did."

So, then he checked Gerald Davies.

That's when he comes up with two and a half times the lethal dose.

And now, he goes back and checks Harry Berge and comes up with 35 times the lethal dose.

- So, this is what, back in the 1980s?

- Yeah, that would have been in the 1980s, early 1980s.

- What appears to us to be kind of a large oversight today, would the testing likely overlook something like that today?

- I would say it could still be a possibility, because if there is no suspicion of something like that of poisoning, let's say it's a gunshot.

If it's a gunshot that caused the death, we're not going to look for cyanide or poisons.

It wouldn't be pertinent or even maybe necessary.

Unless it's a totally unknown cause, they may or may not check for poisons.

Obviously, if they're foaming at the mouth or something like that, which would be an indication of a poison or toxin, they would check for that.

But it probably would not be done as a matter of routine.

- Even today.

- Even today.

- It's kind of interesting that the cases we've been talking about specifically, they don't have these completely neat endings in terms of a conviction in court based on the evidence.

In the case of the Barbara Hoffman, it's like, well, she had that coy statement about "I was not guilty of the crime I was convicted of," but there were, what, at least one and maybe two other victims that she could've been easily guilty of.

- Correct.

- There's many conspiracies on what actually happened, that perhaps Gerald Davies had killed Harry Berge, and then Barbara Hoffman killed Gerald Davies.

Another conspiracy thought was she had the cyanide in her home, and Harold Berge would come home and drink coffee and put sugar in, and that he accidentally took the cyanide.

So, there's many conspiracies.

But my interpretation of what she said when she said, "I am not guilty of the crime that I have been found guilty of."

What she was saying is, "I indeed did kill Gerald Davies, but I did not kill Harry Berge."

Regardless, she ends up being sentenced to life in prison, and she's still there today.

- And in the case of Ed Gein, other murders that he may well have committed.

But was the idea that, well, we've already got him on one, so we don't need to go to the trouble of convicting him on these others or just to write him off as insane?

- Yeah, back at that time, they didn't probably need to go for the overkill.

And in some cases, they will charge with one and hold another.

Because if you don't get a conviction on the first one, you still have the second one available to charge with.

But he, as I mentioned, he did admit that he killed both of those women.

- Did you ever have a sense that, "this one got away" despite the evidence that you had found?

- Perhaps the-- That, where that happened would be the Kunz family murder, in which five family members were murdered.

And the suspect was charged with all five murders.

And when they get a search warrant for his bedroom, they find a receipt for tires.

For new tires he had put on a vehicle that he had purchased from the Kunz family.

They actually went to the gas station, found those tires, and those tires that had been removed from this vehicle matched tire impressions at the crime scene.

They also, and he had a pile of gun shell casings, and one of those casings matched the gun shell casing of the crime scene.

He's charged with all five murders of the Kunz family, and the jury comes back with not guilty of any of those murders.

- Well, just the feeling... - He's freed.

- ...it was circumstantial, or what?

- I don't know why they didn't consider it.

Again, it reminds me of what the jury-- the judge said about a jury.

You'll never know what they're gonna rule in a court of law.

But he is not done with the law.

Six or seven years later, his ex-girlfriend goes to the sheriff's and says, "He told me he killed all of the Kunz family members."

One of those he took to a swamp in the next county over, and he killed her and left her in the swamp, and they will end up charging him with kidnapping and false imprisonment of that Kunz family member.

And he will appeal that all the way to the U.S.

Supreme Court as double jeopardy.

They will not hear the case.

They will send it back to the lower court, and he will be found guilty of kidnapping and false imprisonment of that Kunz family member and be sentenced to 31 years in prison.

- But not convicted of murder?

- He cannot be.

He was found not guilty.

You cannot be charged again.

- Oh, 'cause that would be double jeopardy.

- That would be the double jeopardy, yeah.

- You ever read about these cases in the newspaper and think, "Oh, that's interesting how that turned out."

- What I'm... What is more often I'll find interesting is I'll either listen to the news or read a newspaper and they'll talk about how this victim was shot.

And I have been to that crime scene and nobody was ever shot.

- Oh, really?

- So, what you hear in the news is not necessarily what happened at the crime scene.

So, I've had instances like that where the news media is describing something that's totally different than what I'm seeing at the crime scene, yeah.

- Do you ever read crime fiction?

- I read crime books all the time.

- Do you really?

- That's my-- That's my top priority.

I read tons of Patterson and Woods and so forth.

- Do you, uh-huh.

- Primarily, I just read crime scene books.

Yeah.

- No problem with busman's holiday for you.

What do you find there in terms of credibility?

Are there some that rate higher than others in terms of the authors and the kinds of crimes they write about?

- They tend to be pretty realistic, and people are more conscious of what is recovered at crime scenes.

So, even the criminal is more aware of what goes on when they go to a crime scene, and how to potentially try to avoid leaving any evidence behind.

But in many cases, if it's a crime of passion, they're not thinking of anything like that.

And they may leave behind evidence, including DNA.

- And what would you like to see as the next kind of breakthrough in your aspect of criminology?

- Well, everything is getting smaller and smaller and faster and faster.

So, when I started, we had a mass spectrometer that took up a whole room.

Now, they're just a small tabletop.

DNA, when they started with DNA, it could take weeks to months to get a result.

Now, they can get a result in 24 to 48 hours.

I'm predicting that within, say, the next 10 years, a law enforcement officer, if he stops a vehicle on the side of the road, he'll be able to take a cheek swab and stick it into a portal, portable instrument and get a computerized result of that driver's DNA on the spot.

- Like a license plate check.

- Yeah.

- That fast.

- Yeah, I think we're gonna get to that point someday.

- So, cases that may have taken a year or two to resolve early on in your 34-year career could be solved in weeks, maybe.

- Well, even less.

- Even less.

- Even less, yeah, yeah.

- Such are the times.

- Everything's getting-- And they're developing other ways of making unique identification.

Your earlobes are unique.

[Norman chuckles] Your eye irises are unique.

- Uh-huh.

- And so, we're getting more and more unique ways to pinpoint who that individual is.

So, that's all going to go towards speeding things up and making results come much more quickly.

- Robert Block, it's been a fascinating look at true crime in Wisconsin and the rapidly accelerating solutions to crimes, thanks to the Wisconsin Crime Laboratories.

- Sure.

- Great pleasure.

- Thank you.

- I'm Norman Gilliland, and I hope you can join me next time around for University Place Presents.

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