SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Bug Expert Joe Keiper Uses Insects as Clues
from the Cleveland Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- On the day before Halloween, as grim-faced detectives and crime scene investigators searched the foreboding house where suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell lived, a man arrived carrying a folded butterfly net and a small blue fishing tackle box filled with glass vials and surgical tweezers.
Joe Keiper spends most of his days in a basement lab at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, a bright space that holds cabinets stuffed with hundreds of thousands of carefully preserved insects. It's a bug-lover's dream. This afternoon, Keiper descended into a nightmare. In the dank basement, police had unearthed a decomposed body from the dirt floor.
... As one of two dozen or so U.S. entomologists with forensic experience, Keiper occasionally works as a law enforcement consultant. He uses his knowledge of the types of bugs that dead bodies attract, the timing of their arrival, and the rate of their reproduction and growth to judge how long a victim likely has been dead, among other things.
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