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Partners In Crime

Tribune photo by KELVIN MA

Ben Rocha, 12, center, shows off his chromatography reading of some black ink to Jack Brittain, 13, left, and Corey Yeung, 13, at the Berkeley Prep summer camp's forensics class on June 25, 2008. The class was inspired by the popular TV show CSI.

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 5, 2008

TOWN 'N COUNTRY - The scene: The lobby outside the Berkeley Preparatory School auditorium. Crime scene tape forms a square around an empty picture frame, toppled wineglasses, footprints and a mysterious telephone number.

The crime: A painting on display at an art auction was stolen overnight. Eight suspects had motive or opportunity.

The evidence: Fingerprints, fibers, hair. Ink analysis might show which pen wrote the telephone number. Shoe patterns can help match the footprint to the wearer. And is that blood?

The investigative team: Eight students, ages 12 through 14, enrolled in Berkeley Prep's first summer "CSI Camp" last week to learn about forensic science. They sifted through the evidence and built a case for whodunit.

Wendy Livingston, a science teacher for Berkeley's middle division who ran the CSI camp, created the crime, inventing a fictitious art theft and planting clues for her students to uncover.

Though the crime never happened, the students, most of whom attend the private school, and Livingston took it as seriously as if they were detectives.

Livingston passed out the "police report" and background about the suspects, including fingerprints and descriptions of what they wore that night.

Berkeley hosted an art gala, Livingston told her class, in character. Well-to-do benefactors, Mr. and Mrs. "Wellrich," bought a popular, large watercolor at the auction that night, but it was raining hard and the artwork was too large to take home. They planned to return later to pick up the painting.

"But guess what happened," Livingston said. "It was stolen last night. So this is where we come in. We're going to see if we can solve the crime."

Was it the valet, Corey Vette? Marsha Mellow, the caterer? Or fine arts collector Art Steele?

The two-week camp builds on the popularity of the "CSI" television series but is more than mystery. It builds observational skills, Livingston said, which helps in any science class and encourages deductive reasoning.

Students learned about forensic scientific principles and how to use microscopes, clay molds, fingerprint powder and paper chromatography, which separates ink into its unique pigments.

They donned gloves and crouched around the crime scene perimeter with metric rulers and a grid to draw the location of evidence before bagging what they wanted to take. Livingston had scattered photocopied footprints, and the students compared them for size and shoe pattern.

They poked through a trash can, scrutinized crumpled napkins and pointed out barely visible hairs.

Three red dots on the empty picture frame looked like blood, the team decided. Jack Brittain, 13, removed the frame from the scene to take to the "lab," handling it gingerly on the sides.

"Don't touch the top," he warned the other students. "There's blood on here."

Josie Curci, 14, and Peter Tirella, 12, examined a crumpled paper with a phone number. Next to them was a cup filled with black pens in different styles, any one of which could have written the number.

"We have to test which pen wrote the number," Josie said.

"There's probably fingerprints on it, too," Peter agreed.

Back in their classroom, filling in for a crime lab, Josie and Missy Guerra marked chromatography paper with ink from each pen they found. When soaked in water, the marks separated into blues and oranges, different patterns for each pen.

Behind them, Ben Rocha and Corey Yeung used a similar method to analyze the phone number. Corey, 13, compared pen samples to find a match.

Nikki Potts, 12, was at work with fingerprinting powder, dusting plastic glasses to see if she could spot whorls, arches and loops that might link a suspect to the crime.

Jack and Laurel Avery, meanwhile, used microscopes to review the hairs the class found. They had learned the difference between a fiber and a human or animal hair and Jack spotted it immediately.

"I don't think that's human hair," he said. "It's got no cortex."

The following day the students would learn about DNA as Livingston guided them through the ways forensic scientists might deal with blood, although the techniques would have to be modified to be safe for students.

They also had a stack of shoe prints to examine. Josie was making a mold of a key-shaped impression found at the scene that might help. And once they had all their fingerprints, fibers and pen types, they would chart which ones went with which suspect to see if anything stood out.

No one goofed around. No one ignored the evidence to chat about summer plans. They swapped materials and called each other over to see what they had found.

They had a crime to solve.

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib.com.

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