A crime scenario
This is a hypothetical situation, "It's year XXXX of your specialty. A dead body is discovered in the middle of a well populated area and the overwhelming evidence suggests he was murdered. Is anyone in charge of finding the killer? What is the attitude of the public and is there an expectation of justice?" Redditor LordKettering replies, his setting: 1772: Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
A young man has been found dead in one of the alleys between Ann Street and Fish Market. Colonists have gathered around the scene and, despite murmurs of political motives, soldiers have not occupied the city for more than a year, and the violence hasn't erupted into murder in just as long.
Sheriff Greenleaf is a supposed loyalist and lackey of Governor Hutchinson, but even the Whig leaning residents of Boston would rely on him to find the killer. There is an expectation of justice, and the recent mob violence against an inept government places uncommon pressure on Greenleaf to find the killer.
Though gun violence is certainly not unheard of, the murderer in this case demonstrates Bostonian's noted knowledge of the law in using a blunt object of some kind. Any firing of muskets or pistols within the city limits that is charged with ball is illegal, even if firing at animals, targets, or uselessly into the air. A gunshot would have attracted a good deal of attention to the scene immediately, so perhaps our murderer had been planning this.
The first step in Greenleaf's investigation is to identify the victim. This is a fairly easy task, as all of the cities in the colonies are fairly small (only four exceeded 10,000 residents), and even these are broken up into smaller and tightly knit neighborhoods divided along class, ethnic, and economic lines. One of the crowd gathered around the body would certainly recognize him.
For our scenario, let us say he is an apprentice to a craftsman to a ropewalk by the docks along Merchant's Market, a mere block away.
Forensic science is
A young man has been found dead in one of the alleys between Ann Street and Fish Market. Colonists have gathered around the scene and, despite murmurs of political motives, soldiers have not occupied the city for more than a year, and the violence hasn't erupted into murder in just as long.
Sheriff Greenleaf is a supposed loyalist and lackey of Governor Hutchinson, but even the Whig leaning residents of Boston would rely on him to find the killer. There is an expectation of justice, and the recent mob violence against an inept government places uncommon pressure on Greenleaf to find the killer.
Though gun violence is certainly not unheard of, the murderer in this case demonstrates Bostonian's noted knowledge of the law in using a blunt object of some kind. Any firing of muskets or pistols within the city limits that is charged with ball is illegal, even if firing at animals, targets, or uselessly into the air. A gunshot would have attracted a good deal of attention to the scene immediately, so perhaps our murderer had been planning this.
The first step in Greenleaf's investigation is to identify the victim. This is a fairly easy task, as all of the cities in the colonies are fairly small (only four exceeded 10,000 residents), and even these are broken up into smaller and tightly knit neighborhoods divided along class, ethnic, and economic lines. One of the crowd gathered around the body would certainly recognize him.
For our scenario, let us say he is an apprentice to a craftsman to a ropewalk by the docks along Merchant's Market, a mere block away.
Forensic science is