Fire Bombing Research Paper

Fires can happen anywhere: lint from a dryer could spark and go into flames, a bolt of lightning could catch a building on fire, or perhaps someone could intentionally set one. Fires and other things such as explosives and bombs are used by criminals everywhere. These two means are used widely because of their power to completely destroy and obliterate, leaving little traces of evidence behind—or so it is thought. Even though fires and explosives do seem to destroy everything in their paths, they still leave evidence behind that can be picked up by forensics such as the little bits and pieces of shrapnel and chemicals that are present around the scene as well as in the bodies of victims. First off, let’s discuss fires. When a fire is lit,

However, there are specific places to look, as noted before. For example, the wreckage itself can be a very useful tool in determining what exactly happened. Was it arson? Was it an accident? Who did it? All of these questions can be answered through the examination and collection of the evidence at the wreckage. In the case of Steven Benson, the Pan Am Flight, and the Oklahoma Bombing, evidence found directly at the scene of the explosion was used in order to help move the case forward and find the person or people behind it. In the Steve Benson case, a car bomb that was set off when the ignition was turned on killed both his mother and his brother, Scott. A bulk of the evidence used to incriminate Benson was found at the scene where the explosion occurred. The investigators were able to locate a bomb that was homemade, therefore it was a “low” explosive. The bits and pieces of the bomb also gave the investigators to track where they were bought. “Teams of investigators visited local hardware stores, junkyards, and construction sites to check the sources of the pipes and end-caps” (p. 141). They figured out that someone had recently bought similar items at a store, got a description, and it ended up matching with Steven Benson. Similarly, in the Pan Am Flight 103 explosion, the crash site of the plan provided a multitude of evidence to figure out what happened while

An example would be when Steve Benson was questioned about the bombing of his brother and mother, he was very calm. This was a clue that he may he been the one that was behind the bombing. Had he been innocent, then he more than likely would have been more upset and reacted more emotionally to his family members being blown up. In the Pam Am bombing, the victims of the crash wielded evidence as well “the fact that the airplane victims were found to have suffered lung damage from violent decompression suggested that some catastrophic failure had made the aircraft disintegrate in air” (p. 142). Just from the victims alone, the investigators were able to piece together that the plane did not crash because of a malfunction, but rather an attack from the