#103: Zack Kowalske

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together. We are Live. Welcome, Zach. Is this the first podcast that you did that you're doing? No, no, I've done a couple before and I actually used to host a podcast. I'll get out of here. Really. Yeah. Wait, what kind of podcast was it? So it was probably about 10 years ago. It was a forensic science weekly kind of forensic Science News and commentary. Wow, that's really cool. And so you do you do 1 episode a week.

0:42 And used to, yeah. And then? And how long was it? I did that for about a year and a half, two years, and then I just got busy and kind of moved on to other projects currently, you know, in development of a kind of a new video based podcast project right now. That cool? Yeah, it's fun creative outlet. Yeah. Do you feel, do you feel that you've always had that kind of need for some kind of creative outlet? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I, yeah, I am very much because of what I do and how I don't know how how sucked into my work I can get. It's very difficult to try and maintain that sense of self. So I've always kind of sought some kind of creative outlet, whether it was writing or no video or podcast or something like that.

1:41 Right now I've got I kind of multitask all that creative outlet across a few different spectrums. I know, I know exactly what you're talking. About SO. Yeah, yeah. So tell me a little about yourself. So you're so you said that you don't, you're that the nature of your work is so busy that you often have you, you need to make time for yourself. What do you do? What's so busy? Yeah, So my name is Zach Kowalski. I am a detective with a metro Atlanta Police Department. I specialize in crime scene investigations. I'm assigned to our crime lab, been there for a little over 16 1/2 years, and I specialize in crime scene reconstruction. So anything dealing with violent crimes, blood stain pattern analysis, shooting, reconstruction, you know, kind of advanced crime scene analysis work predominantly, you know, I in our crime scene investigations unit. So I'll go out the scenes that I'm requested to and, you know, try and use science to catch bad guys. And then I did you, did you go into this from a law enforcement perspective or a science perspective or both? A.

2:48 Little bit of both. So I knew that I wanted to go into crime scene investigations from about the age of 12. I got my first fingerprint kit under the Christmas tree. I think that that year. Cool. Yeah, a a note to what to go. Do with the Christmas tree? Wait, what is the Tokyo do with the fingerprint kit? Destroy the bathroom counters with fluorescent powder unknowingly. So always do any kind of fingerprinting work outside because you will stain the countertops. How does it work? How does that work? Fingerprint powder? So fingerprint powder is a finely ground up, typically volcanic ash for our black ones. The bigger print powder comes in a variety of different colors and as the whole idea is that you want to apply some powder to the sebaceous oils of fingerprints so that you can increase contrast with your medium that your your prints are on, right.

3:50 So if we have a, you know, white background, like a a painted wall, we want to use some black powder so that we can develop that print to where we can visualize it. And then we can, you know, take photographs of it and lift it and recover it that way. And when you get a print, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off when you got a print. The shape of like the actual physical shape of the print is what you're going to use to, you know, to match with someone's DNA or you wait for the DNA on the print. So there. Yeah, Yeah. So with prints, there are a couple of different routes that you can take, right. So the first is that we can identify who that fingerprint belongs to if we have sufficient wrench characteristics that can be based off of, you know, just depends on, on what kind of surface it's on and you know, how that print is deposited.

4:40 So we can identify the pattern. I'm sorry. Does that frequently happen? Oh yeah. You could like, it's pretty you you. It's not so hard to find, like it's not so hard to get a print with ridges. No, no, not at all. It is whether or not there is sufficient ridges to actually be able to ID it right. Because if you think about how you touch, you know how you interact with the world around you, your hands and your fingers and are constantly in motion. So you always think, well, you know, I touch a doorknob. I can absolutely get a fingerprint off of that. Well, what's your hand doing when you touch that doorknob? Well, typically you're twisting the door knob, right? So that is inherently distorting those Ridge characteristics. So it's not guaranteed that we're going to get a fingerprint, a quality fingerprint, I should say.

5:24 Now what we can do is we can swab that print, right? And we can swab that and try and go after what's called low count DNA or trace DNA and try and go about identifying the source that. Way. Wow, amazing. That's cool. Yeah, forensic science is awesome. I mean, you know, we're looking for the absolute tiniest of evidence to either identify a source or figure out the series of actions that occurred within a scene. Yeah, awesome. So you're 12 years old, you get this kit, you start playing with it, you ruin your, you ruin your counters and and then and then, and then what's the next step? Are you always a scientist kind of guy? Is that is that the way your brain works?

6:05 Yeah. So I grew up loving science and nature. I had these Audubon books that I would go out into the woods. I grew up on a bunch of wooded area in Georgia and north of Atlanta, and we had a Creek. So I would go down to the Creek and I would catch salamanders and crawdads. And, you know, I would use my Audubon books to try and identify the species. And, you know, I'd loved Steve Irwin, the crocodile Hunter. You know, I, I would go around the woods dressed in khaki thinking I was the crocodile Hunter. And so that was at an early age. I was very much inspired by the natural world around me. And so when I was in the eighth grade, I had a science teacher, Marcy Kogar.

6:55 Marcy, if you're listening to this, hello. Thank you so much for literally changing my life. Any any good teachers? We absolutely need good teachers because a good teacher can have an influence and impact on the world that they might never know. So Marcy Kogar had been going back to school while she was a teacher to get her master's in forensic chemistry. And she was my eighth grade science teacher and she had, I had a textbook, one of the forensic chemistry textbooks with her in class. And I had been looking at it and I became fascinated about it. And she said, you know, she kind of encouraged me about it. And so I started reading everything I possibly could get my hands on the dealt with forensic science. And I was absolutely infatuated.

7:44 So you know, fingerprint kit under the Christmas tree. And then within the next year, I was fascinated by blood stain pattern analysis by understanding that we could use physics and mathematics to understand violent how violence occurs and using science to understand that violence. So I mean in the. The coolest thing in the entire world. It really did. So you know, I'm in the night. I can very much. I have a very distinct memory of my 9th grade science class, and I was doing a project to show my class how blood stain pattern and analysis worked, and I went to a small little private school. I look back at what I'm about to tell you today and this this could never happen in today's kind of school settings that we have.

8:33 But I remember having this pumpkin that I had rigged up with aquarium tubing and a pump so that I can circulate my fake blood. And then I brought this as the neck. And so then I brought this into class and I took a kitchen knife and I cut the neck and I showed how the pump, how the pumping and I was making blood stains, you know, in front of a ninth grade science class, so. What did you just say? Did you teacher love it? They loved it, absolutely loved it. I. Bet they did, by the way, because that's creative. It's such a fun like that. That's this is the kind of assignments we need to encourage, I feel like. Yeah, you know, I never had a bad teacher in high school or, you know, middle school for that. I was always blessed with great teachers who really encouraged me and just let me kind of thrive my, you know, beat my own weird little drum.

9:22 And and really the same thing for my mom. My mom is absolutely the reason that I am where I am today is because she was so encouraging of everything that I got into. You know, I, I, we turned our, we had a, a detached garage that had been converted into an apartment and my older brother lived up top and we turned the lower level into my own little crime lab. So yeah, at that point I'm 12/13. So they so they really leaned into it you all. 100%, you know, really leaned into it and. Was your family in law enforcement?

10:02 No, no, just you. Yeah, my, my grandfather Bucky, he went into civil defense in the 50s after he finished World War 2. But no, I've, I'm of my immediate family. I'm the only one that decided to go to long. But they they gave you that, by the way, that space is not, it's not. So speaking as a teacher and as an older brother and as now a parent, that space is not easy to give a kid. Like, I know it's like people talk about it a lot, but I feel like human nature is to want, especially like if you're a parent, you want your kid to kind of live the life either that you feel like you lived well or live the life that you didn't live better, you know? And like a parent will typically have an idea, like an outline for the kid what their life is.

10:49 And if that kid wants to deviate, parents, you know, it's hard. You don't know what to do with that, you know? And so I give a ton of props and credit to people that are willing to give other people the space to be themselves and not trample on them, you know? Oh, that was absolutely 100% my mom. That's awesome. Yeah. And yeah, I will for always. And I've tried, you know, I'm a parent myself. My daughter just graduated high school last week. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Now I just got to get her through just got to get her through college, but that was definitely one of the biggest growing pains and learning points for myself as a parent was that, you know, our kids are not us. So, you know, understanding that my learning style and my kind of viewpoint on education is very different from my daughters, you know, I'm, I did my master, I did my undergrad in, you know, investigated forensics, my master's in forensic science and I'm a PhD researcher in forensic science out of Staffordshire University.

11:54 So education is very much a key focus point for me, you know, personal education. My daughter's not that way. You know, she, she's super excited to be going in to marine sciences down at the college that she's going to go off to, You know, she wants to go be a shark researcher. And hey, if that's what you want to do, go. I will encourage you every different way that I can because that was ultimately what I kind of had to learn was that our kids are going to find their own way. And it is your job as a parent to just encourage them and to support them. So just to just for your, just to, I'm sorry, hop in real quick. I, I know I mentioned this on the phone recently, but I just saw that the place I was mentioning to you, the dolphin therapy place that I sold my medical equipment to is looking for interns for that thing coming up.

12:45 So I'll send you the information after if you would like for your. Daughter. Yeah, absolutely. Anything to get started is such a is such a phenomenal way to do it. That was down in the keys, right? It's, well, yeah, but it's the closest key. It's Key Largo so. Hell, maybe I want to go be an intern. By the way, I, you know what, I think that I think it's funny because we live in a time, especially with remote work and you know, I mean, I know that your schedule at this particular moment is crazy. But I think that for a lot of people, there's a lot more time and opportunity to kind of chase these crazy dreams down today than there's ever been before, you know? 100%. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, please. No, I mean, I completely agree, you know, But I am by far. I'm a victim of my own eccentricities, you know, apart from my full time detective work, I also run a private practice firm where I'm a, where I run an expert witness firm. So I do private case work for both prosecution and defence, doing crimes reconstruction, shooting reconstruction, all that kind of stuff.

13:50 And that is pretty much a full time job all on its own is of running a company and then the PhD thing and all these other little projects. I found myself how do you balance your time? What's your what's your typical? Do you have a typical day or do you just is every week something else? Yeah, so I kind of divide 1. I live and die by my calendar. I kind of plan my days out down to like the half hour blocks because I have to. So at the Police Department, I work typically Tuesday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM. So I work for 10's and then I'm on call on off hours and my partner and I split on call status. So you know, somebody has to be available at 3:00 AM to respond to, you know, something.

14:38 So, so that's kind of how that works. And I'll kind of go into what an average day there looks like. Saturday, Sunday, Monday are devoted to my private case work in the company and that can be as short as 3 hours a day or as deep as 12 to 14 hours a day and just really depends on the requirements of the company at that point and my case caseload volume. I stay really freaking busy with it, which is a good thing. I'm by no means complaining, I absolutely love what I do. Once again, you wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do all this if you didn't love it. You. Know absolutely not. And then with the PhD work, I kind of sprinkle it in throughout. I'm in the final phases.

15:19 I've just provided my first draft of my dissertation, so I've got my revision notes. Got to do some revision work over the next month, month and a half, and then I'll submit it be done with it. Is there is there a maximum amount of time that you have to take to do a PhD? Or can you take as much time as you want and sprinkle over next month of years? No, there is a minimum and maximum registration period. So it depends on if you're full time or part time. So I'm a part time researcher. So the minimum registration period is five years, which is I'm at and then the maximum registration period, I want to say is 10 years. It might be 7 though it's I think it's 10 if you're full time.

16:03 Typically what you see is a minimum registration period of about three years, with a maximum registration between 7:00 to 10:00. Right. And I guess that's depending on how heavy or top your dissertation is going to be. Correct. Right, right, right. That's really interesting because one of the things I mean, I've, I've been thinking, you know, I've, I've, I've, I'm always thinking a little bit about going back to school because if excuse me for no other reason other than teaching, I love teaching and I would love an opportunity to teach college students. And, you know, there's, it's almost impossible these days to get a job teaching, teaching in college without a PhD, you know? You know, the PhD thing has been the most, it has really been the biggest challenge for me, not just in terms of conducting the actual research itself, but you truly become a subject matter expert when you do a PhD is, you know, if you have ever had imposter syndrome, I highly recommend you do a PhD because you'll come out on the other end being a being an expert in your field. So.

17:13 What do you? What do you? What's your PhD focusing on? What do you? What are you going to be defending? Yeah, so blood stain pattern analysis, my dissertation research specifically has been in how environmental variables influence our accuracy of measurement, and that is across multiple different surface types. So how does surface roughness, porosity and other environmental variables kind of affect the overall stain shape and size? And then there's also a contingent, which was the the most novel research component. And this is where it got a lot of traction. I just did an interview with BBCA couple weeks ago on it. It was, I did a Astro forensics, I guess is kind of what I'm work.

17:58 I'm calling it Astro. Yeah, as in space. So it was the first space forensics research, so. No way. Let's go. It's so cool. Yeah, it's super cool. And the story behind it is super neat, right. So what we ended up doing was taking the same study that we were doing here on Earth and doing that in a zero gravity environment. And so how this all started, this is a super just bizarre. Yeah, it's a, it's a bizarre series of events. So years ago, I had gone to my advisor and I said, hey, I so back story, I'm a huge space nerd. I if you didn't know, I love anything. Science but I.

18:43 Really love talking about this. OK, I really love space science, right? So I'd gone to my advisor and I said, hey, I'd like to do a thought experiment as the last chapter of the research that takes it into a space environment and how blood stain pattern analysis will be influenced by that space environment. Because here on Earth, gravity is incredibly pervasive. It is always with us. It influences everything that we examine. So when you remove that gravity, how do fluid dynamics affect blood and blood stain patterns? I said. So, you know, I'd like to do it as a thought experiment. And what that just meant was is I would do a pretty exhaustive literature review of studies that are dealing with fluid dynamics and space medicine already. And then I would apply those concepts to a thought experiment of how blood stamp power analysis would work. So as part of that, I'd reached out to a friend of mine who had a colleague at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, JPL, and she put me in touch with her. I was like, hey, I'm looking for any kind of research studies or video that I can get my hands on of fluid dynamic studies on the ISS.

19:59 And so she put me in touch with somebody who put me into and I go down this. So nice that people are willing to do that by the way, isn't it? It's. Fantastic. When you tell somebody just kind of like, hey, this is what I'm looking for it. It never hurts to cold e-mail somebody because what's the worst they can tell? The worst they can tell you is no, in which case you're exactly where you are right now. You have nothing but advantage to gain. So, you know, be willing to be, you know, put yourself out. Willing. Yeah, be willing to put yourself out there because what ended up happening was I got a hold of a study that was on hemorrhaging in space. Right. So bleeding in space and how to hemorrhage control by a guy? Yeah, fascinating because, because, because there's no gravity, right?

20:48 Where's the, how's the hemorrhage going to rupture? I guess a man of error, Like how's he, how's he going to spread? You know what's going to happen. Yeah. So basically, so if you don't know when you cut yourself in space and you start bleeding, there is no gravitational pull, right? So what happens is the fluid just accumulates in kind of this mass. It's called a fluid Dome around that injury site. So like as you move, the mass is going to kind of move with it. That looks like jello, right? It's like if you think, if you think of like a bowl of yellow and how that. That. Jiggle, yeah, but it's around the injury site.

21:29 Right, right, right. So let's say I have a cut in my hands, right. And then the the blood would kind of just. It just oozed out and it would just stay together because of surface tension. So until you have a sufficient force, like until you move your hand quick enough and you create what's called a shear force, that shear force is what's going to detach the liquid from your hand. So I'd read George's paper on it. And so I'd emailed him. I said, hey, this is what I'm doing. I would love if you have any video that you'd be willing to let me look at so I can kind of extrapolate some concepts. Well, he replied back and he said, that sounds absolutely fascinating. I am actually going to be driving down to Kennedy Space Center next month for my next research flight. Would you like to meet for coffee while I pass through Atlanta?

22:18 Nice. Abso freaking lutely I would like to. Make you for coffee. So George and I met at a coffee shop that was just off the highway not too far from where I live. And we proceeded to spend 2 hours talking about all things space medicine and my research. And you know, just it was, it was a great sounding board. And towards the end of the conversation, he asked me a phenomenal question that has forever changed my life. If you could do this research in, in 0 gravity, how would you do your research? And so that's such a phenomenal question because it forces you to do 2 things. One, this type of research is incredibly expensive. So any kind of microgravity research, you know, a parabolic flight arc.

23:07 So if you have ever heard the term the vomit comet, it's a plane that does a series of parabolic flights. And so it induces gravity for researchers that runs about 40 grand to put anything actually up into the ISS. You're talking about millions of dollars because weight matters. So you're in confined environment. So when you're asked the question of how would you do your research, you have to boil your research down to the simplest investigative question. I see. What are we actually looking at, right? And how can we do it in the simplest terms? So on the back of a Starbucks napkin, I kind of sketched out what I was thinking and he said, well, I tell you what, if I have any extra time, if you'll, if you want to ship me a couple materials and I have some extra time, I'll see if I can't do it.

23:56 And you know, so that was December of 2021 that he would did that flight. And unfortunately he didn't have any extra time. His real research, you know, his, his, his research that that NASA was actually paying for took priority. And so it didn't happen. But he did another series of flights in May of the following year. So six months later and he calls me and says Zach, I had time and I was able to get 2 tests out of it. How so? When did he call you? How many years later? Six months later, so. Six months later, got you. So in May of 22 and so we've been able to do 2 tests, which gave me just enough data to kind of work with and from there was able to actually make a study out of it.

24:46 And so that published that published last year in Forensic Science International. I highly recommend anybody that's interested in it you know check it out. Send me a couple of links by the way, to put in the show no caption of the stuff that you've done and I want to read them myself. Yeah, what I wasn't expecting was the kind of the media storm that that ended up starting. So I have since went on Fox News, BBC and a variety of variety of other. New York Post did a comment on it, so it was pretty cool to get some actual. Is that some real like when you when you when that initially starts rolling? And do you think it's like a prank at first? They like, you know, like what is this or how did that feel? Yeah, it was definitely surreal, but gratifying, you know? You know, when you're doing novel research like Astro forensics, you know, people call you crazy. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it was.

25:41 Very much eventually you're going to. You may as well start now, right? That was the whole thought, right, Is, you know, when you're doing something that is so far outside the spectrum, it most people make fun of it because it sounds, it sounds crazy. But I'm going to tell you a little, a little little secret of of how I try and live my life. In order to be exceptional, you have to be the exception. Yeah, Right. So I've never really worried about what people thought of my research or thought of my work. I love what I do. And if you can have that level of self-confidence, yeah, then yeah, go, go for it.

26:24 You know, it, it, it, it was difficult getting it published because of that. So I wrote up the study and I initially had submitted it to Journal of Forensic Science. And Journal of Forensic Science had said that it was the Astro forensics was immature in its study and that maybe in a few years, as it developed, you know, what they'd consider and whatnot. To which, you know, I I laughed at the response and the denial because I'm pretty sure that's what they said to Galileo. Yeah. Not not calling myself Galileo. Wow. That's. I understand. Yeah, but I think I understand what you're trying to say. But yeah, and, you know, it's novel for a reason, right? Novel literally means new research.

27:05 So, you know, so then I pitched it to Science and Justice out of the UK and other journal. They kind of had the same responses, that it was a little, you know, a little nascent, didn't really kind of fit with contemporary research. And then I pitched it to Forensic Science International, and they loved it. There you go. And so, you know, don't. I've been told no a lot in my life of different ideas and. No, it's just a word. No, it's just a word, you know, You got to keep plugging away. I work cold cases a lot and in my cold case investigations. What's the cold case? Sorry. So a cold, yeah, a cold case is any kind of typically it's a homicide or you can have violent crimes, But so I work cold case homicides. So cold case homicides are murder investigations where all leads have been exhausted.

28:00 They're typically old cases, so they can be 20-30 years old that you're still trying to solve. Wow. So in the bet, the the only way that you solve a 30 year old murder is by having dogged determination. Yeah. And and you know, you're going to get lab results that don't help you, you're going to get negative results and you have to have the tenacity to be able to go, OK, that that lab test didn't work for us to produce a positive lead. What's the next one? Right? What's our next piece of evidence that we can try and re examine? What's our next lead that we can try and follow?

28:42 What's the next interview that we can try and go conduct to try and get that that one piece of information that is going to change everything? Yeah, yeah. So being willing to accept and disregard no is a superpower. So you probably so I mean it's interesting. Did you you think you learned that from work or you think that's what made you good at work and you knew that already? Oh, I have no idea. That's a chicken and egg, kind of. I know, right, But there's certain things that people know, you know, like I know that for example, I have a very, you know, similar, similar experiences where I've been told no a lot that I've had to like go alternative routes to try to get the yes, right. You know, I think that's probably a, that is probably a personal trait that that is probably something that I, I bring to work. I grew up kind of a socially awkward kid. You know, I didn't have a whole lot of friends because I was this weird little eccentric kid, right? But the friend group I had, we were a small little friend group.

29:47 And that that was, and we're still all best friends today, 30 years later. That's amazing. Oh yeah, yeah, your true friendship is one of the best blessings that we can have in life. So shout out to my crew where I was going with that is chicken before the egg, right? Yeah, in terms of not being in terms of not just taking a no and like kind of figuring things out because you need to do that with the science journals, you need to do that with work. You need to do that with, you know, like just. I think it's a learned, you know, probably a learned thing. I don't know where I got it from. Yeah, Yeah, I think, I think that I think because I think for a lot of people, the difference between success and failure is who's able to just last another day, just like one more day. So it's funny you say one more day. Harrison Ford has an amazing quote that I can't quite remember off the top of my head, but that's the summary of it, is that consistency is success, right? Is if you can tell yourself one more day, right? And so when I had when I started my most recent kind of YouTube channel, a creative endeavor, that was what I told myself. I said just you just gotta make it one more day. You just gotta shoot one more episode. Just shoot, you know, write one more script and just keep going. And that was a lot of fun for me. That was the creative outlet that I needed And you know, life kind of evolves you and changes, right. So I started kind of my private company started picking up, so I didn't have as much time to

31:18 shoot. And so you kind of figure out how you evolved through that. For me it kind of shifted into writing sub stack articles and I saw that those are. Those are I read a couple of them. I read a couple of them earlier. They were they were a lot of fun. I wanted to actually ask you about them. We'll get back to them. But they're very they're really cool. I like them a lot. Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, I've always loved writing and that was kind of what at that point, the Science Detective, that's the YouTube series that that I, I started last year, year before I wanted to bring forensic science topics and concepts to an audience, right. And, and communicate those science ideas. I prefer video, you know, I prefer visual medium because this is, you know, it's really difficult for me to explain a blood stain pattern to you when I can just show you a really cool blood stain pattern.

32:14 And same thing with like, you know, thinking of those concepts in microgravity. But it's also, you know, so that evolves, you know, kind of ran out of time for, because I had to, you know, actually do real casework. And so that's where I kind of shifted gears and turned it into a riding outlet. And I enjoy that. You know, I'll bounce back and forth. You know, the theme and the concept of the science detective, more than anything is what is consistent. Yes, of course, I know. So yeah, it's a lot of fun, by the way. It's really, really cool. It's really, really cool because because it's fun to to see because when someone has a passion and it like they become an embodiment of a combination of their own, like personality and twist and that passion and like that, like presents it in a whole. It's it's, it's one of the most magical experience. I think that people love, you know, and I think that with enough time and you know, effort getting out there, like the quality is going to be there.

33:17 If you're authentic, you know, when you because you're authentic about it, you know, you can't fake authenticity and passion. You can't fake that kind of stuff. So when you read it and like you see all the work you're doing, I'm like, this guy loves you know what he does, You know, like you can, you can detect that immediately. Yeah, I my biggest problem is I, I have too many hands on too many different projects right now. You know, my therapist asked me several months ago. She's like, what happens if you don't do them all at the same time? I was like, I don't know, my head explodes. Yeah. But it was such a great question that challenged me at that kind of season in my life was to really try and focus on once again, getting back to basic principles of what is the most important project right now.

34:14 Let's get that done so that I can kind of compound interest my time and move on to other ones. Right. So like I've got right now I've got three different books I'm working on that are all at different phases. And it's like trying to make a dent. Three different dinners at the same time, right? You're not you're going to make a crappy dinner across all three of them. Whereas if you just take one project, devote everything into it, and then kind of go from there, I kind of equate the idea if you've ever heard of the snowball technique with like paying down debts and stuff like that, is you devote all your, you know, financial resources to 1. Project.

34:55 Yep. And then you snowball it to the next one. Same thing with your time is, you know, if you can focus everything on one project or endeavor, whatever, then you kind of compound from there. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, it's, it's just, again, it's just a matter of the discipline of doing it. You know, I said this yesterday and I said this today and I'll and I'll say it again tomorrow. I think that that in five years and 10 years from now or even 15 years from now, the difference between what's going to make people successful or not is their ability to be autonomous and disciplined. And I think that, you know, like, like what you, what you do is like the way that you reach out to people, try to make something happen, make a connection.

35:40 Do you know anyone else that would be able to help me move that on to the next person? Like we have information. Information is more easily achievable than ever. But connections and discipline are actually what we're going to need to actually turn that information to something tangible, you know? Oh, absolutely. You know, and being in my and law enforcement and, and that forensic community for more than 16 1/2 years at this point. If I run across a problem, you know, on a scene or dealing with some kind of analysis or some kind of hairball thing that I'm thinking of. If I don't know the answer, I can probably get to the answer within two phone calls is I'll know somebody that I can call who will know somebody who knows the answer, right? Is.

36:25 And that's a lot of times you, you run into when you're trying to solve difficult cases like we'll go back to cold case homicides. They're cold for a reason, right as you have exhausted all available analytical testing at that point. So you have to think outside of the box on being able to obtain that partial DNA profile or whatever it is because all the investigators that have touched that case before, you didn't think of that, right? Or this the science and technology didn't exist at the time, right? So that's what that's one of the big things now is we look at cases that were working cold cases like can we apply any advanced DNA analysis to this case, right? So when you start kind of getting on the fringe of what modern day forensic science can do, I'll give you a good example.

37:20 I had a case where I had a surface that is incredibly abnormal. I won't kind of say what that surface is just because it still is an active investigation, but it's a really abnormal surface that you would never process for DNA today. And then you wouldn't think to look there. Yeah, you'll, it pushes the limits of what our capability is. You're talking about such a low level of DNA that may you wouldn't think to be right. Yeah, you just wouldn't. Most labs aren't going to try it, but I had an idea of how we can do it. And so I called my main state crime lab. I said, hey, is this something you can do? Is this something that we we can do in doing it through this process?

38:10 And they said no, that that's not possible. It falls outside of their validation protocols. Excuse, excuse, excuse. So then I contacted a good colleague of mine. He runs a private crime lab shop out of California and he's kind of my sounding board when I have crazy snowball, you know, crazy hair brained ideas. And I called him, I said, hey, I've got this type of evidence and I want to get DNA off of it. And here's how I'm thinking we can do it. Is that something we can try? And what I love about him is he'll always say doesn't hurt to try, you know, because he he's going to charge me for it, right? So I mean, he's got, you know, once again, you have nothing but advantage.

38:59 You know there's only upside. You know if at most. If at most. Yeah, if at most the, it fails to be able to develop a, you know, suitable profile or any kind of partial profile, then you're exactly in the same place that you were already. So I sent this, this item out to him and it worked right. Amazing. We we ended up generating something off of it that everyone else said that you couldn't do. So that that once again comes back to being able to be not just tenacious, but innovative thinking, being able to think. Yeah. Being able to think outside the box and just don't don't care what people think man, you know, have. You have you ever thought about heading out? I know this.

39:49 I mean, I'm only, I'm only going to say this because I'm super, super interested in this whole like era and time period and top and like everything about it. But you head out to California to like LA to like where like the whole Manson family was. And like there's a lot of there's a lot of of, you know, deaths apparently that were associated with the family that were never actually closed up cases because they didn't have the evidence. Can you hear me All right, by the way? Well, yeah, I can hear you. OK, yeah. And so there's a great book called Chaos. I don't know if you ever heard of it or read it by a guy named Tom O'Neill. And he started as an he's an investigative journalist and, and he started by writing a piece for the 30 year anniversary for the Manson murders in the, you know, 95.

40:37 And he's supposed to write a news news article and it turns into a 20 year project. And he wrote this enormous book, incredible, not enormous, but incredible book that's just so detailed, Rich about about Manson, all the potential directions that were that were associated with him. And he doesn't have any kind of he's missing evidence. He's missing a lot of, you know, either evidence or files and stuff like that. There's. A lot of that's one of the whole. Area. You know, that's one of the most difficult things about working cold cases is over years, over decades, evidence gets lost, evidence deteriorates, evidence gets accidentally destroyed. You know, or people are late or people, or the technology has not been updated and people haven't come back to look at it again, you know?

41:23 Yeah. It's really interesting. I mean, do you ever work with investigative journalists and stuff like that to kind of try to figure out like. Not within my government casework, just, I mean, there's, there's a pretty hard line there between, you know, being able to talk about criminal investigations with media. But what if, what if someone comes up to you and says, hey, I have this story I'm working on. I need help finding some evidence, you know, in terms of XY and Z evidence, you know, murder, DNA or whatever. Yeah. So as long as it's not a conflict with my current casework, you know, So as long as it's not, you know, and by any way that I represent, I recently did that for a documentary series of a pretty infamous case, cold case from the 60s here in Atlanta. And so I just did a piece with them to, I'm not going to say just because that documentary series is currently in production.

42:20 OK, fine. Let me know. Let me know when it comes. Out Yeah, yeah, it it'll be it should be airing in in October. That's exciting. I need to set a. Reminder yeah, it's super exciting, but they, but there's the same thing is, you know, it was a a private investigator and investigative journalist who were shooting this and they were deep diving into this case and they reached out to me because of we just closed a cold case with my agency and they wanted my opinion and thoughts on this particular case. And so that was that was a neat opportunity and a fascinating look into, you know, this case from the 60s. Cool. So I'm excited to hear. I'm excited to find out about it. I'm really excited because I love that whole era. I love like 60s.

43:02 America, to me, is one of the most fascinating points in time. Ever. I very much feel the same about the 50s and 60s, right? Is that whole concept of retrofuturism? Yes. I think I may have been born in the wrong era. You know what? I feel the same way. But I actually think that for people like us that feel like we were born in the wrong era, we were probably meant to just carry over the spirit of that era into this one. You know, actually, and maybe that's what it is right is maybe it's the spirit that I well, apart from the architectural and like just like the beautiful design concepts of that era. But the you have this post World War 2 excitement and enthusiasm and this innovation that really. Explosion of creativity.

43:50 Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know, to me, I, I, I look at that and it just seems a little different from our current techno, whatever it is that we're currently in. I would love to see a blending of the two and I'd love to see that kind of those design, same design concepts. I think that's coming up. I think that's coming up, I hope. I think so. Yeah, the the reason why I think that is because I think that the 50s and 60s were kind of a relatively similar in the sense that there was a streak of anti authoritarianism that kind of was driving the underlying motivation.

44:32 Like a rejection of the whole militaristic World War 2, tough parents kind of culture where you're supposed to live a straight proper life. And, and a lot of people, you know, wanted to pursue their own thing. And, and at that time, you know, trust in institutions had collapsed, you know, or in in many, many ways. And, and I think that we're experiencing a similar thing where we have all the technology and intelligence and creativity. And in the last couple of years it has been a lot, you know, lack of trust in institutions. And almost like I was scrambling to try to re establish like what's going, you know, who's going to emerge as like the new trusted, creative, intelligent, honest, authoritative perspective and and everyone's kind of scrambling for it at one time.

45:15 You know, it's really, really interesting. And I think that that's going to, I think that's what's going to lead to creative and and cultural blossoming, I hope. I agree. We're at this unique point as a society where you have such a hard division of political ideologies and societal ideologies, right is everyone has a very firm opinion on how our society should look and be shaped and be run. And that happens to be meeting at a time point when we're also at this technological revolution. With ground breaking ground with every day is just another. Oh, it's fascinating.

46:03 You know, it's, it's I love being in the future. I can't wait for my flying car. But you have these all these roads that are starting to merge at the same point, right? And I have no idea what the next two or three years are going to. Look, I I I'm excited, though. I don't know, but I. Choose to just like Doctor Who, I choose to be an eternal optimist. So regardless of who you voted for or how you what you think of our political parties at at the ground level of our society, I choose to see the good, which is very difficult to do in my career.

46:46 But yeah. How do you how do you keep that up? How do you maintain that? Oh. Is it just like you just choose to kind of see the goodness that you put out into the world and you see it kind of come back to you? I think so. You know, I, I have been, I've investigated tons of really just horrific scenes over the years that, you know, do leave some mental scars. I'll be the first one to tell you that, you know, I was involved in a shooting pretty early on in my career. And then that was followed by, you know, working lots of horrific child murders and stuff like that, that had a ultimate impact on like post traumatic stress and PTSD and all that kind of stuff. So it took me several years to try and understand how, how that kind of my, my personal outlook was and how it evolved and developed for me.

47:44 I nowadays I, I work things very academically, very clinically is the best way to try and describe that, you know, So when I go and work, you know, a terrible scene, it, it's just a, it's just a scene to me. I'm very much disembow or not disembodied. Disassociated. Disassociate from the emotional context of that scene. So let's can we talk about that a little bit? Is that OK? Yeah, absolutely. So I did, I did want to get to this. This is one of the many topics that I wanted to get to. But yeah, the, the what some things that you've experienced, I guess earlier in your career, things that help shape you.

48:27 How do how do you know, how do people doing public service, you know, carry the weight of the responsibility that you carry and what do you do to deal with it and stuff like that. And I would love for you, honestly, I don't care what direction you go. I just want to hear what you think about all that. So take it away please. Yeah, when I first started in law enforcement, mental health. What's Atlanta like, sorry, in terms of law enforcement, in terms of like what do you typically see? What kind of crime do you typically see in Atlanta? Like I know for example, certain places are more prone, you see drugs more often or some places are more geared towards prostitution or. Violent. I mean, do you have it all in Atlanta?

49:08 You have everything from violent crime to human trafficking to drugs. I mean, I work for an agency that is in the metro Atlanta area, so I don't work for Atlanta proper. I see. But it's the same concept, right? It just kind of spreads out. So you have very much a diverse selection of crime types. OK. But yeah, I mean, when I first started in law enforcement, we, you didn't really talk about mental health. You just I, I very much came up under a man up and kind of toughen it out and, you know, you just don't talk about you just move on to your next, your next assignment, you know, your next tasking that you got to handle.

49:51 And that slowly evolved and changed over my career. Thank God for the better, you know, law enforcement, public safety in general. So law enforcement, firefighters, communications and corrections have an incredibly high suicide rate. Last year, more cops committed suicide than were killed in the line of duty. No way. Yeah. So it is we we are more likely to die by our own hands than by, you know, a bad guy. And that's because, oh, it's absolutely horrendous. Thankfully, within the past 10 years, that has very much made a shift. You know, the concept of destigmatizing mental health was a big thing with that normalizing the conversation about mental health. You know, going out to it's very difficult to try and discuss and talk about some of the scenes that we go to with somebody who has no context or understanding of it, right? Is I can't really tell you what you know, digging up with your hands a murdered 4 year old feels like or. But that's stuff that you that you guys have to deal with. Yeah, I can very much think of the day before Christmas of 2013 where that was what I was doing is, you know, having to dig up a fresh, shallow grave of a child and that that is and you. Take that whole you, take that

51:21 with you forever. No, I mean, yeah. I mean, that was what, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, something like that. And I can still very much see the fog of the woods that I was in. And, you know, I can go right back to it over time, time, time dulls it, right? But it, it's a compounding thing, right? Because then you're moving on to your next case. Yeah, ultimately that all caught up with me. So that how do you deal with it? It's kind of dependent upon the individual per Everyone handles it differently, right? You know, if you handle it in a really positive light, you're probably working out and exercising because exercise is incredibly helpful for mental health. You're prioritizing doing that, right? I try, I try to once again, we come back to time, I try and work out at least two to three times a week that that has definitely not been the case over the past month and a half because my basement has been under a remodel. So I haven't had that's been my excuse is what that is. I got you.

52:28 Sounds like a good one. Yeah, Yeah, I think so. So, you know, that's a healthy way of doing it, finding those positive, healthy outlets with your family, stuff like that. Because then there's the negative outlet, right? There is, you know, alcoholism, Yep, alcoholism, you know, substance abuse, those really negative behaviors that can increase risk, right? So buying, you know, really crazy things and you know, gambling and all those different vices can be so easy because it's giving us that dopamine hit, right? What I mean, that's not new novel to just law enforcement. Everyone is constantly looking for that dopamine hit to take their mind off of their own individual stresses and problems.

53:18 My baseline and my stresses and problems are just a little different from your stresses and problems, right? Doesn't mean that we're not both dealing with stresses and problems. It's just yours. May be, you know, you know, you you had a bad day and you know, you're you're under a lot of stress at work and you know, because you got to get, you know, different expense reports out or, or whatever normal, you know, the normal person does. My bad day looks a way freaking different than that. So that's the the dicotomy there for me and my career. I went down a, you know, a really, it crept up on me and I didn't even realize it right, so.

54:01 Because it's because it happened slowly or in smaller in small bites. 100% right. So I was when I was involved in a shooting back in 2013. What happened? A friend of mine at an agency north of us had stopped a car for a license plate violation. As he was walking up to the car, the guy gets out and shoots him seven times. By the grace of God, he ends up surviving. And. So, so this guy then flees down South that down the highway and our agency ends up picking him up. I'm a new word. I'm a, you know, less than one month detective. Then like any good detective, I was, you know, just leaving dinner and I end up in this car chase and shooting with this with this guy who tried killing, you know, a friend of mine tried killing me and a lot, you know, several other officers.

54:53 What was his story? Was he on? Was he on drugs? Was he part of a was he a crime? Was he a gang man? What was what was the situation? He was in a mental health crisis. He was basically going out looking for. A fight, a lot of that. Yeah, yeah. I mean normal people who aren't having mental health crises don't try and obsolete officers. Yeah, you could be an aggressive, you know, like you could be. You don't have to be having a mental break to be to be acting violently or aggressively necessarily. Yeah, absolutely. That's correct. Yeah. You know, so we end up in, you know, a hellacious gunfight. He ends up getting killed, you know, and thank, thank God Dave survives.

55:36 So that was pretty early on. I was 24 years old at the time. That's really young. So what, what what are you experiencing? So are you are you? I'm only I'm just curious about like I started two months ago doing jiu Jitsu, right, Just, you know, totally. Thank you very much. It's a lot of fun. It's again being the crap out of right and. And getting twisted up into like looking like a pretzel. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, and there's and there's and there's two or three times where especially. And it's interesting starting this kind of later in my life because it's a totally new experience. My body is not used to any of that. And on the way home from my second class, I, I, my whole body, I, I, I was driving home, my whole body was shaking and like, my, like, I was just going through this massive physical. Yeah, so I'm.

56:26 Not sure whether it's a trauma or shock or what, right? But like if you guys are shaking, I'm on the wheel and like, I can't. And that's just with a couple of friendly guys that just want to teach me some moves that I happen to be taking falls in the wrong way. You know, like you can't imagine being 24 year olds and, and being in this world. So at that point, your body is undergoing a fight or flight or freeze response. And so now I kind of teach about Physiology and neurology of stress and Combat Stress, right? And so within those first couple seconds, as soon as you are exposed to a stimulus that you perceive to be advantage, you know, disadvantage to your health, you know, such as somebody shooting at you or being twisted up like a pretzel and getting into a fight, your body is going to start dumping hormones, right?

57:16 So epinephrine, neuro epinephrine gets dumped into the bloodstream and that is going to kind of start that adrenaline response. So we're going to start experiencing heightened increased heart rate, increased respiratory rate because we're trying to get more oxygen into our blood for our brain to be able to process these things. Yeah. You know, your blood's gonna start kind of getting pulled away from your limbs and towards your core. That's why you start kind of getting those shaking. And then you're gonna have, you know, cortisol being introduced into your, into your bloodstream so they can try and level it out. But yeah, you know, your body undergoes a crazy chain reaction just in terms of blood chemistry during those kind of responses.

58:01 Not to mention, you know, the mental health component of after the fact, right, of anything like post traumatic stress or anxiety and you know, depression, stuff like that. For me, I, I had a hard time sleeping after that in terms of like falling asleep. So I was diagnosed with acute post traumatic stress as well as pre insomnia. That's just a really fancy way of saying I had a hard time falling asleep because my brain was going 1000 miles an hour. So have you? What do you, what do you think about the, the research There's, and there's I guess a good amount of it, although it's not really done so much in the states about PTSD and psychedelics and stuff like that and using it to use it. Like, do you think that that's that should be something that we look to use for our law enforcement and our, you know, and our veterans and, and the people that you know, and the people that are on the front lines? Yeah, You know, so I have, I mean, similarly you have, you know, listened to quite a few podcast. You know, I think Sean Ryan talks a lot about it on his show.

59:09 Oh yeah, you know, so he there is definitely something. He's the hero for talking about it the way he does, by the way. 100%, you know, shout out to Sean Ryan. You know, you're, you're you very much normalize the conversation that is needed both in the veteran community and in the public safety community. So I very much admire that about him. He's a hero, I think. You know, I think that it definitely merits study, rigorous scientific study in terms of what the long term effects are, whether you know, if you're at that point with post traumatic stress or cumulative post traumatic stress, you probably aren't going to be in a duty ready status to where you can. I mean, maybe you can, I don't know. Can't can't imagine how much how much worse is it than the PTSD that keeps law enforcement officers up every night that you know, like how much you know, I mean, and down the line, how much does what we had this does the status quo compound and how much is it like you said, you know, more more deaths by suit by your own hands than by than than in the field. I'd rather seek interesting and hopefully helpful realities than than alcohol, you know?

1:00:28 Oh, yeah. You know, if DMT is helpful and and better than you know, Yeah. You went with Coors. I went with Jack. You know, my, my mine was Crown Royal. Like I loved Crown Royal. Do you? Do you still? Do you still drink? No, I quit drinking a couple years ago. I quit drinking I guess probably 3 or 4 years ago now. And not, not because of not because of this, you know, I quit drinking because I wanted to quit smoking. And quitting smoking was by far one of the hardest things that I, I personally ever did. And so I had very much had this association with the two. You know, when I drank, I wanted a cigarette.

1:01:09 And you know, so best way, the best discipline I had was it's a much. More, it's a way healthier outlook. I mean, cutting out drinking and smoking in one go is just. Spectacular for you? Yeah, it very much was. And you know then I wanted to. That was very much when I really started kind of feeling that I wanted to level up. And you know, Jocko, if you've ever listened to Jocko, yeah, Jocko's podcast, he is adamant about that. There is nothing good that comes out of alcohol. And I could not agree with him more about that. Having gone through everything I've gone through in my career, you know, that alcohol only, it almost cost me my job. It almost cost me lots of different things because I was trying to medicate this post traumatic stress and, and trying to sleep in a really unhealthy way. So you know, anyone listening out there, you know, I, I encourage you to really question what does alcohol actually bring you?

1:02:15 And if you are honest with yourself, the answer is a sum of 0. You know, but. I think that it's a little bit more and by the way, I'm certainly not a heavy advocate of alcohol period. I do think that for people to have a drink or two as a social lubricant, it could be could be like once a week or once every couple of weeks could be a massive benefit to themselves to help them get over some kind of social hump that they have. I think but but but physically, you know, but like to use it as a remedy or to use it as a medication is is. A by no means, don't get me wrong, I am not this anti alcohol purist. If you want to go get, you know, have drinks. I envy you.

1:02:56 I very much miss it. I went, you know, but and I had always told myself that, you know, after I quit smoking and been clean from smoking for a year, that I can go back to drinking it. It's not like I have this like I can't do it. No, it was just a personal choice to wear. Yeah, yeah, totally. And, and, and the longer that it, it kind of persisted, the more I was like, hey, you know, I don't need this in my life. You know, I feel a lot better not having it in my life. You know, I haven't, you know, I don't wake up with hangovers or anything like that. So that, that is helpful, you know, with the using it as a social lubricant. I definitely understand that, right. But then what are you doing there? You're using alcohol to remedy a personal problem and, and that is some kind of social anxiety, right?

1:03:45 So, so I just with anybody, I, I encourage you understand its place in your life and whether or not it's actually needed, right? Because I can tell you I have of at least in my career, I have seen so many adverse actions and incidents that alcohol was a contributing factor, whether that was a DUI or fatal wrecks or murders, you know, all because alcohol was the inhibitor, you know of good choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I totally agree with you, you know, and I again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm definitely not advocate for it.

1:04:31 I'm definitely not an advocate against it in a healthy way. I happen to know that even for myself, as I became more mature, I realized that it alcohol tends to lead me to lead me to down more immature behaviors and paths that just don't align with the way the decisions and ways to of interacting that I want to be, you know, that, you know, the way that I am. But you know, and for example, like you said, I do have social anxiety and something, you know, and if I'm in a new setting and I'm at a wedding and I've never, I haven't met anyone around me, then a drink or two will, you know, get me talking to one person over and say, what are you up to? If you know? And I'm, it's funny because if once you start talking to me, then I'll jump right in.

1:05:12 But to make that initial like initial hello, yeah, kills me, you know, But do is there a lot of corruption in in in law enforcement that you've experienced? No, it's not like what you see on TV's. No, it's not. No, no, that, that is a very, very, very small percentage of what you know of law enforcement. Gotcha. So majority, majority of are you are you suspicious of people being corrupt or not typically? Not typically, just because that that is so incredibly rare, right? Right, and do. No, that's, that's not to say that it doesn't happen. You know, Al, there was a story a couple weeks ago about an entire small Police Department out in Alabama that was super corrupt.

1:06:04 But once again, that that's you're talking about a series of actions and events that are so statistically small compared. You know, it's just like the whole concept of excessive force. You know, if you look at, you know, that became really obviously a highlighted social perspective not just during Ferguson back in what 2016, but also with George Floyd, you know, back in 2020. I mean, actually this week is the anniversary, right? You know, the five year anniversary of George Floyd and and that was a horrific thing, but and it brought, but it brought police excessive police violence in into the spotlight, right. And what most people don't realize is that out of the 50 plus billion law enforcement citizen encounters a year that the actual likelihood of it resulting in in the sustained allegation of excessive force or police brutality is less than a thousandth of a percent, right?

1:07:15 It is where it is something that is so astronomically small you you have a higher likelihood of being struck by lightning multiple times. Really than by having that really. Yeah. Oh yeah. Wow. Wow. I didn't know that. That's amazing to hear, you know? Yeah, I was living in Seattle at the time. When? When the riots were happening. Yeah, and. I mean, I was living here in Atlanta, and Atlanta was burning because of Rashard Brooks, so. What was So what? So what what what was that like was especially from. I'm sorry, does first of all, does law enforcement or does, I guess doing your public work restrict you in any way from your private work?

1:08:00 Like when you told them that you're going. Yeah, so you and you told them that you want to open your own thing, open your own shop, what they say. Yeah. My agreement with my agency is that I just won't work any private cases within the county that I work in, right, Because that would be a conflict of interest. So I just don't work any private cases within Fulton County, which is the county that Atlanta's in. But, you know, all the surrounding counties, you know. And so, you know, in my private case work, I do everything nationally, right? So I've got case work in everything from Georgia to Alaska and Texas and Illinois. Is that all there? I do, Really. Yeah. Awesome. So what's that like?

1:08:43 That's one of the best. That's probably, in my opinion, the best perk of opening up my own shop was, you know, the opportunity to travel and meet and network with new clients and new attorneys. You know, I doing both prosecution and defense casework makes me, it gives me a unique perspective in my government casework because I am a defense expert. So I understand kind of I've learned the thought process, the thought processes behind what a defense attorney is looking at in terms of how they approach a case and mitigate the case. And that has made my government case work a lot better, more roll around, I think.

1:09:26 How so? Can you tell me can? You tell me the difference in like, I guess philosophies, perspectives, coming at something from a defensive perspective or as a prosecutor. Like what do you mean? Like what if I were hiring you and I was a prosecutor? If I was, if I was a defendant, you know, what's the difference between what I'd be asking you to do or the responsibilities that you have? I mean, so typically it's this, you're asking me to do the same thing, right? It is, you know, that's why I went into what I do is evidence doesn't have a, you know, have a bias. You know, the evidence is what the evidence is. The interpreting it has a bias. The interpreting has a bias, absolutely right. So when I'm dealing with concepts like shooting reconstruction, right, is you can only you, there is no bias to the measurement of a, of a trajectory flight path, right? It's going to only line up a certain way. It is the interpretation of, of how that flight path goes with the overall story of, of that case, right? And that is up to the prosecutor or the defense attorney where I kind of help them is advising in manners of whether or not something actually could be possible, right. So is it possible that the defendant could have been acting in self-defense?

1:10:47 Well, based off of all of this evidence, yes. Or based off of this one, you know, based off of this gunshot wound in this blood stain pattern, Absolutely not. Your defendant as guilty as sin, you should probably take. Wow. Wait, so, So what would be the case with the, can you give me some examples of like cases that happened that you can describe what gave it away to you that it was possible or not? You know, because I guess, I guess the whole and I guess the way to to kind of keep keep framing this is beyond a reasonable doubt or not, right? Like that's all that the court uses. So you're not saying this for a fact, You're saying within a reasonable doubt. Could this person have been acting in self-defense or within a reasonable doubt? Is this guy guilty of sin? You know, when it comes to when it comes to acting in self-defense, you know, my, I am just testifying or providing opinion to, you know, what the blood stain patterns are or what the shooting reconstruction evidence is or what the body positioning possibly could have been. And then that data is interpreted into the story by the attorney.

1:11:54 So I had a case in Houston back in February that was a self-defense case and I ended up testifying to talking about response time. So kind of a subset of shooting reconstruction is human factors and how we respond under stress, right? So I was kind of talking a little bit about that earlier about what your body's kind of undergoing, but like response time to a stimulus, right? So a stimulus being, you know, I'm presented with maybe an armed robber, say for example, you know, is how quick can I respond to that by, you know, what's the average draw time and the average time to draw your gun and fire a shot, right?

1:12:35 You know, based off of, you know, studies within the past decade that ranges between 1.7 seconds to 1.42 seconds on average. And we know with, and there's a obviously a standard deviation range there, but we can start taking some of that information and interpreting that across other concepts that are other types of evidence that we have, right? So if we can use blood stain patterns like in this case that this is what I did, right, was looking at the blood stain patterns to understand the movement of the decedent after he was shot. You know. So that would help me understand the original position that he was in, as well as taking that data and correlating it with the flight paths that he had of bullet wounds that he had. And said those start to help me understand where he was at specific times when he was shot, which I can then use to compare against testimonial evidence.

1:13:32 Yeah. And so that's what I do a lot of. But is it so does it? I mean, I guess I know this also, I guess from jujitsu just starting that your bodies are capable of falling in ways that we have that that if you remove our consciousness or you remove, you know, our brain control, our bodies are capable of falling in ways that we have agree, have no way of explaining or like even recreating again, you know, so, so like someone's getting shot and their body obviously immediately goes, I'm sure it's flooded with, you know, this adrenaline with this, you know, without, with the stress, with the everything, just like, and you probably don't even remember how you landed, what happened, how how you fell. Depends on the nature of the of the individual wound, right? You know, is it a fatal gunshot wound? You know, to where you.

1:14:26 You shot in the leg. Yeah. Or is it, you know, something that is? Yeah. So what was that fatal? In that case, it was a fatal gunshot wound. Gotcha. And so your job was to prove, because it was self-defense, that the person was the person was responding to some to, to to to a threat. Oh, I'm not proving anything. I am providing. Potential evidence of. Whether or not I'm providing, I'm providing factual information about the evidence for the jury to decide if you know, based off of those facts that self-defense was reasonable in this case, they agreed that it was, you know, that self-defense was reasonable and they acquitted him. And that was the absolute correct answer. And you know, in my opinion, I, I very much always did bifurcate personal opinions, right, and personal feelings and. Emotional feelings from my casework. Yeah.

1:15:32 Oh yeah. I mean, that's kind of the key thing is you, you have to remain objective throughout all of your analysis, regardless of what type of casework if you're doing, if you're a, you know, a police detective or a crime lab analyst or a private examiner is that's the whole, the point of forensic sciences that it is objective and does not care about guilt or innocence. It just cares about, you know what is the factual information you. Feel that the facts that the facts of this scenario were not properly understood and and the results do not manifest the way that you felt the evidence laid out.

1:16:15 Absolutely. It does happen. Yeah, it does happen. I mean, look at me, we can see that in exoneration cases, right, Is, you know, evidence can only be misinterpreted, like you said. And that is not just misinterpretation by an analyst, by a forensic analyst, but also by the jury, right? You know, the, you know, if you look at cases like I think of the case of David Cam. And so David Cam was an innocent man who was convicted guilty of murdering his wife and his children. And it was all based off of who's found guilty because of bad blood stain pattern analysis. You know, there the analyst in that case made opinions that they, there was no factual basis to make. And so that influences the jury to believe that the weight of that evidence is of greater value than it actually is. And so you know.

1:17:21 Can you argue that should be illegal to do that? OK. I mean, I could make that argument all day long, but you know, the problem is, is that we have and that is a failure of the criminal justice system more than anything, because it is up to the Trier of fact, you know, that that judge is supposed to be the gatekeeper of, you know, expert witness testimonial evidence. So when I testify in court, I have to basically state my qualifications and my experience. And then the judge will say that, you know, he's recognized as an expert in, you know, student reconstruction or blood stamp out whatever I'm being recognized as an expert in.

1:18:06 And then I can give my opinion and I can testify to those opinions and to the factual evidence, Right, right, right. If I'm not found to be of sufficient value, you know, or to have sufficient skills and experience, you know, then IAA lay witness cannot give opinion, you know, I, I look at. People say objection speculation because that would be that would be the line that people. That there's, yeah, there's a ton. There's a ton of different, you know, rules in court of what you can, you know, object to. Yeah. But we, we have our criminal justice system set up a kind of a very specific adversarial way for a reason. Because the whole idea is that the adversarial system helps the Trier fact, whether that's the judge or the jury, refine all the points down to the truth, right? And that's not always, that doesn't always work, you know, and we see that in exoneration cases. Blackstone's ratio.

1:19:13 So there was a rabbi named Miamondis back during the 15th century and he came up with this thought, this concept that it is better to let 1000 guilty persons go than to ever imprison an innocent man, right. And then there's a guy named Blackstone back in the 19th century, he was an attorney. He kind of refined it and said, you know, it would became 100 guilty persons than to ever, you know, convict an innocent man and put him in prison. And that is very much I could not agree more. That's why I do the work the way I do is because the worst thing that we could ever do is put an innocent person in prison and take away somebody's freedoms.

1:19:57 And that is a. Something as a detective, as a police officer that I tried that never lose touch of is the the weight of what you were doing, the weight of the power that you have in doing criminal investigations is so great. So yeah, that's tangent that I. Didn't. No, no, no. I think, no. I think it's amazing. I think it's amazing. I want to ask you one last question. First of all, I want to absolutely, absolutely have you back on the podcast again because this is a blast. And there's a hundred more things that I want to get to. Yeah. We'll have to find time again in the future to do this again and, you know, hear what else you're working on. The last thing I want to ask, two last things I want to ask you, but the last thing I want to ask you is the Han Solo shot. Who?

1:20:46 Fight who? Fight Who shot? Who shot first? George Lucas tried pacifying it with his revisions and these. Are business Dude, George Lucas is a revisionist. Dude, he is a revisionist, you know. So actually I just finished the George Lucas biography like 3 weeks ago. Fantastic biography for. I would definitely read that. It's, I think it's called George Lucas a life, and it is I, I'd done that one. I I love biographies. Me too. I just. Started his technology. Started Pixar. Yeah. It's amazing. It's so cool. Yeah. That's why True stories of homage.

1:21:27 Speaking of. Pixar, Have You Done Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson? I of course, and I'm working on, there's an amazing book to Pixar and beyond. The CFO of the company, Lawrence Levy, writes about taking the company public from a business perspective as a CFO of Pixar. While I was going public in 95 and working with Steve Jobs and everything like that. And, and he and I have have corresponded a couple of times. I'm dying to get him on the podcast. That's awesome. But yeah, the Toy Story's a homage to to Star Wars. Yeah, so Steve Jobs. Oh see, I could talk about books all day long. Another great one is Bob Iger's Right of a Lifetime. You like?

1:22:11 That one, I loved it. I got to read it. I got. To read it because he brings a really great perspective of leadership and I love anything, any kind of leadership biography. I mean, extreme ownership going back to Jocko, right? Extreme ownership was one of the first leadership books that I really kind of dived into. And thank God I did it early in my career because that that that philosophy has very much molded my outlook on my work ethic. And I think that that has been a driving factor of why one, I'm just kind of neurotic when it comes to diving into a bunch of projects, but really taking that concept of ownership and, you know, the more ownership you take, the more successful you'll be.

1:22:56 Yeah, I got to check out. I got to, I got to check out that that George Lucas book. So. So George would. Like to say that Han Solo totally shot first. He did shoot first. Can you explain why you got how you got there? Yeah, cuz I watched the original cuz the original videos were the best, you know? Yeah, New Hope, The unadulterated New Hope from 78 is the only good version. Yeah, yeah, I'm a little sad. What happened to the Star Wars world? What what do you think of the movie Interstellar? So, and this is absolutely, this will be a great reason of why we have to have a. Another. Conversation, another round of conversation is so a side hobby of mine.

1:23:41 I'm very much kind of a polymath and so I love anything that deals with like quantum dynamics and quantum physics and and so the concept of understanding reality. Yeah, Interstellar is a great movie because it one it's a great you know, it it it's a beautifully shot masterpiece. It really is it is a cinematic masterpiece. But the concepts of multi dimensions and what space-time actually is, I think it's done really well in there.

1:24:26 You know the concepts of you know how black holes work and you know how we can visualize them And going back to, you know, my level space. Yeah, I'm. Sorry. But yeah, it's really good. I I love how they ended up you. Know OK, we're gonna have to get back to that we're gonna have to go back to that so. Yeah, I'm a huge proponent of simulation hypothesis and you know. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know what? As time goes on, I think that I think it feels more and more like inevitable. You know, it's pretty, I, I, I'm a little nervous that we're a couple of years away from just not being able to discern what reality is from anything and like, you know, from AI or from technology. And we're just, you know, we it just we, we have no idea what reality is.

1:25:19 Oh yeah. It's really scary. It's really freaky. But you know what? I, I, I do hope that I do hope. And I believe that because there's been a cosmic positive karmic history where, like, putting out goodness and effort and all those things, you know, lead to positive consequences. And it's not on the outside. On the inside, you know in one way or the other that things will turn out OK, but just not the way that we expect anything to be. Yeah, it's that concept of manifestation, right? Is, you know, projecting how you want the world around you to be. You know, if if you, I am a firm believer of if you can dream it, you can do it.

1:26:10 There's another Walt Disney quote for you. But if you're not happy with where you are in life, then change it. It it really is that simple, you say, Oh, but Zach, I've got pills to pay. I've got you know, the my friend, you are only within this particular lifetime here once. So do not don't forego it. Don't. Give it up it episode is going to have is going to be so much fun. Oh yeah, this gets into the really philosophical stance. Yeah, yeah, that's the stuff I love. It, you know, it's, I work with death on such a regular basis that it has very much given me a perspective on the value of life. You know, a friend of mine was killed on duty a couple months ago and you know, it was, that was by far the hardest scene I have ever worked.

1:27:12 And it very much was kind of a, I don't know, an earth shattering moment or series of moments, right? It really gives you pause for perspective. But life's short. Live it. If you're not happy with it, change it. It really is that simple. Zach, this has been such a pleasure. I'm so happy that you responded to my e-mail initially, and I'm so happy you made this happen. And I'm so excited for our future conversations. I'm so excited to see the work you're doing and the research that you're doing. And you're literally, dude, you're, you're, you're living, you're living science fiction in this world. And it's just science.

1:27:59 And it's so cool. And as an observer, I just want to say I'm a huge fan. I really appreciate everything that you're doing. Well, I greatly appreciate it. I, I love what I do. And you know, I, I try and I, I try and actually live what I preach. And you know, like Humphrey Bogart said at the end of Casablanca, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I hope so. I hope so, Zach. Thanks so much for the time, man. We're going to be, you're definitely going to be in touch and we'll talk soon, OK? Sounds great. Take care and be safe. Good night everyone. Bye.