In 2015 I decided that in order to better educate myself about the forensic aspects of writing crime stories I needed to undertake some formal tuition.

Attending University was not an option and anyway, I didn’t want to become an expert or scientist. I just wanted to know the basics so that when writing about identification of bones, for example, I would know what my investigator (character) would observe at a crime scene and how the anthropologists, and forensic team (formally SOCO and now CSI) went about preserving the scene and reading the signs.

During the next two years I continued taking various University courses online with world renown and respected tutors.

I also studied Criminal Justice and was amazed at the number of miscarriages of justice there have been around the world. Even with DNA and advances in all manner of scientific methods available to detectives and investigators, quite often the real criminal is not the one behind bars!

And I took a basic course in Archaeology.

Archaeologists are often called in to process a shallow grave when initially it is not possible to tell how old the bones in the grave might be.

I haven’t finished yet but I am taking a breather.

Here are the courses I’ve undertaken and passed so far:

Identifying the Dead: Forensic Science and Human Identification 2015

Forensic Science and Criminal Justice 2016

Forensic Science: Witness Investigations 2016

Archaeology: From a dig, to the laboratory and beyond 2016

Introduction to Forensic Science 2016

Forensic Facial Reconstruction 2017

From Crime to Punishment 2017

The Gift by Jane Risdon included in Ghostly Writes Anthology 2018

                                                                                                                                                                                       

                 Jane Risdon is on the Case