Time, Patience Are Crucial When Conducting Crime Scene Investigations

Dave Edington, a field supervisor with the City/County Bureau of Identification in Wake County, says a crime scene usually has a story to tell. Investigators have to figure out what it is.

"You've got to let the crime scene tell you what happened. Dead people talk and evidence does not lie," he said.

Edington said investigators had to carefully collect evidence in the Johnston County mobile home, including fingerprints and fibers.

"When you factor in animals and even police officers who are there with good intentions, they're just like everybody else," he says. "They drop head hair, and you have to eliminate them."

According to Edington, time is crucial to finding the truth about what happened at the crime scene.

"Not only for the sake of the family members, but you want to find out the truth for the victims' sake, the community's sake and for everybody else's sake," he said.

Edington said he worked a similar crime scene in which two people were found murdered in a mobile home. It took him and another investigator 60 hours over a three-day period to collect evidence from the crime scene, which led to an arrest.