Using insects to fight crime

OAKLAND CITY, Ind. -- To lawman Doug Young, flies and other bugs aren't always pests -- they can be allies in the fight against crime.\nYoung uses bugs to help establish a time of death and other conditions surrounding a crime such as murder.\n"Bugs, flies, maggots. Most people say gross. But they are a very effective crime-fighting tool," said Young, police chief in this community of 2,600 people 30 miles northeast of Evansville, in an interview with the Princeton Daily Clarion.\nInvestigators collect samples of bugs on the body and send the evidence to a forensic entomologist\nfor examination. In addition to determining time of death, bugs can help to discover whether a body has been moved. An entomologist will know what species of flies are native to certain areas, Young said.\nYoung gave a presentation on forensic entomology at a conference in Texas last week. He will give another July 7 in Ottawa, Canada.\nYoung said he prefers to provide hands-on exercises at his presentations, so he has been growing bugs on a dead pig behind his parents' house.\n"We use a pig carcass because its skin is similar to a humans," he said. "It may not look like it, but it's close."\nInsects swarm to a body in an orderly, predictable succession, Young said.\n"I put that pig out there, and within 30 seconds, it had flies on it," he said. "The way it was explained to me, they can smell it."\nForensic entomology dates to 1235 in China, where it was used in a case involving murder by slashing.\nOfficials assembled the villagers and had them lay out their sickles, a farming tool. Flies were attracted to one particular sickle, and the villager was charged with murder.\n"It's kind of a primitive science," Young said. "But it's a very useful crime fighting tool, even in the 21st century"