One of the most bizarre crime scene callouts I ever had was from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, home to one of the largest graveyards of aircraft that are moth-balled, obsolete, or scheduled for recycling.
The call for service was from an investigator at the Air base. Normally, he would have called his own trained crime scene personnel or utilized the crime scene people at USACIL (US Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory). But neither of them were able to respond immediately and it was urgent this crime scene be processed today.
What kind of crime scene, I asked. “It’s a B-52.”
How does one process an entire B-52 bomber I wondered as drove to the air base. I met the investigators at their office. They took me out into the airplane graveyard and down a long row of B-52 bombers. The very end plane had its ladder down. We climbed in. They led me forward to the cockpit and showed me that the pilot’s control stick had been hacksawed off the previous night.
Analyzing the situation, I realized that if I were going to hacksaw off a control stick, I would grab the shaft below the spot at which I was going to saw.
I powdered the shaft and recovered a beautiful full left palm and all five fingers. I applied strips of 4” lift tape, overlapping to ensure getting an inch or so of clear margin on all sides of the latent and being careful not to wrinkle the tape on the cylindrical shaft. I gently peeled the tape off and applied the full palm print and all five fingers to an oversized lift card, again being careful not to allow wrinkles to form in the tape. .
The offense the airmen listed was vandalism over a billion dollars, the value of the B-52 assuming that it was destroyed. But then one of the airmen let slip that the plane was destined for the chopper. That’s why it was at the end of the row. It was going to be cut up, smashed, and sent to a recycler that very day.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re going to charge some poor schmuck with a billion-dollar felony for destroying a B-52 just hours before it gets chopped up for recycling?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It was still a serviceable aircraft when he did this last night.”
“That’s the most chickensh** case I’ve ever heard of,” I said. “I hope you never solve it!”
I figure the “vandal” was an old pilot who flew a B-52, maybe even that very plane. It had served from Vietnam to the first Gulf War.
To the best of my knowledge, the perp was never identified. I like to imagine he has the stick mounted and hanging on the wall above his mantel today.
Thanks for your service, Pilot. You deserve your souvenir. You earned it.