Crime scene work, and police work in general, isn’t for everyone. WARNING: this story contains graphic descriptions of violent death.
I was on call for crime scene call-outs at Plano Police Department in the late 1980s when my phone rang at 2:30 A.M. There was a triple fatality on Hwy 544 just inside the east city limits.
I got to the scene to observe a small car in the ditch. It had gone off the road at a high rate of speed and had slammed head on into a concrete gutter abutment, going from 70 to zero in a millisecond. Three high school boys had been to a keg party somewhere east of town and were on their way home. I never learned what their BACs were, but I expect they were all three pretty high.
The high-speed collision had pushed the front wheels back into the middle of the front door openings and the engine was shoved through the firewall. It rested now between the seats where the console used to be. I photographed the wrecked car after the ambulance personnel had removed the bodies. Then I went to the hospital to photograph the wounds inflicted during the collision.
The driver’s teeth had all been taken out by the steering wheel as it slammed through his face. The front seat passenger’s head had exploded when it hit the dashboard. But it was the back seat passenger who had a wound such as I had never seen before or since.
Apparently, there had been a beer bottle on the back deck inside the rear windshield. It had impacted the back of the rear seat passenger’s head straight on, not sideways. It had punched an almost perfectly round hole 2” in diameter in the back of his skull, which was now filled with brown glass shards.
I had photographed the first two boys and was starting to work on the third one when one of our Field Training Officers arrived and asked if he could bring his rooking in to observe “for training purposes.” Sure, I replied.
As the rookie walked up, I was trying to figure out how to photograph the back of the head on that third body. The corpse was lying on its back on a stainless steel table.
“Hey,” I told the rookie, “Hold his head up and forward so I can get a picture of the back of his head.”
With a look of horror on his face, he asked, “Is this really necessary?”
I looked at him, a little surprised. “Would you expect me to take a picture of bullet holes if this was a murder victim?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, he’s an accident victim and the fatal wound is just as important to this investigation. Hold his head up for me.”
The rookie just stood there staring at the corpse. So I grabbed the dead kid’s hair and rolled his head forward until his chin touched his chest, then told the rookie, ‘Here, just hold this for me while I get a couple of photos.”
Gingerly, he took the hair and held it. I took my photos. When the rookie let go of the head, he ran for the door and wretched outside. The next morning, he turned in his badge, uniforms, and gun and resigned. Like I said, this job isn’t for everyone.