Around 1 pm on Thursday the 6th, our criminalistics class received a call. Following our professor, we trooped off campus and arrived at a local house to discover a crime scene. Taking the notes from the first responding officer, we surveyed the crime scene and began sending in our individual units. Documents entered first to photograph the entire scene, followed by the evidence-collecting teams.
The crime, staged to perfection, was an apparent stabbing. The victim was 32 year old Hildegard Scholz, who was found in her garden surrounded by a shovel, a bike with a missing owner, and her husband no where to be found. As our evidence teams searched the scene, the plot began to thicken. A skull and bone fragments were found not far from Hildegard, who appeared to be digging them up prior to her death.
After collecting and documenting all we could at the scene, we gathered the evidence and marched it back to the lab. An evidence locker was established, and our units set to work analyzing all we had found. By the end of the lab, we’d begun to analyze an apparent blackmail note, dusted the shovel and bike for fingerprints, and determined that the skull was an African American female.
With the help of a few business cards discovered in Hildegard’s purse, the suspect list began to form. Her neighbor, Cornelia Fleischman had called in the crime, but had little connection with her neighbors. Hildegard’s husband, Jakob Wilhelm, was unavailable for questioning for several days after the murder. And the bike found at the scene? It belongs to CC student Travis Boccard, who had apparently been viewing Hildegard’s husband’s art the day of the murder.
The case is nearing its conclusion, as we’re just days away from solving it. To see our current theory, suspects, and a more detailed crime report, visit our forensics class website:
http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~mbrasuel/FYE_20011_12/FYE_CH100_2010_11/Case2323.html
