CSI: Boston

A car protrudes through the front window of the living room; a dead body sits propped in the driver’s seat. House debris is scattered across the front of the car. A bloody handprint paints the hood. In this wreck of a living room some odd details seem to stick out-uneaten pizza slices and a half full beer bottle strewn across the floor. Muddy footprints leave a trail across the rug.

Outline the perimeter with yellow caution tape and enter crime scene number one — you’ve just stepped right into CSI, Boston-style. OK, you’ve actually just stepped into the Red Wing of the Boston Museum of Science. Upon entry, visitors around you try to decode the evidence: When was the pizza last touched? Is the beer warm yet? Has the mud dried?

CSI: The Experience made its east coast debut when it opened at the Boston Museum of Science Sunday. The exhibit, developed by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and Bob Weis Design Island Associates, invites museumgoers to become forensic scientists for a while as they decode the science and technology behind crime investigation. The crime, the evidence and the equipment are all real, but Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys take heed: the exhibit is just a simulation.

Ioannis Miaoulis, president and director of the museum, said the exhibit will be a major hook for all visitors because it combines several tried and true elements into one: popular culture — in this case, TV — life sciences and technology.

“If you have seen CSI, you’re going to recognize some of the characters and mock sets, but even if you have not it will still be a problem-solving experience where you’re exposed to a real situation in which you get to use real tools,” Miaoulis said.

AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are assigned only one of three mock crime scenes to investigate, and are told not to cross the police line into the other rooms.

Case number one, “A House Collided”, is the aforementioned car wreck smashed through the window of a quiet suburban living room. Case number two, “Who Got Served,” takes visitors into a dark alleyway behind

an old Las Vegas motel where a

dead young woman is sprawled across the ground with tire tracks run over her and a full purse with a bag of cocaine on the side. The third case is “No Bones About It!” in which a hiker discovers a human skull-with a visible hole-sticking out of the side of a mountain.

Fictional character Gil Grissom from the popular CBS drama cautions investigators upon entry into the crime scene: “The dead can’t speak for themselves,” he says. “Let the evidence guide you. Listen to what the evidence is saying.”

Clipboard in hand, visitors take notes on everything, down to the shoe size imprinted in the muddy footprints. Grissom’s “recruits,” the museumgoers, are given a diagram of the crime scene to draw on and recreate everything they observe. The museum gives a few hints, though: At the end, a large poster-size cheat sheet maps out the evidence investigators might have missed along the way.

TOOLS AND TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Next, visitors proceed to the two mock laboratories and autopsy rooms.

To analyze the evidence, visitors are supplied with magnifiers, microscopes, touch-screen computers and UV lights – the typical tools of the trade. Video monitors, chemistry equipment and computer databases are also available for use. Each case focuses on different objectives of crime scene investigation. In case number one, for example, visitors use touch-screen computers to compare fingerprints of possible suspects. Visitors even tackle toxicology reports, blood spatter analysis and firearm identification.

And the technology and techniques used in the investigation are true to life. Scott Bauman, spokesman for scientific products and services distributor Thermo Fisher Scientific — whose products serve as models for equipment on the TV series and which are used throughout the mock labs of the exhibit — said some of the exhibit is accurate representations of the fake stuff, but some is real. The exhibit’s mass spectrometer, a device used to measure the masses and concentrations of atoms and molecules, costs $750,000.

REALITY VS. TV

The exhibit might give visitors the CSI “experience,” but it, like the TV show, misconstrues the amount of time necessary for a true crime scene investigation: A crime cannot be solved in the one-hour constraint of a TV show, or even the afternoon spent in a museum hall.

“The exhibit is based on the television drama, but the sciences that are here are all real. I’d say it’s very realistic,” said Sgt. Wesley Wanagel of the Crime Scene Services section of the Massachusetts State Police. “But people should make the distinction between drama and real life.”

Wanagel stressed that for some people crime scene investigation is what they see on CSI, but for others, like himself, this is what he does day in and day out. Some crimes take weeks, months or years to solve, and still other cases never get cracked.

“Forty five minutes isn’t optimal time to solve a crime,” Wanagel said.

Visitors will never truly understand the amount of time and effort that goes into such an investigation, no matter how realistic the representation, Bauman said.

“A lot of people think they can do this type of work because they watch CSI,” he said. “Things don’t always work out like on the show.”

Wanagel teaches a masters-level biomedical forensic science course, Topics in Forensic Science: Human Identification, at the Boston University School of Medicine. The course discusses trace evidence examinations, forensic dentistry, Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems and Combined DNA Indexing Systems, and uses human cadavers for hands-on experience.

ADDITIONAL

SCIENCE

The museum offers three add-on stations to the exhibit, which let visitors explore bone and DNA analysis and fingerprinting.

Judy McCarthy, one of the museum’s program presenters, said, “It’s not as easy as it is on TV. It’s so much more involved. There’s so much more behind it.”

The fingerprinting station introduces fingerprinting without the evidence-no more black thumbs, but instead ceramic-based ink is now widely used to collect prints and analyze the prints in a microscope.

The museum has complemented the traveling exhibit with a series of free lectures and workshops given by those working in the field, including former FBI special agent John Douglas. The Armchair Crime Scene Investigation Series invites adults to participate in a mock trial and defend DNA evidence while learning from the Boston Police Department about the tools of the crime lab.

RESULTS ARE IN

“I thought it was impressive and very well managed. We didn’t feel rushed through it at all,” said Craig Piekarz, a museum member from Southborough, Mass. who brought his family Sunday morning to the exhibit’s opening.

“It was cool to do all the different things a real CSI does,” said Piekarz’s daughter. Piekarz’s son said that he had fun solving the crime and maybe one day, he’d like to be an investigator.

Lori Gover of Stoughton, Mass. said she enjoyed working as a team with her family, whom she brought to the exhibit. “It’s nice to have a challenge rather than just walk through and look at something visually, she added.

McCarthy said the exhibit will draw in a wide range of people.

“It’s not necessarily just for CSI fans,” she said. “Anybody’s who’s interested in science will be interested.”