FORENSICS

LYNN - Classical High School social studies teacher Lyle Henkenmeier is probably not making any friends with school custodians this year.

With all of the finger print dust, piles of dirt and remnants of plaster coating his classroom after his daily forensics lab, the nightly cleaning work tends to get out of hand — something he said he has offered to clean up himself, to no avail.

Despite the messy aftermath, the first-year forensics lab has been a success to say the least as word of mouth around the school has quickly made it one of the most sought-after courses on campus.

Henkenmeier teaches the basics of forensics in his criminal law course, but through a Hardscrabble Grant, was able to come up with the resources needed to break the subject off into its own half-year elective.

The hands-on class is entirely lab-based, there are no textbooks and there are no tests. Instead, students learn how to extract clues from a crime scene by lifting fingerprints, studying dirt samples or examining blood spatter on a wall.

The course differs from a science offering in that students study the physical and social aspects of crime, rather than the chemical composition of the evidence.

“The course is more hands-on than last year when we took the street law class,” said senior Jessica Tannian, as she studied a small pile of dirt with classmate Bunmi Atewologun. “Here you have to look for things like color, texture and contrast. The darker dirt is more moist.”

Henkenmeier has provided many of the resources for the class on his own, including the dirt, of which he has samples from all 50 states, several foreign countries and various areas around the city.

He said he has visited 38 states himself, but it was his mother who donated the rest, which she accumulated from friends who would travel abroad.

“Growing up in Illinois we were poor, and we would never travel anywhere,” he said. “So my mother started asking her friends who would travel to bring her back some dirt from each place. Eventually she had people she didn’t even know saying, ‘I’m going to Greece, here is some dirt.’”

The students will study hair follicles from both animals and people during the course of the year, along with real crime scene photos that show how complicated gathering evidence can be.

Henkenmeier built a small machine that creates blood spatter on the wall, and students even donated old shoes so that they could make plaster imprints of the soles to study.

Students said some of the most difficult work has been lifting fingerprints and describing a suspect for a police sketch. Henkenmeier challenged the group to describe Classical Assistant Principal Gene Constantino, someone who is familiar to all of them, and used a computer program to generate his photo based on the description.

“We had a full period (to do the fingerprints),” said senior Wade Barber. “It has to be perfect so you can distinguish the differences. Lifting off the tape was definitely the hardest part.

“Describing the image was hard, too. Imagine being a victim that has to do that from memory,” added senior Jenny Mastrogiannakou. “Describing people from memory was difficult, I even got a pass to the bathroom so I could go see what he looked like.”

Henkenmeier admits he had no idea how the class would go, but says he has been pleasantly surprised by the interest and enthusiasm of the students.

In the future, he hopes to join forces with the science department for the chemical side of the course, and hopes to have members of the Lynn Police visit his classroom and talk to the students.

“I always say if I can get them to think for themselves and not just believe what they see and hear on TV, than it is a successful course,” he said. “If I can get them to think for themselves, I did a good job. Those (TV forensics shows) are fun to watch, but realistically for an average police department it isn’t even close. You have to be really, really careful with that sort of thing because most of them are pretty outrageous.”

A new forensics course is currently being offered at Classical through the Social Studies Department. Mr. Henkenmeier who also teaches both Civil and Criminal Law teaches this pilot class. This forensics course is very hands on endeavor with an emphasis on lab work. The students will study a variety of criminal evidence in the period of the semester. They have already worked on a Face Print computer program and are currently working with rolling and dusting fingerprints. Later on they will deal with ballistics, blood spatter, footprint impressions, hair/fiber analysis and other types of evidence.

Thanks to this mystery volunteer, the Forensics class use the Face Print program to come up with this photo. Who do you think it is ?