Science of Forensics…Buster Out Braconid In?!

If you watch, read, listen and digest as much death and murder crap as I do – and I pray you do not! – once in a wee while you’ll come across an Eureka moment, even if your grade 12 Biology grade was only a P for pass.

Such happened only recently to MsBurb, as she chose to get in some rare TV time while nursing her moving muscles the other night…

But really, the damn issue has been gnawing at my brain ever since Buster was a bust up at Barker and at Spahn.


Debra, the other victims’ family members, political will and the media had enough gusto to finally take on the issue of whether or not Charlie et al. committed more murders than what is known, yet with only one small attempt, and a failing one at that, the quest was dropped faster than a boulder falling from one of the over-hangs in Golar Wash…it seemed, well, cut off, in mid stream, as if it wasn’t  a real good idea in the first place.

I can buy that.

What I cannot buy is why try so hard for so many years to get an investigation going when all you do in the end is dig some sand and dirt, rent a sniffer dog and abandon all hope.

Maybe because it was just a political ploy to keep the murders fresh in the minds of the voting Californians to keep the Mansonites behind bars as they creepy crawl into old age and the quest in and of itself never really was intended as a practical pursuit.

I get the impetus but I really hate political mind games, don’t you?!

So, alas, MsBurb has had this issue simmering on the back burner of her wee brain ever since; but although her cerebral pot wasn’t running out of water, there was no steam generated on which to build an action…

I hate inaction, don’t you?!

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I, the wayward Canuck, MsBurb, can and will save the day by being proactive on this issue. But Hell if I’m not going to simmer on the idea of one until I find it, right? We Irish are bone stupid but Eveready Bunny stubborn, you know.

So, yes, getting back to the muscle pained evening this last Monday night…

My phone and Net were not yet hooked up and poor Danny was holding down the blog forts when I, in I must say, quite an unusual stance, did the only Canadian thing one can do when there is NOT a hockey game on, and for once turned on CBC TV. Yep, MsBurb broke down and became a Canadian for one night, well, for an hour or two anyhoo…too much “Canadiana” in one night could kill a large adult you know.

So, with the winter storm brewing outside, the wind howling through the heat ducts and a crackling fire more than active in the hearth, my TV tube flickered as I tuned into one of our long standing documentary programmes called “The Passionate Eye”.

And tonight’s topic, “Science of Forensics” .

The programme was basically about a wholly different set of circumstances with one tiny, weenie similarity – the use of cadaver dogs at possible crime scenes.

And to those of us who remember Buster’s attempts at Barker and Spahn, that niggling that a job was still undone kept niggling, so I listened.

Blah, blah, blah, “zero in”, “hit on”, “false positives”…yep, no news here, only a clear image in my mind of allot of sand dug at Barker with no clear purpose in sight…frustration…

But then, just then, came slowly buzzing into view, the “Ultimate Sniffer”, the Buster-On-Steroids solution to the false positive problem of all the Busters out there...

The Braconid Wasp!

This tiny parasitic wasp, which can sense from miles away a chemical distress in leaves when caterpillars are munching on them may have been The Manson Family answer all along!

Scientists like Dr. Glen Raines have learned to train these tiny Busters by swapping the chemical leaf scent for a cadaver scent instead, by allowing the wasp to feed on sugar water over the scent from a cadaver. And in less than 5 minutes, these tiny flying Sherlock Holmes’ can zero in the decomposing flesh and bone to one part per BILLION, far exceeding the most capable sniffer dog or any man-made scent device.

Five of these trained critters are put into a  “wasp pound”, a plastic container with scent holes and placed inside a wand containing a micro camera linked to a live feed computer.

When a crime scene is investigated, sniffer dogs are used to cover large territory but when they hit upon a target, the wasp pound is substituted for the puppies, for a virtually zero false positive reading on what the dog has detected.

The wasps, when there is no evidence of any decomposition or body parts, will just crawl around in the pound in a random way but when they hit upon a positive target for decomposition, all five wasps will rush to the central vent in the pound.

These flying sniffers can and have been used for mass graves, natural disasters and body part decomposition detection and with the one part in a billion capability to detect human decomposition, they would soar well over Buster’s vague attempts up at Barker in ‘08!

Given this new tool, the issue of whether or not Charlie did away with any more people after Shorty may really be only a wasp sniffer away…

My personal opinion is that there never were any more kills beyond Shorty’s murder because Charlie always needed to feel cornered before he felt the need to strike. And once there was no hope of freeing Bobby, once Mary and Sandy were freed on the fraud charges and once his need to vent at the frustrations of dealing with the Hollywood elite were vented in TLB and Shorty was eliminated as a possible snitch, there just was no more need for killing over the need to just evade capture.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that what one starts one should not finish, and if all it takes is five trained wasps, a camera and political incentive to finish what you began, who am I, or rather who is Debra to deny a wasp his or her day in the sun.

It’s okay Buster, they won’t bite you, I promise!

California authorities, are you getting my buzz?!!!