Electric Fishwrap

A teacher’s passion for true-crime stories leads her to create forensic science class

By KATE MARTIN

Skagit Valley Herald staff writer

MOUNT VERNON — Manuel Gomez rolled his middle finger on the ink pad and then oh-so-carefully placed his finger on the white paper. He bent his knees to get the right angle and then rocked his body from right to left.

Gomez, 17, lifted his finger straight off the paper and examined his work. His inked finger had left behind a near-perfect print. The Mount Vernon High School senior is one of more than two dozen students taking a forensic science class.

This is the first year for the class, championed by science teacher Heather Farren. By her own measure, Farren is “obsessed” with true-crime books, Court TV and science. She’s so engrossed with the legal system that she was disappointed when she was passed up for jury duty a couple of years ago.

But this year, she brought her passion for solving crimes to her students. The class is not full of worksheets and time-wasters like when she attended school, she said.

“It’s lame,” she said. “Kids don’t want to do that.”

Farren visited the Washington State Patrol’s ballistics laboratory and brought back shell casings and slugs from handguns of various calibers. She can even regale students with a tale of what it feels like to be tasered — for 0.5 seconds, at least.

So far, her efforts have paid off. Many students, like Gomez, thought the class sounded interesting. But they wanted to see if the subject was career material.

Gomez said his favorite part of the class thus far is the ballistics unit.

“Matching bullets is pretty cool,” he said. “It takes a long time, but it’s fun.”

Fiona Verschoor, on the other hand, already knew she wanted to be a sheriff’s deputy. The class has only magnified her interest.

“I was so stoked when I found out we were going to have a forensic sciences class here,” she said.

Verschoor said she’s been interested in public service since she was 6 years old. She volunteers with a search-andrescue group and is already taking classes at Skagit Valley College for a degree in administration of justice.

“I want to do patrols for the sheriff’s department, maybe even SWAT,” she giggled. “I like action. I can’t sit still.”

Students practiced fingerprinting themselves over and over: Roll the finger on the pad, then roll it on the paper, nail edge to nail edge. It’s not as easy as it seems. Too much ink blurs the lines together and you can’t see the prints. Not enough ink and it’s too faded to see the pattern.

Students wondered how real officers get a clear print from a struggling suspect.

At the end of the fingerprint unit, students will fingerprint teachers, who will make up their own fake criminal names. Farren will then create a fake crime scene, and her students will have to follow the evidence to the criminal.

Farren has also taught students about the differences between human hair, animal hair, and synthetic and natural fibers. They also learned the difference between male and female pelvises and skulls. Soon, they could learn about blood spatter evidence.

She’s not going to use real blood, of course. She makes it with cocoa powder, corn syrup, food dye and other household ingredients.

“It’s hard to get the fake blood recipe just right,” she said. “I got the recipe from a vampire Web site.”

Farren’s future plans include adding a more advanced forensic science class to the curriculum in the 2009-2010 school year. The class will cover DNA analysis and entomology, the study of insects — specifically, the insects that are found on a human body after death.

Originally published April 21, 2008.