By Karen Blackledge
DANVILLE — Sometimes little things reveal a lot, according to Montour County Coroner Scott Lynn.
For instance, in one local case, a cigarette butt found under the body of a homicide victim helped police link the killer to the crime, Lynn said.
“The cigarette was the same type the perpetrator smoked and the DNA matched,” Lynn told the 11th- and 12th-graders in Donna Wood’s forensics science class at Danville High School on Monday.
Investigators must pay attention to details “no matter how trivial they may seem,” Lynn said. “That’s my business to pay attention to detail.”
The coroner has an extensive library of photographs of the settings in which victims were found. The photographs can be gruesome, but they can also shed light on the circumstances of the death under investigation, the coroner said.
Lynn described the case of man whose body was discovered in the woods a mile from his home.
Because blood ran toward his feet, “We know he wasn’t in the position he was found. He was seated or standing when the injury occurred,” Lynn said.
A couple of pine needles on the body indicated he had been there for a day, Lynn said. Also found was blood on the sleeve of his jacket. His cell phone and wallet were nearby.
At the man’s home, Lynn discovered a safe deposit box on the man’s bed and an open drawer where gun shells had been removed.
An autopsy showed two holes in the skull. Lynn ruled the death a suicide.
“We confiscate the victim’s driver’s license and passport so they can’t be used by anybody else,” said Lynn, who has been coroner 18 years. Before that, he served as chief deputy coroner, beginning in 1981.
