Ten

On the 26th or 27th, sheriff’s officers and the State Attorney’s staff made two crucial decisions.

Because Don Frye was not legally qualified to testify on blood spatter evidence, the state retained Herbert MacDonell, the professor and criminalist from New York, to examine the crime scene and make a report.  MacDonell was not available until after the New Year, but the sheriff would hold the crime scene until MacDonell could fly to Orlando.

They also decided that the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C., would analyze and test the forensic evidence.

On the 28^th, the two OCSO technicians flew to Washington with nearly one hundred pieces of evidence that had been collected in the store, at Zeigler’s home, and from the Dunaway car.  It was the first of what would be several submissions to the FBI Lab.  The specimens included pistols and bullets, blood and hair from the victims, swabs and filter paper, the store clock, and the stained car door latch.  The transmittal letter requested ballistics matching, blood typing, chemical analysis, and hair and fiber analysis.

Ordinarily that would have been the work of the Sanford Regional Crime Laboratory, which operated under the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.  But this was not an ordinary case.

Then, as now, the FBI Lab was considered the finest in the country, one of the best in the world.  Its experts were often the final word on matters of serology, ballistics and tool marks, fingerprints and shoe prints, hairs and fibers, explosives, handwriting identification, and other branches of the forensic sciences.  The lab’s services were, and are, available free to state and local police in criminal investigations.

The FBI Lab was not without drawbacks.  Its experts were generally inaccessible: when they were not busy in the laboratory they were often out of town, appearing at trials around the country.  They had to be scheduled well in advance for consultations, depositions, or trial testimony.  But their reputation was impressive.

“We want results to be as fast and accurate as possible,” OCSO Chief Deputy Leigh McEachern told reporters on December 28, explaining the decision to send evidence to Washington.1

McEachern said that he expected the two officers, Alton Evans and James Shannon, to have preliminary reports when they returned in two or three days.  That estimate proved to be absurdly optimistic.  Over the next weeks and months,