Who You Gonna Call? Unique Forensics Experts By Katherine Ramsland

I write crime fiction and nonfiction. Inevitably, they run together. My three novels in the Nut Cracker Investigations series feature a female forensic psychologist, Annie Hunter, who runs a PI agency from her home on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She travels, so I Scream Man is set in Savannah and South Carolina’s Low Country, with a follow-up novel, In the Damage Path, set in western South Carolina and Tennessee. The third installment, Dead-Handed, takes her to Concord, MA (Hawthorne country). I form my plots from actual cases I’ve worked or researched and include unique forensic disciplines that can introduce readers (and other writers) to something new.

 

Let me tell you about a few.

 

Annie herself is a suicidologist. As a clinical psychologist, she can do standard assessments and consult on the psychological angles of death investigations. Her unique training in suicide gives her an advantage for interpreting behavior at death scenes. She can spot when a supposed suicide is staged, for example, or see more in a suicide note than what cops are trained to see. She can perform psychological autopsies and handle city councils faced with a cluster suicide (or is it?). In the Damage Path features a narrative based on the case of the girl who persuaded her boyfriend to commit suicide. But is there more to the story? Annie thinks so.

 

A key member of Annie’s team is Natra Gawoni, a cadaver dog handler and data miner. She keeps the records straight, finds obscure info, and simplifies complex data. Her dog, Mika, can locate clandestine graves and participate in search and rescue operations. This expands the team’s investigative abilities.

 

I’ve worked on death investigation teams. It’s amazing how many different types of experts come into play. A forensic geologist for an exhumation, for example, or an anthropologist trained at a body farm. A radiologist, a medical photographer, a criminalist, a pathologist, a graphologist. When I set out to write my series, I realized that, like me, Annie can connect with a network of specialists. She has a core team, but she can reach out to a discipline that might be needed for a specific kind of case.

 

Ayden Scott is Annie’s main PI, and he’s also a forensic artist. Few readers know much about this expertise. Sometimes, Annie needs him to draw a face from unidentified remains, perhaps a skull or a decomposing face. This is a rare skill, with exacting mathematical calculations. His artist’s eye catches small details, like something in a prisoner’s tattoos, which can break a case. Ayden also coordinates with Annie’s part-time digital analyst, Joe Lochren, to tinker with tech. (I use an actual cyber tech advisor who’s offered some very cool devices and plot twists. My favorite, in Dead-Handed, is his dark web honeypot.)

 

One of the most unusual disciplines I’ve included is a forensic meteorologist. JoLynn Wilde is introduced in In the Damage Path when she provides a unique sensor mounted on a drone to calculate from trees where decomposed remains might be buried. She also discovers a possible murder during a weather event, which brings her back in Dead-Handed to investigate more such cases. The Weather Channel once aired a series, Storm Stories, which featured these experts. Since I love to use weather in my fiction, it’s useful to include an expert like JoLynn.

 

She’s also a taphonomist. She studies the many factors that affect outdoor decomposition. I’ve taken courses at body farms in Tennessee and Texas, learning how to study what happens to human remains in various condition. I’ve learned (like Ayden) to draw from decomposed faces and identify remains among the ashes in burnt buildings.

 

A controversial method I’ve used is remote viewing. Some readers think this makes my fiction paranormal, but not at all. As Annie explains, the US military used it during the 1970s-1990s as “psi research” for spying. This began at the Stanford Research Institute, a California-based think tank. SRI researchers sought real-time sight at a distance. Science writer Jim Schnable documented these experiments in Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, and journalist Annie Jacobsen offers even more in Phenomenon: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. I use this to justify the Nut Cracker team’s experiments. Annie cites the case of a remote viewer locating Ted Bundy’s last victim. That’s in the prosecutor’s book! (And he confirmed it to me.) Thus, I coined “remote profiling” as a crossover method for last-ditch forensic investigations.

 

My most recent novel, Dead-Handed, involves toxicology, meteorology, geology, suicidology, dark web analysis, behavioral profiling, taphonomy, anthropology, end-of-life science, and a bit of literary history. As I say in the blurb: “What do Nathanial Hawthorne, William James, Scottish lore, and a purloined corpse have in common?” My own experience on death investigation teams is that multiple disciplines are often involved, so I use the opportunity to show readers what they can do.

 

_______

 

Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology and behavioral criminology in the graduate program
at DeSales University. She has appeared as an expert on more than 250 crime documentaries and was an executive producer on Murder House Flip and A&E’s Confession of a Serial killer: BTK. The author of more than 1,800 articles and 73 books, including Confession of a Serial Killer and The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, she pens a regular blog for Psychology Today. Her fiction series features a female forensic psychologist who consults on death investigations. Dead-Handed is her most recent book.

 

My Best Source for Ideas: The Quickening By Katherine Ramsland

My Best Source for Ideas: The Quickening By Katherine Ramsland

 

As soon as a producer suggested I write fiction based on the quirky things I do, I flashed on my next project: a series about a forensic psychologist who consults on unique investigations, including those with paranormal reports. (Yes, I do those things.) The first novel in my Nut Cracker Investigation series is now published, and I Scream Man was quickened into existence. It chose me.

 

Let me explain.

 

I’ve been writing for nearly four decades, leaping from genre to genre. I’ve covered philosophy, psychology, self-help, biographies, companion guides, and immersion journalism. Now I mostly write about forensics and crime. After some 69 books, 16 short stories, several scripts, and hundreds of articles and blogs, I’ve covered a lot of ground.

 

I’m often asked where I get ideas. A few come through suggestions or requests, but mostly I find them in my research. As I move through books full of themes, images, and ideas for potential projects, the one that quickens will beckon. It will take my breath away, as if it’s been gestating in me, waiting for me to notice it. I will feel that I must start on it right now. If I can’t, it will stay with me. It belongs to me. In fact, the Nut Cracker series came to me a dozen years ago. Only now did the right set of circumstances converge to write it and get it published. 

 

Quickened ideas trigger a fluttery quality that makes my heart beat fast. I recognize them. I’m fused to them. Some might say this is just another word for inspiration, but it’s much more. I have many inspirations that flare bright but fade fast or that merely get me through a scene. The quickening endures. It’s personal. When I come across it, everything stops. The world recedes. My focus sharpens. I must attend to it.

 

For example, when I read about Professor James Starrs exhuming bodies to re-evaluate cases with new forensic science, I had to be on his team. Everything I’d done to that point had prepared me. I contacted him. My passion persuaded him, and not only did I get on his team but I also wrote his casebook, A Voice for the Dead. Another time, when I heard about the sale of a house near me where a triple murder had occurred, my interest in home renovation converged with my expertise in crime to write a pitch for Murder House Flip.

 

I should say that not all ideas that quicken for me gain my agent’s approval. And this breathless sense of rightness has not been the catalyst for all of my work. However, quickened ideas that do produce articles, stories, and books have been my favorites to write. The passion from them never dims. There’s no writer’s block.

 

So, what’s the source? What makes these ideas mine?

 

The quickening appears to blend my most avid interests with my goals, which forms into a focused vigilance. Once they all converge in a discovery, I gain momentum. For I Scream Man, I wanted weather to be part of my plot, so I researched hurricanes and watched every relevant video I could find. I wasn’t looking for anything specific, just taking it all in. Then I spotted the unusual phenomenon of hurricanes that kill themselves. My psychologist, Annie Hunter, is (like me) a suicide consultant. The concept of a self-destructive tempest quickened into my central metaphor, which played out in several ways in the tale. Such a discovery feels so pressurized to me that I must home in. I can’t not write about it.

 

To enhance the chance of a quickening, I read in many areas beyond my expertise. I also meet other types of experts. The more my world expands, the more potential I gain for these lightning-rod ideas. I’ve even acquired co-authors merely from attending conferences and getting the vibe from something they’ve said.

 

Quickened ideas transcend other subjects that might be just as viable but don’t grab me as forcefully. The more I learn, the more sensitive I become to nuances that might spark the sudden muse. The quickening works because the ideas to which I resonate emerge from what I’ve already prepared. It’s waiting inside my deepest wells to spring out and grab me when I draw near.

 

***

When a boy vanishes under strange circumstances, forensic psychologist Annie Hunter collects her team of sleuths, the Nut Crackers. They link the boy to a network of powerful people, the “I Scream Men,” who gain political favors through a juvenile sex trafficking ring. As Annie tries to hide a victim they seek to silence, head predator Alder Plattman – nicknamed “Plat-eye” – snatches her young daughter. Relying on coded clues, some quirky allies, and the mysterious method of remote viewing, Annie sets out to rescue her daughter and cripple the criminal network. Among her associates is attorney Jackson Raines, a youth advocate whose brother stole the network’s secret records before he was murdered. As a hurricane bears down and Plattman chases Annie’s team, they race to recover this vital cache before he can find and destroy it.   

 

Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, where she is the Assistant Provost. She has appeared as an expert in criminal psychology on more than 200 crime documentaries and magazine shows, is an executive producer of Murder House Flip and consulted for shows like CSI, Bones, and The Alienist. The author of more than 1,500 articles and 69 books, including The Forensic Science of CSI, The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds, How to Catch a Killer, The Psychology of Death Investigations, and Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, The BTK Killer, she was co-executive producer for the Wolf Entertainment/A&E four-part documentary based on the years she spent talking with Rader. Ramsland consults on death investigations, pens a regular blog abut crime for Psychology Today, and is currently writing the Nut Cracker Investigation series. The first one, I Scream Man, was just published.