The Game—The Perspective of a DNA Analyst

The following article was an anonymous submission to the Vicarious Trauma ad hoc Committee that focuses on the emotional aspects of the job.

Years ago, I was in a class where Ray Wickenheiser was teaching. Near the end of the training, he invited our group to take part in a game that people often would ask him to play. The "game" was for the group to spontaneously (and randomly) name a household item and he would tell us a real case story of his own that involved that item. Of course, he left out the names and other identifiers. His storytelling was easy and non-celebratory. But there wasn't an object that didn't have a story. I was only seven years into my career at that time.

This many years later, I can now play that game, too. I still live in the area where I did most of my casework as a DNA Analyst and Serologist. I could also be a tour guide for a "Dearly Departed" murder bus tour. Between the random household objects that I've seen used to hurt others or to receive the cast-off blood from a victim, and the locations that have since been cleaned up and put back into regular rotation with the public . . . I really can't escape the work I used to do. It's all around me while running errands.  It's in my own home.

When we were dating, my husband gave me an electric teapot that he no longer used to use in my cubicle. It was the same brand and model that had been used to beat someone to death in a cold case. Apparently, he'd had this teapot for a long time. I was thankful when it started smoking one day and I could (in good conscience) throw it away. 

Working a different cold case, I once opened a vintage pair of blue suede Adidas sneakers — the same as my dad had worn when I was in grade school. 

So many not-so-random memories. I can still remember the lunch I ate the day I swabbed my first used condom. It happened to be pre-buttered corn-on-the-cob that I'd wrapped in plastic wrap. These seem innocuous, but these moments of reflection are like flashbacks that I can't really explain as disturbing. Yet, other people would find them disturbing if they knew the whole story of that case.  

I'm proud of my work.  Someone had to do it, but really I'm reminded constantly of bad things that people have done to others. Thankfully, I did not witness the raw emotion of victims and their families. It was enough to imagine what had been done, or alleged to have been done, through the collective witness of the material possessions submitted to the lab in bags. Speaking of bags:  if I see plastic bags containing [who knows what] on the side of a highway or in a ditch, I am imagining body parts and now-dead babies.

Years ago, I took a psychiatric test as part of pre-employment screening. One of the questions asked if I believed that an evil presence influences some people to do bad things. Using my number two pencil, I (without hesitation) filled in the oval next to the word "yes" because I don't think what I've seen can be explained any other way.