A college degree in death investigation? Inside the final exam at UW-Platteville’s Crime Scene House

By A.J. Bayatpour

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    PLATTEVILLE, Wisconsin (WDJT) — Some of the people who will help solve future crimes are finishing their education on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin. On that farm is one of the most unique classrooms in America: The Forensic Investigation Crime Scene House.

In mid-December, CBS 58 got exclusive access to the final exams being held for the Death Investigation course, which is part of the college’s Forensic Investigation program. UW-Platteville was the first school in the Midwest to offer a bachelor’s degree program in forensic investigations.

This final exam required students to visit the crime scene house and thoroughly document one of four death scenes Assistant Professor Janamarie Truesdell had set up.

The scenes included a hanging death, a shooting death, a blunt force trauma death and a sharp force trauma death.

Those taking the test included a mix of students majoring in the crime scene investigation emphasis, which is geared toward a future in law enforcement, and those in the new medicolegal death investigation program which trains those seeking futures in medical examiner or coroners’ offices.

“Law enforcement comes more from finding out who did it, what’s the physical evidence,” Truesdell explained. “We want to know what happened, and who was this person? We work together, but we’re separate agencies.”

Truesdell is a forensic anthropologist, and she’s consulted medical examiners in Kenosha, Racine and Waukesha counties.

The final exam she’s created for the Death Investigation course is weighed equally in three different areas: The quality of the 45-50 scene photos she expects students to take, a written body examination and a detailed written scene report.

Truesdell said when putting together a report, the photos alone should tell a story about the investigator’s visit to the scene and everything they noticed from the moment they arrived on the property.

“If you can think of those flipbooks that’s sort of an animation — when you flip the pages, they sort of make a movie — that’s what they’re doing with their photos,” she said. “So, every new space they step into, they have to take a photo.”

Something that was immediately noticeable as Truesdell oversaw students processing scenes was the emphasis on language. Specifically, the students were to avoid using the word ‘blood’ because they hadn’t been able to test the substance, even when it appeared obvious that’s what it was.

“We call it rust-colored liquid or red-colored liquid because we don’t know it’s blood on-scene,” Truesdell said. “We have to be careful with our words. Me saying it’s blood, then someone could just say, ‘Well did you test it? Do you know that it is?’ Then I have to say no, and their next question would be, ‘Do you just make stuff up on scene. then?'”

Those taking the test included Nicole Kisley, a junior from Cudahy. Kisley said she hopes to one day work in law enforcement either for the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) or a surrounding agency.

She noted this final exam felt an awful lot like doing the real job someone at a medical examiner’s office would do.

“Working one-on-one with the officers on scene was very interesting,” Kisley said. “And kind of got you into the real world a little bit.”

Those who set up this house say that’s the point.

Will LeSuer, who chairs the school’s Department of Criminal Justice and Forensic Investigation, said the school wanted to ensure the crime scene house is as realistic as possible. That includes running water and electricity at the house.

Outside, the department with its colleagues in agriculture to use dead pigs as a way to detect corpses and measure different stages of decomposition.

“You can learn a bit through academy, police academy and everything,” LeSuer said. “But understanding it in much more depth and having the time and practice to do it beyond just a compressed academy.”

UW-Platteville was the first public college in the Midwest to offer a bachelor’s degree in forensic science. When asked about real world success stories, LeSuer pointed to the MPD’s new civilian crime scene investigation unit.

Milwaukee’s civilian CSI unit launched in early 2023. Cassie Strandberg, a 2018 Platteville graduate, is one of five supervisors overseeing a forensics division that includes both sworn detectives and civilian scene investigators.

Strandberg said she vividly recalls her initial campus visit, which included seeing the crime scene house.

“And I was immediately like, ‘This is where I’m going,'” she said. Because they had the opportunity to do a lot of hands-on work there.”

Of the 11 civilian forensic investigators employed by MPD, six graduated from the program in Platteville.

“It’s a way to be part of the criminal justice field without actually being a police officer” Strandberg said “So, you get to do hands-on work with the investigations, but you also get to bring that science and analytical aspect to it.”

MPD data show the department’s homicide clearance rate was between 68% and 78% between 2016 and 2019. In 2020, the city’s murder rate spiked and the clearance rate dropped.

From 2020 to 2022, Milwaukee set three straight new records for most homicides in a single year, going from 99 homicides in 2019 to 190 in 2020. The city recorded 195 homicides in 2021 and 215 in 2022.

The homicide clearance nosedived in 2020 to 54%, and it hovered between 50% and 59% through 2023. Last year, the clearance rate rebounded to 78%, the highest share of cases with an arrest since 2017.

LeSuer said having forensic analysts who are already professionally trained as they enter the workforce is step toward building more trust in the criminal justice system.

“By having students who know the actual proper standards, you can make sure that justice is carried out in a fair and correct process,” he said. “So that you don’t lose, say, a case based on faulty evidence collection.”

However, Truesdell said the most important lesson she teaches her students is that to properly determine how someone died, you must appreciate life.

“I tell people death is about the living,” she said. “It’s the living that need the rituals. It’s the living that want to say goodbye. It’s the living that have this.”

It’s something Kisley said she picked up on during the class. She said the human aspect of death investigation was always something that appealed to her.

“You’re helping people who are going through a traumatic time with loss of family, loss of friends,” Kisley said. “And really, the honor of being able to help them through this grieving process.”

Some deaths are peaceful and fairly straightforward while others are violence on complex. Still, to at least some extent, every death needs an explanation.

“Nobody thinks about it until they sort of have to, which is human nature, but there are people who it is their job,” Truesdell said. “And you want to make sure they’re doing that job well.”

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