Evidence Classification, Locard's Exchange Theory & Jonbenet Ramsey Case

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he neglected to search the house, this led to the father finding the body in the basement. Once the body was discovered, it was wrapped in a blanket and moved, this disrupts the crime scene and doesn’t allow for a proper investigation. You would think after finding a body that the police would have blocked off the entire house, but they allowed the family, friends and several officers to walk freely inside. Friends of the family even helped clean the kitchen, wiping the counters and any possible evidence that could have been there. Lastly the body of the girl wasn’t examined until more than 18 hours after finding the body and this can lead to loss of evidence.

What should have occurred is this:

Multiple officers show up to the residence, one officer builds rapport and talks with the family taking notes (if only two officers, if more than two another officer takes notes), the other officer(s), search the entire house blocking off the girl’s room and upon finding the body block off the basement and call for an investigation unit to come in, after making the call they should finish securing and blocked off the entire house for the investigation unit and ask the parents to go with a couple officers to the police station while the investigation is being conducted. In doing this, the body would not have been moved, the house would not have had several people inside and the kitchen would not have been cleaned. This would have protected crucial evidence, the crime scene would not have been contaminated and the culprit could have possibly been brought into custody.

According to Locard’s exchange theory the person responsible could not have avoided leaving any kind of trace evidence. As indicated earlier his theory states that once somebody has made contact with anything it results in a physical exchange. This means the person responsible, once making contact with the crime scene would have to leave behind trace evidence because of the physical exchange that was made by being at the scene.