Four Bizarre Forensic Investigations From Law & Order: SVU

SVU will never run out of ideas because most of their stories are “ripped from the headlines” and have been lambasted as such. Despite frequent criticism about modifying the stories behind real crimes for television ratings, SVU has also given us insight into the world of police and forensic nursing.

There’s no question that the way the authorities operate on television is drastically different from reality, but each crime is accompanied by a forensic scientist explaining the very real ways in which she deciphered the victim’s cause of death. Some of them are simpler than others, and all are disturbing — as one would expect inspecting a dead body to be. However, some are just downright gross.

1. Anal Champagne

A recent episode of SVU focused on the art of a lunatic who painted a canvas red — with real blood. As the mystery unravels, a story of a tyrannical CEO, suicide, and murder are unraveled. When a young girl is killed, all employees at her company are grilled for answers. Although attention is immediately on the boss who was prone to flying into violent rages, there’s also an air of mystery surrounding the victim’s drunken state when she died. A former alcoholic, victim Ellen had been struggling to remain clean for a while. What was more baffling was the fact that although her BA was high, no alcohol could be found in her stomach. The key to this puzzle was, grossly, the woman’s anus and anal cells.

Cells found only in the rectum were detected on the rim of the champagne bottle which had gotten her drunk — meaning that someone else had fed her butt the alcohol until she was too drunk to fight against her assailant. Rumor has it Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks used to do cocaine the exact same way.

2. Boy and Girl Parts

When a gang member is thrown from a rooftop, the case seems like a slam-dunk. Saliva was found on the victim’s body, and it belongs to 14-year-old Logan — or so the detectives think. Things get muddled when his sister, Lindsday, claims to be the killer, because the DNA had a Y chromosome and clearly belonged to a male. The gross part may be less about the forensics and more to do with the startling discovery that Lindsday was born a male and given a sex change as an infant after a botched circumcision left her genitals mangled beyond repair. This was based on the real case of David Reimer, a boy who underwent years of “gender reassignment” after the botched surgery. Although the doctor believed the operation was a success, David eventually underwent years of hormone therapy to reverse the process and ultimately committed suicide.

3. Menstrual Blood

Confrontation has more to do with forensic psychology than forensic science. When a criminal rapes the same girls repeatedly and on a schedule, his modus operandi, or method of operating, is closely examined. The forensic psychologist infers that the rapist keeps a log of his victim’s menstrual cycles, attacking them while they are ovulating and thus increasing his chances of impregnating them.

This type of forensic psychology brings SVU detectives a lot closer to solving the crime because they can stake out the criminal when the victims are ovulating, giving them a better chance of catching him. One of the victims, however, hinders the investigation by denying her most recent rape — her husband had been trying to get her pregnant for a year, unsuccessfully so, and she wanted to keep her rape-baby alive and a secret from all.

4. Smooth Gens

The episode titled Sick is less-than-loosely based on Michael Jackson and the controversy that surrounded his interest and love for children. In the episode, there’s a whole lot of child abuse. The fake Michael Jackson molests a few kids but gets off easy when he makes a private settlement with the children’s parents. This “closure” doesn’t last for long, however, when the kids begin acting out in school and at home, drawing profane pictures and burning the genital areas of their dolls.

There’s also a subplot about the grandmother intentionally poisoning her grandmother in order to garner media attention and monetary support for the kid’s “cancer,” which leaves the child with permanent internal damages. However, the forensics focus on the celebrity perp, who is called in so that forensic scientists can remove his pubic hair for DNA testing. This goes awry, however, when the celebrity’s baby-smooth pubic area yields not a single hair — he had been receiving laser hair removal on his junk the whole time.