Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Real Crime Scene Investigations Explained | How CSI Solves Murder Cases
Sat, 05 Apr 2025
Investigator Alina Burroughs examines murder cases ripped from the headlines. She explores prosecution and defense teams' tactics to highlight the evidence that argues their case. Alina knows it can't bring the victims back -- but it can bring them home.Alinas IG https://www.instagram.com/alinaburroughs/?hl=enhttps://www.alinaburroughs.comFollow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What are the challenges faced by crime scene investigators?
He was targeting sex workers and he would solicit services. He would then beat them near to death and then leave them. And we had had this probably maybe four to five times that we would find these women beaten nearly to death. I encounter people on generally the worst days of their lives. Nobody calls a crime scene investigator if their day's going well.
Right.
Right. And I don't encounter people that are happy to see me. If I'm lucky, the victims are living.
Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Alina Burrows, and she is the host of Crime Scenes Confidential. And she is an expert in forensic science. I've watched several of the episodes. You know, I mean, I thought they were really interesting, a little really kind of graphic, too. You know, like you really kind of get into. The whole thing. And I the one I thought was interesting.
Well, I mean, I guess it wasn't just. The forensics, but it was the fact that it seemed like the police got on to one of this is the guy that had like the furniture store. Yeah, it seems like they decided he was he was guilty and then they just stuck with that.
Yeah, that's a common thing that we see in some investigations. And that's why I fell in love with crime scene investigation forensic evidence, because it doesn't have a bias. It doesn't have an interest in a particular person, especially when we look at some older cases before forensic science really had a chance to evolve.
You know, what you see is police get there, they make up their mind about something and they kind of run with it because, like I said, depending on the time, there may or may not have been forensic science that could come about with blood test results that supported one way or another. And that's the scary thing when we look at cases that are a bit older.
That's part of the reason why Crime Scene Confidential exists. We want to look at cases under the eye of 2023 and look at decisions that were made. You know, the stakes are pretty high here. We have people that are still in prison that are saying that they're innocent.
And if they were put in prison in a time in which we didn't have forensic capabilities that we have today, do they still need to be there?
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Chapter 2: How does forensic evidence impact investigations?
I mean, have you had any issues where they, I mean, I kind of asked, but you, you, you not really like, have you actually had any issues with, you said that the ones that have been like adjudicated, you haven't had any where they, you started the process of saying, Hey, here's a case where we want to do. And then it just went so bad. You guys were like, scratch that.
We can't, they're not cooperating.
No, I don't think so. And I think that if it were that, it probably wouldn't make it to me because they know how intense I get into these cases. They probably wouldn't release. If they give me a name, they know I'm going to start doing my research. So they probably won't even tell me a name until they know that this is good and solid for us.
The good news about season two that we didn't have with season one. So season one, we filmed the whole season. nobody knew about the show, right? We were a brand new show. Nobody knew what this was. So by the time we film a second season, we have a whole season that people can watch. We have a reputation. They look at it and they understand who we are, what we do.
So the access that we have in season two is unprecedented because people have seen it and they are, I mean, such an honor that people trust me to the extent that they do, that I sit down and we have some just deep, powerful conversations. This season is just really up to the ante.
Are there any cases that stand out, not just in this season, but just, let's say, in your career? Do you have any cases that stood out that were really exceptional or challenging or
I think there are always cases that stand out to me for a variety of different reasons. And it's not always because they're the most gruesome or anything like that. I think there's cases that stand out to me because it was the most interesting out of the box kind of solve, right? You know, crime scene isn't something that you can just say it's fingerprints and shoe tracks and DNA.
Yeah, it's those things. But crime scene is such a It can come in any way, shape or form. Right. It's about making matches between victim, suspect and crime scene. And that can come in any capacity. It's not just in that box. So any case that I've made a match on something that's just been like, how did that happen? I had we had a serial rapist who was. He was going around.
He was targeting prostitutes in the Orlando area and he was soliciting services from them. I should say sex workers. I'm from an older school that has to learn to change my word choice. He was targeting sex workers and he would solicit services. He would then beat them near to death and then leave them.
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Chapter 3: What inspired Alina to become a crime scene investigator?
Homicide, the way that we run out to all of them, we run out to department different than a lot of police, some of the police departments, I won't say a lot, but some of the police departments, you know, we have investigators that we have burglary investigators, then we have robbery investigators, and then we have homicide.
And then, you know, we have investigators that specialize in certain types of crime. So whereas most, you know, police departments don't work like that. If you work burglaries, if you're a detective, you work all of them, burglaries, robberies, and homicide. We didn't work like that. So I knew pretty early in my career that homicide was where I wanted to be. It was the tip of the spear.
As far as investigators, they were always the sharpest. They were always the most cunning. They were always the, they were the, you know, the guys that I came up under They were the guys that you wanted to be in police work.
So I always knew I wanted to go to homicide, but I was young and I went into investigations at, I mean, I was probably in my early twenties and I think I got promoted to homicide. Right at about 20, you know, 28, 29 years old, I want to say. I can't remember exactly, but yes, I was pretty young in police work.
And, you know, seeing all of that in a young husband, a young father, you know, I got kids, you know, I got babies now, you know. And as a homicide investigator, you spend a lot of time and work, a lot of time at work. missing out on football games and having to leave out of your daughter's ballet practice or their recitals, you know, because you're getting that call.
But I was driven, man, and I wanted, this is something that I wanted to do. So from the time that I was at Homicide, And it happened a lot when I was in robbery and burglary too. But when I was in homicide, my wife was almost a single wife. She had to raise our kids. She had to go and handle the house and everything. So yeah, but it was a great time in my career.
There are certain parts of it I wish I could do over again, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. That experience was amazing for me.
Do you have, are there any cases that stand out that.
I got plenty of them. I got plenty of cases that, that, uh, stand out to me. I've, I've worked, I've worked. Almost nothing that you could show me in a crime scene would surprise me. So I've worked everything from child murders, children being slain, and then all the way up to elderly people being murdered and thrown out on the side of a road.
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Chapter 4: How do crime scene investigators prepare for a case?
Well, I was going to say, even with cameras being everywhere, you still have to go to the bank. You still have to go to the convenience store. You still have to go and, you know, you still have to, it's still all that running around to say, well, if he went this way, he probably would have crossed this liquor store and they've got a camera. So let's go there.
You still have to put all those things together. Then you have to sit there and look through 12 hours of tape or 120 hours of tape or whatever the case may be. And then, you know, everything, it's just, I was going to say, it's like, you know, like I said, I've talked to a bunch of law enforcement. They're like, it's just like extreme boredom with these spikes of adrenaline.
It's like being a soldier. It's like you're, nothing happens for, you know, three months straight and then you're in a battle for four days straight and it's just exhausting. That's exactly right. Yeah. As you say, I was in, you know, I when I was locked up and I would do all this research on guys and I'd order the Freedom of Information Act.
Like it would be hours and hours of printing documents, paperwork, ordering docket sheets, reordering documents. And then the spike in adrenaline would be you get mail and you open up the transcript and on page seven, you're like, oh, yeah.
you're running right like i would feel like i had solved the case i'm running around going oh my gosh he was driving in black horse families yeah whatever it would no it always works out like that man you know we we would have there would be days like we would we would be going for for two or three days i remember i had a case on first 48 a couple years well it was probably uh
Oh man, this was in 2010, I want to say it was. This was on, this case was on 1st 48. Man, we had, I mean, during the initial phases of the investigation. So what happened was we had this victim that was inside of her home. Some guys break in on her and put her down on the ground and shoot, kill her, murder her inside her house.
And then the store and got gas and pour gas all around the house, set the house on fire, tried to burn the body up. Don't say never. And so during the initial phases of the investigation, you know, I thought it was just going to be a random. I mean, a completely, you know, kind of normal, if that's a word that you can use a homicide cases, which you normally can't use.
I thought it was just going to be like a routine investigation. So while we're out on the scene, some of the family members come to the house and they start asking about the woman's child. Said her child should have been inside of the house and we hadn't seen the child. There's not a child inside of the house. So now,
The case switches from just a routine investigation to now we are looking for an adopted child. So we just, we go, we run for hours and hours and hours. And then we ended up locating the child, you know, at a friend of hers house. So, you know, and then we go back into the routine of investigating the case. And maybe two or three hours after that, we get a big lead of where
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