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You need security clearance just to get inside the gate, and a pass code to open doors once you’re inside. The northern Alabama district FBI headquarters is a fortress, but the agency's evidence response team let CBS 42 cameras inside for an exclusive look at how they operate.
Anywhere, any time, wherever the crime is committed the FBI evidence collection unit responds. They're an eight person team with a complicated mission: Find the clue to crack the criminal case.
No job is too big or too complex for the highly motivated crew of experts. Veteran agent Lorenza Moore says precision and patience allows the unit to turn mission impossible into the average day. Equipped with a mobile command station, they can monitor their surroundings and report via satellite for five days without refueling.
Northern Alabama's FBI field office stretches beyond the state line.
"We're responsible for domestic operations as well as international operations," said Moore.
And they're working on some of the most attention grabbing cases on the planet. In the last three months alone, agent Lorenza Moore says the evidence collection unit assisted Colombian authorities investigating the murders of union activists at a mine owned by Drummond Coal.
They also helped Australian detectives follow leads in the three old drowning case of a scuba diving newlywed from Helena. But their biggest task by far came more than five years ago at the world trade center. They examined hundreds of victim's from the carnage of ground zero in the fresh kill’s landfill on Staten Island.
FBI Evidence Technician Patsy Martin said, "We scoured the landfill for items of evidence to help identify the individuals as well as the body parts."
To do this job right, Martin has to flip a switch most people don't know exists.
“It was tough but when you're doing something like that you remove yourself and become scientific about it," said Martin.
Moore feels the work they did brought peace to hundreds of suffering families, desperate to know what happened.
"It was our job to go through the debris and try to bring some closure to some the sadness behind that," said Moore.
Because the business of stopping attacks before they happen has never been more serious, local weapons of mass destruction coordinator Joseph Ronsissvalle follows up any suspicious leads.
“Our intelligence officers across the country getting briefings daily, so we kind of know what's out there to expect when there's a threat. We can immediately contact them to find out if those threats are across the country, their locations," said Ronsissvalle.
Bottom line, they have the tools, the training and the determination to work a case until it breaks.
Not as easy as it looks…
When FBI evidence techs head to a crime scene, they take everything they need. They have cutting edge high tech gear, and excel at putting that equipment to good use. These specialists are the best at what they do, often times finding clues in places that have already been looked over, 20 times or more.
"We take our time go over the whole 180 degrees of the room to figure out exactly what we're looking for."
And they can look with a different set of eyes at an otherwise invisible spectrum of light that reveals hidden fingerprints or blood splatter. But how do they take it from a wall, a can, or a compact disc, to the evidence bag?
"Bring them back to the FBI lab put them in the fuming chamber. We would place a certain amount of super glue, heat it up, and close the chamber," said Martin.
The glue fumes create hard copy prints in about an hour. They can also retrieve microscopic traces of any crime scene from a suspect's clothing with the use of a dehydrating locker.
It's a job that requires meticulous attention to detail every step of the way. While they make it look easy, evidence collection is anything but simple. No matter how smooth the cops on CSI pull it off, this is an exact science.
“The majority of the equipment that the CSI shows work with are equipment that we actually use. A lot of the analysis that they do in the field can't be done in the field," said Moore.
Evidence technicians like Moore wonder if shows like CSI may be too realistic, especially when it comes to criminals who take notes on how to cover their tracks. Moore says even court is a little more complicated.
“It makes it difficult but not impossible. You're having a jury that has watched says for instance CSI and they think you know all these things can be done within one or two hours. It's not going to happen. You know sometimes it takes days to do analysis on evidence," said Moore.
The real team searches for the truth until it is found, and only then is the job considered done.
