Crime Scene Live is an ongoing series of events, usually once per month, at the Natural History Museum in London. It's a very popular event, and tickets sell out months in advance.

Lucy Orr

Lucy Orr

Lucy Orr

Lucy Orr

Lucy Orr

Lucy Orr

Lucy Orr

Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

Lucy Orr

Lucy Orr



I always knew there had to be a dark side to the seemingly sedate Natural History Museum, and lo and behold I recently received an ominous e-mail. There’s been a murder in a shed behind the museum, I'm told. My first thought is it might be one of the screaming children you often see outside the Dinostore, miserably whining about the size of their snuggler. But on closer inspection this murder was committed last year, and the case is now being reopened due to some gruesome new evidence.

I feel well prepared for my job as a trainee crime scene investigator (CSI) having binge watched Making a Murderer recently. I don my full SOCO (scene of crime officer) suit and—with cider in one hand, notepad in the other—I pay close attention to the initial briefing. Event organizer Lucy Minshall fills me in (along with 100 other novices) on some mysterious disappearances that have happened amongst the museum staff. Chillingly, we ponder whether the skeleton in the shed could be one of them.

It seems the body could be one of three museum workers: Sally Hughes (glamorous younger woman), Susan Snow (obsessive older woman), or Daniel Davis (regular bloke). Phil Turner stands out as the main suspect as he is the boyfriend of Sally Hughes, and bloodied clothes were found at his flat. But things are more complicated than they first appear. Coinciding with the murder was the disappearance of the infamous Cursed Amethyst. Could these events be related?

During the briefing we are informed we'll take part in three activities that would help us identify the victim, establish when they were killed, and track down the murderer. Working in three teams (Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie) consisting of around 30 people, we're given around 45 minutes for each activity. In hindsight, this didn’t seem long enough, and in the end I had to be dragged away from my newly found maggot mates.

Team Bravo’s first stop is a lecture theatre where Ally Fray, an archaeologically trained anthropologist, promises to help us develop our forensic anthropology skills to identify the age, sex, and height of the body from the skeleton. Luckily, they manage to cover every bone—and hopefully help us ascertain our victim.

By inspecting and measuring the teeth, pelvis, and skull of our skeleton, we come to a unanimous decision on who the victim must be *no spoilers*. Even though the session comes close to confirming my initial concerns that this evening might involve too much thinking and not enough drinking, it is fast-paced and involves some regular good-natured heckling.

Feeling confident that we're well on our way to solving this crime and establishing a new career in forensics, it's time to get to grips with a weight of physical evidence the police have collected during the preceding months. Dexter-style eyeballing of blood spatter and looking through social media and travel logs all lead me to what I suspect must be a number of red herrings, so it's time for some fingerprint analysis to narrow down the suspects.

Using magnetic powder to find fingerprints looks easy on Columbo, but it's surprisingly tough to identify one sweaty blob from another. One of the Natural History Museum's CSI assistants advises me that using a microscope would help me identify unique patterns more easily, but I feel sad for anyone that might be convicted on my rather sloppy dermatoglyphical assumptions. I suspect that my creeping uncertainty and clear scientific thought must be down to the temperature in the basement of the museum (which ranges between sweltering and boiling) that forces many participants to partially disrobe their SOCO suits: these temperatures are all the better to breed maggots in, I suppose.

During our third and final activity, the museum's resident forensic entomologist, Martin Hall, explains how we can establish a time of death very accurately by using the pupation cycle of flies. I manage—after much deliberation of pupae charts and studying of fly beard hairs—to discover that my maggot is of the Calliphora vomitoria variety, which seems strange as Hall tells me these flies are usually found in a rural environment. There must be something suspicious going on involving the breeding of maggots for other purposes, we agree.

To recover from sulking about my defeat during the maggot race, I hit the bar for another cider and discuss my findings and suspicions with other members of team Bravo. I then return to the auditorium for the event's conclusion. Unsurprisingly, the killer is given away by his Oyster card history, rather than any forensic minutia, and—as usual—greed and professional resentment prove to be deadly motives. Though some complain that the murder plot is too obvious, I feel it gives those involved a sense of accomplishment: they've learned enough forensic skills during the evening to correctly deduce who committed the crime.

The whole evening is over in a flash. It's paced well enough to give me a sense that I'm making progression through an actual criminal case, but after paying £60 for a ticket, £5 for a slice of pizza surely deserves its own criminal investigation.

The bowels of the Natural History Museum lend an air of gravity and true scientific rigour to the proceedings. Informative and entertaining for both scientific nerds and Philistines, this ongoing event is an appropriately refreshing way to experience such an iconic and endearing building.

I had such fun that I’m almost tempted to book myself in for a Dinosnore overnight stay at the museum, even though that costs £180.

Crime Scene Live is hosted regularly at London's Natural History Museum, but tickets sell fast. Wannabe private dicks are advised to use their best detection skills to track down availability for the next event. Full details are here.

***

Lucy Orr grew up close to CERN and Fermilab, while her father was busy searching for the Higgs boson (which he eventually found). While waiting for her mutant powers to manifest, Lucy kept herself occupied programming BASIC, reading comics, and playing MUDs. With an extensive career in digital art and animation, she still finds time to pet ferrets, listen to pop punk, and drink cider.

Listing image by The Natural History Museum