The crime was a homicide.  The victim, 30-year-old Christine Jean Schultz, was shot in bed in her home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 28, 1981, at approximately 2:00 a.m.  Her two sons, Sean and Shannon, were in bed across the hall.  Sean got up to check and made the first call to his mother's boyfriend, a cop named Stuart Honeck.

Four police officers went to the scene, where Sean let them in.  Honeck was the first to see the victim.  He moved her and saw that she was not breathing.

The victim was reportedly found lying on her right side, facing west, although crime scene photos showed her lying on her stomach.  She wore a yellow Adidas T-shirt and white panties.  A clothesline-type cord was tied around her hands, binding them in front of her, and a blue bandana-type scarf was wrapped around her head, gagging her mouth.  The T-shirt was torn near the wound, a bullet hole in her right shoulder.

Police cut the cord around the victim’s hands and wrapped her body in plastic.  They removed a brown hair from the calf of her leg.

The medical examiner was called two hours later.

An ambulance was called three hours after the murder, and the victim was transported to the police morgue.

There was no evidence of a break-in, and the doors had heavy-duty locks, including a deadbolt.  Her former husband, Elfred Schultz, who was also a cop and soon became a suspect, was allowed to search the home.

According to Sean, age 10, he woke up to the feeling of something like a rope or covered wire tightening around his throat.  A large gloved hand moved over his face, covering his mouth, eyes, and nose.  The glove was dirty and tan-color.  He struggled, pulled at the cord around his neck, and screamed.  He heard the person, whom he took to be a man, utter a deep growling sound.  The intruder ran out and crossed the hall.  Sean followed Shannon, his 8 year-old-brother, into the hallway and saw a man in his mother’s room.  When the man ran out past them, Sean saw the man taking the steps three and four at a time, his green army jacket flapping.  At the bottom, Sean noticed that he wore low-cut black shoes, like police shoes.  He thought the man wore a ski mask, and described him as having a physical stature similar to Stuart Honeck.  He went to his mother, who was still alive, and ripped open her shirt to fix the hole in her back. He turned on the lights and used a washcloth to try to wipe off the blood, then wrapped gauze around his hand to put pressure on the wound.  At 2:30 a.m., he called Honeck.

Shannon said he jumped out of bed when Sean screamed, saw a man, and kicked at the intruder.  He described a large white male with reddish hair tied into a long pony-tail, wearing a green jogging suit with yellow stripes running down the sleeve.  The man then ran from the room and crossed the hall, entering their mother’s bedroom.  He heard a woman’s voice say, “God, please don’t do that.”  Then came a sound like a firecracker.  He raced to his mother’s room and saw a man standing over her bed.  The man then ran past him and down the steps.

Several things are wrong with this investigation, which later targeted Lawrencia Bembenek, the young wife of Elfred Schultz (despite the fact that nothing about her fit the boys' descriptions).  Because the victim had been Schultz's wife and was dating another cop, the investigating officers appear to have forgotten procedure.  In fact, Honeck actually believed that Schultz had killed Christine and as the investigation progressed, there was suspicion of a cover-up - especially when Bembenek, who was convicted of the crime, claimed that she'd been framed.  There's no doubt that evidence was handled badly and the scene was not secured.  That means that there was room for reasonable doubt, no matter who got arrested.

So how should a crime scene get processed?

Crime Scene Procedure

911 dispatcher (AP)

When a crime is initially discovered, a call goes out to authorities - generally via 911.  A dispatcher notifies patrol units close by.  Uniformed police arrive and decide whether they need other personnel (homicide or arson unit, for example).  They note the time and write down any other pertinent observations, but refrain from touching or moving anything.  If the perpetrator is present, the officer makes an arrest.  Otherwise, the officer secures and controls the scene.

Sometimes it's difficult to determine the extent of the scene.  It might be a single room in a building, but it could just as easily be outside.  In the case of a murder, the crime scene could extend to other rooms where the killer left traces of his or her presence, out into a hallway, and even into a neighborhood.  If someone was killed or raped in one place and then transported elsewhere, the crime scene extends to the vehicle of transport and to the other location.  However, the most pertinent evidence is likely to be close to the point where the crime took place.

In major crimes like a bombing or a homicide, detectives are called in.  Their job is to take over the investigation to determine:

1. Who did it?
2. What happened?
3. When did it happen?
4. How did it happen?
5. Did it happen here or was another crime scene involved?
6. Who is the victim?
7. Why was this crime committed?
8. What evidence is there to help prove the motive and the crime? 

Witnesses are detained and interviewed.  Some are transported to headquarters to make formal written statements.  The detectives then prepare to obtain whatever search warrants they may need.

If there's a body, the coroner/medical examiner checks it to be sure it's human (some are in bad condition), and decides whether there is reason for an autopsy. 

While that's going on, the criminalists—also called crime scene, evidence or identification technicians---are hard at work searching for evidence and collecting whatever they find. Let's take a look at their equipment.