A basic principle of modern forensic science is Locard's Theory, which states that every time something comes into contact with another object, it will take something away or leave some trace of itself. Applied to real-world crime scenes this theory leads forensic scientists to discoveries not even visible to the naked eye. Sometimes, crimes are prosecuted based on evidence as microscopic as a unique kind of fiber, a hair that can only be traced to one individual, or, most famously, DNA.

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Personal web pages, profiles, and weblogs are a less tangible example of Locard's Theory in action. If a person has had the opportunity to explore and use the world-wide web often enough, they may surely have left traces of themselves behind, frozen in a kind of digital suspended animation. More and more all the time, this evidence is as likely as anything found clinging to a shoe or under a fingernail to lead to a suspect, sometimes even provide the evidence that leads to convicting that suspect.

These traces can also remove the faceless element of the crime for the average person accustomed in the past to passive consumption of the news, where sometimes even in televised trials the victim never becomes truly real again, but remains a kind of abstraction.

Sites like MySpace.com also can provide a representation of something investigators in the past had to spend a great deal of time and shoe leather figuring out; a murder victim's associations, their circle of friends.

So while it is poignant to see Melanie Parker's bright smile in life looking back from her web page, sometimes the interest in seeing such things is twofold. There is often the question that troubles until an arrest is made; somewhere among all those 'friends' linked from this profile, could there also be found the face of a killer?

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Steve Huff can be reached via the contact form at huffcrimeblog.com

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