The television or movie screen is the closest most people will ever come to witnessing the forensic world. But Jennifer was raised in it. As the daughter of a small-town medical examiner whose office was in their home, there were body parts in their basement fridge and autopsy photos on the kitchen table. Jennifer investigated my first fatality, an airplane crash when she was 8 years old. Picking up pieces of skull, her father simply saw this as an anatomy lesson. It was the first of many coroner lessons she experienced over two decades growing up around death. 

Not a day goes by that she doesn’t draw on my forensic background and education to craft stories for page and screen, and also to teach others about crime and death investigation. All with a sense of gallows humor, of course.