Kevin Neal

The Bureau of Criminal Identification

In Ohio, the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, a division of the Attorney General's Office, is available to assist police departments that do not have criminalists on staff to process crime scenes.  BCI also functions as a central crime laboratory for examining all types of evidence, from fingerprints to DNA samples, or tire marks to computer hard drives.

BCI Special Agent Eva Hall was on duty September 6, 1997, when she received a call to assist the Champaign County Sheriff's Office with a crime scene at the Nettle Creek Cemetery. She had already been involved in processing other evidence related to the children's disappearance, visiting the Neal homestead back in July, shortly after India and Cody vanished, to collect trace evidence as suspicion fell on Kevin Neal. Now she had the sad task of ensuring that the recovery of the children's bodies was performed according to crime scene protocols.

When she arrived at the cemetery around 5 p.m. that evening, the area had already been cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape. She noted that the area where the bodies were found was "a heavily wooded area. On first glance you couldn't really see anything in there."

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1. Messages from the Dead
2. 700 Years Later
3. The Children are Missing
4. Unhealthy Family Dynamic
5. Complex Relationships & Conflicts
6. Search for Children Called Off
7. Behind the Scenes
8. Neal's Criminal Past
9. Lies
10. Sexual Predator
11. Bodies in the Cemetery
12. A Ghastly Find
13. Physical Laws of Death
14. The Stages of Death
15. The Bureau of Criminal Identification
16. Working the Crime Scene
17. Manner of Death
18. Not Much to Work With
19. Cause of Death
20. More Forensic Clues
21. "We Are Not in a Rush"
22. No Smoking Gun
23. "Hurt Someone They Love"
24. Incriminating Statements
25. The Physical Evidence
26. Forensic Botany
27. Bug Collecting
28. Forensic Entomolgy
29. How Flies Tell Time
30. After the Blow Flies Flew Away
31. Enter the Cheese Skipper
32. Date of Death
33. The Secondary Screwworm in Court
34. Battle over Bug Evidence
35. Cheese Skippers for the Defense
36. Counterpoint
37. The Body Farmer
38. Dr. Bass for the Defense
39. "The Liver Bothers Me"
40. The Jury Decides
41. Bibliography