John Dietrich hip checks a sensor on one of the Nebraska State Patrol Crime Laboratory's white walls, a security card in his back pocket unlocking a door. Welcome to perhaps the last tour he'll
CORY MATTESON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 7:00 pm
John Dietrich hip checks a sensor on one of the Nebraska State Patrol Crime Laboratory’s white walls, a security card in his back pocket unlocking a door.
Welcome to perhaps the last tour he’ll give of the Lincoln lab he helped create.
“Some of the things we do are very important to the case,” says Dietrich, the director of the lab. “We stay out of the guilt, innocence, all that.”
Leading the tour is a man who makes a mean salsa. A chemist who is equally at home in his vegetable garden. At the lab, he shared stories of living with his wife and four daughters. At home, he spared them the details.
“He possesses the qualities of goodness, and greatness, more than anyone I've ever known,” toxicologist Brad Rutledge says.
“They don't really care, I think, if I leave or stay, but they certainly don't want to lose my salsa,” Dietrich says.
Today, he will be honored for his nearly 35 years of service to the state. Dietrich, 65, is retiring at the end of the month.
“I enjoyed the work,” he says. “I got satisfaction out of what I was doing. I was using my chemistry to make a difference.”
About 300 confiscated handguns line a shelving system across from the soundproof testing room in the lab’s Firearms Section. The lab keeps rifles, machine guns and a grenade launcher.
There, firearms experts fire rounds into a stainless steel tank of water to see if hammer marks on bullet casings are consistent with those fired at a crime scenes.
Little patches of gunpowder have settled on top of the water.
Though Dietrich doesn’t have much to do with firearms investigation, he, along with the rest of the lab’s staff, has an intimate knowledge of what weapons and the people wielding them can do.
In 1973, Dietrich started off analyzing vandalism cases, pranks, nothing big. The severity grew.
In his first homicide case, the victim’s body was scattered across a lake in western Nebraska.
“When you first get baptized to those types of cases, you realize that there's such a wide range of cases, from the mundane to the … actually, the cases that are physically tough to even work on or look at," he says.
He remembers details, the color of the janitor rags (red) a murderer left behind at a coin store after killing a clerk.
He had to sift flour from a train car where two victims were found. The flour absorbed odors, and it got all over him and others at the lab.
That night, he told his wife, Bobbe, to leave a set of clothes out in the garage.
Dietrich’s work, at least the most disturbing details of it, was something he didn’t bring into the home, says Cindy Lefler, one of his four grown daughters.
“He is a very intelligent, helpful, quiet man,” Lefler, 33, says.
The Biology Section is where DNA testing takes place. You can look through the window, but that’s about it.
“They don’t like strange DNA in there,” Dietrich says.
In 1973, the state patrol hired Dietrich, a trained chemist, to be a forensic scientist, and to help create a lab. They gave him catalogues filled with chemicals, microscopes and such.
Thanks to a federal grant, the state had about $100,000 to invest in the field, and it was his duty to buy tools that would help criminal investigators.
“Well, I don't know too much about that,” he recalled saying.
He learned. He studied at other state crime labs, at the FBI. He studied microscopy under the controversial scientist who declared the blood on the Shroud of Turin was, upon closer examination, paint.
The lab, which began with four employees, started by doing some firearm testing, evidence tracing and forensic document examination. Over the years, the staff and its list of responsibilities, grew. Dietrich became director in 1986.
In 2000, the crime lab began offering free DNA testing to law enforcement agencies across the state. It is now a nationally accredited lab. Dietrich was instrumental in pushing for that, Pam Zilly, the lab manager, says.
“He's been an awesome person to work for,” says Zilly, who has worked at the lab for 20 years. “He's been a mentor of mine.”
On CSI, the lab techs grope at each other and flirt for a minute while the Automated Fingerprint Identification System computer whirs, whirs and — bingo — spits out an exact match, an “ident.”
In reality, matching a fingerprint can take weeks. And it’s not identical; it’s probable, and still needs multiple sources to verify a likely match.
Sometimes, the computer doesn’t return a match. The latent fingerprint examiners call it the “slot machine.”
But the technology, compared with the old days, is astounding, Dietrich says. He watches Mariana Ward, a latent examiner, demonstrate how photo software can isolate a fingerprint on an image of a Big Red gum wrapper, bring it to the forefront and make it AFIS-ready.
“It’s amazing what you can do the last few years,” Dietrich says.
Dietrich and his staff have seen the rise and fall of one drug after the next.
“Methamphetamine has just kind of overwhelmed everything,” he says. “It's probably the worst one you can be addicted to.”
He has testified at high-profile murder trials, and prepared his staff when it’s one of their turns to take the stand. Prior to court appearances, the crime lab staff stage mock trials.
“I’m usually the judge,” he says, laughing.
On the way out of the lab, there’s a dry erase board with a drawing of Dietrich on it, a big red smile across his goateed face.
In his left hand, he pours potted water onto a garden bed. From one plant sprouts a double helix, a pink microscope and a blue gun.
From another grow nine smiling faces — a wife, four children and four grandchildren.
From the third plant springs, among other things, a bowling ball and a set of golf clubs.
Work, family and hobbies. He sewed them all together, the drawing, made by a Grand Island lab technician, suggests.
“Bring us salsa,” it reads in one corner.
“Good luck,” it reads in another.
Reach Cory Matteson at 473-2655 or cmatteson@journalstar.com.