Friday, Oct. 6, 2000 | 11:39 a.m.
They're not police officers, but they can land a criminal in prison as surely as a signed confession.
They are Metro Police's nerd squad -- the crime scene analysts. They are the ones who know how blood splatters, the difference between a head wound caused by a baseball bat and one caused by a golf club. They can tell how long someone has been dead by the maturity of the maggots.
And starting tonight their exploits are the basis for the new CBS television show "C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigations."
In the opening minutes, detectives are at the scene of an apparent suicide. Crime scene analysts pull up, leading one detective to say to another, "Here comes the nerd squad."
Metro crime scene analysts Daniel Holstein and Yolanda McClary both smile and laugh, saying nearly in unison "that's us" as they watch an advance copy of the premiere in their office.
They know all about the show. The main characters are based on the pair, with most of the other characters mirroring their fellow Metro crime scene analysts.
There are police shows about homicide detectives and street cops, but not about the nerd squad. Holstein, McClary and the rest of the analysts aren't sworn officers, but civilians with specialized training, patience to comb over a scene looking for evidence and -- more importantly -- a strong stomach.
"We're the ones with our noses two inches away from the bodies and the maggots," said Holstein, a crime scene analyst for 11 years.
But what they see and smell may be key to solving the crime. They look at everything. Whether it's a homicide where they peer at a dead body or a burglary where they lift fingerprints, their senses are their primary tool, said McClary, who's been digging through crime scenes for 6 1/2 years for Metro.
"If you don't take your time and look at everything carefully and then look again, you'll overlook something," she said.
Las Vegas Valley residents will recognize not only some of the city's landmarks in the show, but also the police cars and uniforms, which are just like Metro's.
Sheriff Jerry Keller said he's pleased the efforts of the department's crime scene analysts are being portrayed on national television. But he does have a warning for viewers.
"The public must realize this is a Hollywood interpretation of the demanding work of evidence collection," the sheriff said.
McClary and Holstein both said the show follows what crime scene analysts do fairly accurately, but like anything that Hollywood produces it's not exactly the way things go in real life.
On the show the analysts seem to spend only a little time at the scenes. That's the opposite of real life, McClary said.
"We can be at a homicide scene all day looking for evidence," she said.
Holstein said they go wherever the evidence is. They have crawled under houses, in pipes and into trash bins. Nowhere is too gross for the crime scene analysts to go if needed.
After listening to Holstein and McClary for just a little while, it becomes clear where the "C.S.I." characters' personalities and love for their jobs came from.
The character played by Marg Helgenberger -- of "China Beach" fame -- is based on McClary. Helgenberger even spent some time with McClary and rode with her for a night traveling to real crime scenes in Las Vegas.
"We're the one's doing the messy work," McClary said.
Holstein and McClary's paths to this career were entirely different. Holstein said he's loved figuring things out since he was a kid. He would perform autopsies on dead animals at age 14.
Even now he has a model of a head at his house that he fills with blood -- real blood -- and hits with pipes, baseball bats, golf clubs, just about any type of weapon to analyze the different ways blood splatters from the impact of the various weapons. He has to use real blood, he said. "It's the only way to see what the real stuff will do."
Just like the show's character Gil Grissom (played by William Petersen), Holstein will draw blood from anyone he can convince or trick.
"We always know when he's on the warpath for blood," McClary said. "The new people are always hit up. They don't know they don't have to yet."
McClary, with her slight build and manicured nails, was working toward a criminal justice degree when the evidence collection class caught her attention.
"You have to love this job, because if you didn't, you just couldn't do it," she said.
And there is a certain appeal to the job. Witnesses may change their testimony or forget details, but the evidence the analysts collect -- whether it puts a defendant away for life or sets him free -- never lies.
"Evidence is going to tell us the truth," Holstein said. "All we're after is the truth."
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