Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky , John Jay College of Criminal Justice

http://www.almexperts.com/ExpertWitness/experts_and_consultants/expert/5158924.html

Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky , John Jay College of Criminal Justice

899 10th Ave.
New York, NY 10019
Profile:
Consultant to attorneys in the areas of forensic biology, serology and DNA analysis for more than 20 years.
Years as Expert: 20

Primary Area of Expertise: DNA

http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/51/9/1759

DNA: Forensic and Legal Applications. Lawrence Kobilinsky, Thomas F. Liotti, and Jamel Oeser-Sweat. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005, 364 pp., hardcover, $89.95. ISBN 0-471-41478-6.



BOOKS by Lawrence Kobilinsky:

http://www.alibris.com/search/books/author/Kobilinsky,%20Lawrence



List of Authored papers:

http://lib.bioinfo.pl/auth:Kobilinsky,L

Blood Work: The Man Behind the Crime Scenes


Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky paves the way for a more exact forensic science.


http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/folio/spring2005/bloodwork.htm

Almost overnight, forensic science is becoming part of American popular culture. Turn on a television, and you can't avoid it: Court TV panelists discuss blood evidence, trace evidence, and DNA testing. On a series known as Body of Evidence, a retired criminal profiler details her most puzzling real-life cases. The lead character in one of several CSI programs scours a Manhattan dog show for clues to a woman's mysterious death.
The truth behind the Hollywood version of crime-solving, however, is that actual forensic detective work is rarely as exciting, speedy, or infallible as it's usually portrayed to be in popular entertainment.
"It's not as you see it on television," chuckles Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, Professor of Criminal Justice and Biochemistry at The Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Senior Science Advisor to the President at John Jay. "It's very good entertainment, and I enjoy watching it, but they make some significant mistakes. They do it because they need to make crime solving seem more glamorous."
It's Kobilinsky who serves as John Jay's point man on a range of scientific issues relating to criminal justice, as he shepherds everything from a more rigorous method of bite-mark pattern comparisons to a better way of doing the excruciatingly complicated lab work involved in matching tiny bits of DNA gathered at a crime scene with samples collected from felons and suspects. At a moment when the CSI phenomenon is suddenly bringing unprecedented numbers of crime-fighting students to John Jay and The Graduate Center, he has suddenly become quite indispensable.
Kobilinsky, who received his Ph.D. in biology from The Graduate Center in 1977, came to John Jay full-time from the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in 1980, only a few years before forensic DNA testing was about to become a revolutionary discovery for human identification. He has since become a sort of crime-science Renaissance man around campus.
On a given day, he might be advising a graduate student, peering at readouts from one of the genetic sequencing machines housed in his compact laboratory, writing a textbook on forensic science for high school students, or appearing on television to comment on a high-profile case of the moment--Kobilinsky was prominently featured for months in a seat beside Dan Rather, analyzing the scientific portions of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. A recent week even found him jetting off to the Dominican Republic to investigate that nation's penal system and write an eye-opening report at the request of newly elected President Leonel Fernandez, a City College graduate.
Back home, Kobilinsky's own criminal justice research takes several tacks. One is his recent push to add greater rigor and science to the way crime investigators collect, document, examine, and match bite marks to exemplars (orthodontic casts taken from suspects).
"Why bite marks? Virtually all Federal grant money is going into DNA testing now, but that has been to the neglect of other kinds of evidence--latent fingerprint, hair, bite-mark, document examination, fiber evidence, and other kinds," he explains.
Indeed, in a number of recent cases, fingerprint or bite-mark findings of guilt have clashed with subsequent DNA test results exonerating the same suspects.
"I've been very critical of forensic procedures that are more art than science," he says. "So much of this bite-mark examination is subjective, just as it is with fingerprints. There is no clear protocol or system for the examiner who must make the call as to whether or not this bite mark matches the bite pattern from a suspect; it mostly comes down to feeling, opinion, and experience."
With graduate student Kathleen Pfeiffer and forensic dentist Dr. Ira Titunik, Kobilinsky has been using an image processing computer software known as Lucis to digitize, and then transform into grey tones, photographs of bite marks on victims. The resulting images can then be matched to a growing catalogue of Lucis-transformed images of sample bite marks from suspects.
"This is about putting more objectivity into that examination," he says. "What we're trying to do is bring more science to that process."
Kobilinsky also remains active on the DNA front: Another of his projects is a concerted effort to improve the scientific protocols used in lab work. New advances in DNA testing, particularly of so-called low-copy number DNA samples, have increased the power of the tests but also the potential for errors in identification. Because the low-copy method uses such small numbers of DNA molecules--genetic profiles have been generated from as little as a single human cell (and there are trillions of cells in the body)--the testing must be done especially carefully.
"These low-copy techniques are very useful in cases of burglary and robbery, where you might only find a single smudged latent fingerprint or a bit of hair," Kobilinsky says. "You might turn up some good investigative leads. But the flip side of this is that contamination can ruin everything. For example, if even a few cells slough off the investigator's hair or skin and gets into the sample, it's contaminated. Or if some DNA-containing evidence was already present at the crime scene prior to the criminal event, you could generate an irrelevant genetic profile. Even if you get 'successful' typing results, you may not always be able to interpret them properly."
With his John Jay lab team, Kobilinsky is devising a new system for handling small amounts of DNA and amplifying that DNA from a few copies into billions of copies using the process knows as polymerase chain reaction. At any stage of processing (extraction of DNA, quantification, addition to PCR reagents, or thermal cycling) it's possible to accidentally introduce a contaminant which could render the results difficult or impossible to interpret. To test the refinements, he obtained nearly one hundred old-case weapons swabbings from a collaborating police department (the John Jay labs are not accredited to do any actual crime scene lab work for law enforcement purposes), then re-ran the DNA testing using a number of different protocols.
"I feel we've hit upon a better way" of organizing and performing the low-copy tests, he says. "The technique we use minimizes exposure of the template DNA to any potential contaminant."

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-liexpe315905434oct31,0,3790784.story

In missing cases, similar tell-tale signs

BY SUMATHI REDDY | sumathi.reddy@newsday.com
October 31, 2008

Susan Smith pleaded to television cameras to find the man she claimed kidnapped her two sons in 1994 in South Carolina.

Charles Stuart did the same in Boston in 1989, spinning an elaborate tale about how he and his pregnant wife were abducted and shot - she, fatally - after leaving the hospital.

And this week in Bethpage, William Walsh Jr., with red eyes and trembling voice, begged for the public's help to find his missing wife, Leah.

All were eventually charged in the deaths of their family members, fitting into a criminal profile in which the defendant stages dramatic and public expressions of grief and composes detailed stories that, in the end, just don't add up.

"You'd think if you perpetrated something you'd want to keep a low profile and give as few details as possible," said Stephanie Lake, a professor in the Sociology Department and Criminal Justice Program at Adelphi University. "But some of these people almost enter into some kind of psychological state where they try to believe it themselves, convince themselves that there were some outside perpetrators."

Walsh is charged with killing his 29-year-old wife, a special-education teacher in Glen Cove, whose car was found Monday morning on the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway. Her body was found Wednesday morning in North Hills.

Yesterday police said Walsh strangled his wife, hid her body in the woods and staged her disappearance, complete with a fake text message and a flat tire.

Forensic psychologists who watched video tapes of Walsh's displays of grief said that though you can't convict him on his mannerisms in the tapes, in retrospect there are some signs of less-than-truthful behavior.

"He seems to be not looking anybody in the eye," said Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the Department of Sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "And I didn't see a single tear."

Jennifer Duffy, a Rockville Centre and Centerport clinical psychologist specializing in forensics, agreed, saying that, although everyone responds to trauma differently, Walsh appeared nervous and with a flat expression on his face.

"The things that he was saying and the voice that he was using was inconsistent with the affect he displayed on his face," said Duffy. "His eyes and forehead were really expressionless, flat."

Experts said the public expects to see grieving family members in missing-person or homicide cases and not doing so can raise suspicions. But in Walsh's case, his apparent sorrow seemed overdone, they said.

"A public display of grief, that's part of the staging," said Louis B. Schlesinger, a forensic psychology professor at John Jay. "He wants to redirect the investigation away from him."

But, he added, "If you look at grieving people, they don't usually behave that way."

Still, experts said no matter how Walsh reacted, authorities would still look at him as the prime suspect.

"The husband of a dead woman is always the primary suspect until proven otherwise," said Schlesinger. "And statistically, it's because they're almost always the one who did it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/nyregion/16nixzmary.html

Defense Opens Its Case in Beating Death of Girl
By MARC SANTORA
Published: February 16, 2008

Cesar Rodriguez has admitted brutalizing his 7-year-old stepdaughter, Nixzmary Brown — beating her with his hands and a belt, plunging her head into cold water, lashing her to a wooden chair to discipline her, and finally leaving her, naked and starving, on a cold floor.Skip to next paragraph John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times


The defense’s first witness, Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky.



But as his defense team began to present its case to a jury in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Friday, it sought to raise doubts about whether he was the one who delivered the blow that killed the girl and suggested that investigators had not paid enough attention to the girl’s mother, Nixzaliz Santiago.
Saying the prosecution resulted from a “one-sided, lopsided investigation,” Mr. Rodriguez’s chief lawyer, Jeffrey T. Schwartz, told reporters after Friday’s court session that he would keep hammering away at that theme.
“I am calling this terrible police work,” he said.
Still, nothing presented in court Friday contradicted the central thrust of the prosecution’s case. Instead, the defense used its opening witness — the only one called Friday — to try to raise questions about why investigators did not try to prepare a full DNA profile for Ms. Santiago although they did for Mr. Rodriguez.
Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, of the Department of Sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, noted that two items analyzed by police experts — a pair of green sweat pants and duct tape — showed traces of female DNA.
“Without the profile of Ms. Santiago,” those traces were not useful, he told the jury.
Dr. Kobilinsky acknowledged on cross-examination that there was not enough DNA evidence on those two items to match an individual profile even if one had been available.
Later, the prosecutor, Ama Dwimoh, told reporters that a DNA profile of Ms. Santiago had not been prepared because there were not enough traces of DNA on any of the items to allow a match.
Dr. Kobilinsky’s testimony, she said, did nothing to undermine the case against Mr. Rodriguez.
“Nixzmary died a slow death,” she said. “And the people she called Mommy and Daddy failed to get her prompt medical attention.”
In the courtroom, the prosecution sought to turn Dr. Kobilinsky’s testimony to its advantage, using his reference to the “passive transfer” of DNA to once again go through the catalog of evidence of Nixzmary’s dismal life and death.
The chair she was tied to with a nylon rope was hauled onto a table in front of the largely female jury, and Dr. Kobilinsky was asked if there could have been “passive transfer” of DNA to the ropes that bound her ankles.
There could have been, the witness said.
“Would it be fair to say that if someone were thrown up against the wall, their blood would end up there?” a prosecutor asked, pointing to a photo of a blood-spattered wall.
A pillow with blood stains was another example of “passive transfer,” Dr. Kobilinsky acknowledged. Same for the blood on duct tape that bound Nixzmary and the blood on the belt she was beaten with.
Finally, there was the litter box that the girl was forced to use as a toilet, the prosecution’s last example of passive transfer of DNA.
Mr. Schwartz said afterward that the defense was not likely to call character witnesses for Mr. Rodriguez but would keep raising questions about the investigation and the failure to focus on Ms. Santiago.
Ms. Santiago has also been charged with murder in her daughter’s death and is to go on trial later.
The prosecution maintains that the two acted in concert in the girl’s death.
Earlier this month, after Ms. Santiago invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself, the judge ruled that she could not be compelled to testify at her husband’s trial.
Nevertheless, although she has been absent from the courtroom physically, Nixzmary’s mother has been a constant presence, invoked often by the defense and Mr. Rodriguez’s main hope in deflecting blame.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/11/se.09.html


LIVE FROM THE HEADLINES

Interviews With Chris Filippi, Lawrence Kobilinsky

Aired August 11, 2003 - 20:19 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The remains of Laci Peterson and her unborn son washed ashore back in April. Now four months later, they're again under the microscope and under the watchful eye of Scott Peterson's defense team. KSBK reporter Chris Filippi is joining us now live from Sacramento with the latest. Chris, tell us what happened today.
CHRIS FILIPPI, KSBK CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the defense team finally got to look at the remains of Laci and Connor Peterson. They've been waiting to do this for some time. They've brought in a couple of very well known forensic pathologists, Dr. Henry Lee, who you may recall from the O.J. Simpson case, and Dr. Cyril Wecht, who is also very well known for his work in this field.

They did some very close examinations of the body. They spent about three hours at the coroner's office. Took some fluid and tissue samples that they'll do some more testing on. And really, this is part of the defense's effort to try and gather as much information as possible about the autopsy, because they're sure to attack it once the trial begins.

BLITZER: How long did the whole process last, this second autopsy, if you will?

FILIPPI: Yes, it lasted about three hours. It had been decided a couple -- about a month ago that the defense would get a crack at seeing this body firsthand. And that was in fact today, the one day that they would be able to do this. So it lasted about three hours. Again, they did take some samples of the tissue and fluids from the remains. They also took some photographs and they used an X-ray machine. So they really went over things very carefully.

BLITZER: We heard briefly from the lead attorney for Scott Peterson, Mark Geragos, afterwards. They're limited in what they can say, because of the gag order. They and now two forensic scientists as well.

FILIPPI: Yes, very much so, and you've really seen the impact of the gag order on this case. It's been in place for about two months now, and the leaks have really stopped. You don't see the nonstop reporting that you had before the gag order was in place. In fact, it's very rare at this point to hear about -- to hear from Geragos outside of the courtroom. He speak a little bit, just saying overall he was pleased with how things went. He felt like he got some good information. But he wouldn't tell specifically what that information is. BLITZER: Have we heard anything from Laci Peterson's family about this second investigation, this second autopsy?

FILIPPI: No. In fact, we have not, because they're covered by the gag order as well. Although I can tell you just from the leaks that we have heard, this autopsy, you have to remember, is under seal. We're not supposed to know anything about it. But I can tell you they were very upset about the leaks about the original autopsy report. I don't think they've really gotten over that, so they're not going to be very anxious to comment on this.

BLITZER: Chris Filippi, thanks very much for joining us.

FILIPPI: You're welcome.

BLITZER: Scott Peterson's defense is hoping there is something in remains that will clear him of the murders. Lawrence Kobilinsky joins us now with more on what that evidence might be that they are looking for. He is professor of forensic science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice here in New York. Professor, thanks very much for joining us.

LAWRENCE KOBILINSKY, PROFESSOR OF FORENSIC SCIENCE: My pleasure.

BLITZER: What are they looking for?

KOBILINSKY: Well, there are a number of questions that remain unanswered. We don't know the time of death. We don't know the cause of death. Interestingly, if you look at Connor, as has been reported, there is a nylon...

BLITZER: The unborn son.

KOBILINSKY: The unborn son. There is a nylon tape that was wrapped around the neck. I think Henry Lee would be very interested in looking at that.

BLITZER: Why?

KOBILINSKY: Well, it's a piece of physical evidence. If there is any resemblance between that and something that they would find in Scott's home, that would be a very important piece of information. There is also a wound on -- what was considered a postmortem wound on Connor going from the right side of the shoulder down the chest. What's very significant is the umbilical cord, which is about a half a centimeter long, and it is not clear whether it was cut or it was bitten off.

The bottom line here is, people are going to be asking, was this child born and then killed, or was this the so called coffin birth that we're hearing about.

BLITZER: Because of the satanic cult, the notion, the theory that's been out there, discredited by the police, by local law enforcement, the district attorney, but raised by presumably those who think Scott Peterson might have had nothing to do with this. KOBILINSKY: Well, anything that creates reasonable doubt works for the defense. Laci is a whole other story. There is no skull, there are no limbs. The intestines are gone. So I don't believe that this team is going to be able to generate all of a sudden new information that is going to free Scott Peterson from this charge. They probably are taking tissues to do some toxicology, but I really don't have high hopes that there is going to be much new information.

BLITZER: No bombshell, if you will.

KOBILINSKY: No bombshell.

BLITZER: But they spent under three hours, Dr. Henry Lee, Dr. Cyril Wecht, someone very familiar to all of our viewers who watched this case and other cases over the years. What do you make of the fact that they spent under three hours?

KOBILINSKY: Well, you know, an autopsy can take a very short time or a very long time, depending upon the nature of the body and the condition of the body. Here we have two bodies highly decomposed. And it really makes it very difficult to generate information. I don't really think that they really have obtained a hell of a lot of information in the three hours. I think Geragos made a very smart move hiring two very well known scientists.

BLITZER: Among the best in the business.

KOBILINSKY: Among the best in the business. But you know, science is science. And it is said that two people can look at the same item and come up with different conclusions.

BLITZER: Very briefly on that very last point. Is it your sense that they did this because, A, they didn't trust the local forensic scientists who did the initial autopsy, or because they thought these guys were so much better they would glean some new piece of information that might help them in their defense?

KOBILINSKY: I really don't think they're going to glean anything new. I think that they had a choice. Either don't do it and then challenge the ME's office there, or do it and see if they can find fault with procedure.

BLITZER: All right, Dr. Kobilinsky, as usual, thanks very much for joining us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0304/29/lkl.00.html

CNN LARRY KING LIVE

Analysis of Laci Peterson Murder Case

Aired April 29, 2003 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight: "Who Killed Laci Peterson?" a new documentary, promises to take us deep inside the investigation and offers one of the very few interviews granted by Laci's husband, Scott, since her disappearance.
Joining us tonight is veteran newsman Bill Kurtis, host of that new documentary, Court TV's Nancy Grace, a former prosecutor, defense attorney Chris Pixley, famed forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, 25 years New York City's medical examiner and internationally renowned criminalist Dr. Larry Kobilinsky. They're all next on LARRY KING LIVE.

This documentary -- this special presentation on A&E is called "Who Killed Laci Peterson?" It premieres Wednesday night -- that's tomorrow night -- at 10:00 Eastern, and Bill Kurtis is its host. Bill, what's the gist of this?

BILL KURTIS, HOST, A&E'S "WHO KILLED LACI PETERSON?": Hi, Larry. Well, basically, it's a linear presentation in the good old documentary form. Much of the evidence is out there. What we don't know is what is interesting, and prosecutors say that they have voluminous evidence. We have been told the prosecution case is a slam dunk. Once you see all the evidence, what we have now is a circumstantial case. We have no direct evidence. It's nice to see it in a lengthy form, to be able to see both sides, defense and prosecution, and weigh the evidence in this, the court of public opinion.

KING: You've become very used, Bill, to hosting shows on crime. When the case is current like this, do you walk a tinderbox here? I mean, you know, we have to assume innocence. And is there a danger of the media creating guilt?

KURTIS: Well, there is. I think a lot of people feel Scott Peterson is guilty right now. The nice thing about having enough time to tell the story is you can present two sides. I think it's incumbent to us to always remember that he has not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He is still innocent to this time. But the audience, I think, is smart. And given the opportunity to see the evidence, they're going to come to their own conclusion and, I hope, give him a fair shake. We know the media is overwhelming. We know that inside the courtroom, things are fine. But outside on the steps is where a defense attorney can lose the reputation of his client.

KING: Now, unless there are eyewitnesses, all cases are circumstantial, aren't they?

KURTIS: They are. And you have other direct evidence. You can have a murder weapon, blood, DNA to connect the defendant to the crime. And you have some wonderful criminalists whose job it is to find the evidence and prove those links.

KING: Now, there is a portion of an interview with Scott Peterson that he gave to KOVR, a local station. We're going to show a clip of it, and then I'll ask you about it, and then I'll bring our panel in. Here, watch this with Scott Peterson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know that you mentioned on "Good Morning America" that it wouldn't surprise you if they found blood...

SCOTT PETERSON, LACI PETERSON'S HUSBAND: Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... in your vehicles. Explain why.

PETERSON: Well, take a look at my hands. And you can see, you know, cuts here on my knuckles, numerous scars. I work on farms. I work with machinery. I know I cut my knuckle that day.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On what day?

PETERSON: On Christmas Eve.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Doing what?

PETERSON: Reaching in the toolbox in my truck and then into the pocket on the door.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: What's most puzzling about this case, Bill -- and we'll bring the panel in in a moment -- is why? If he did it, why?

KURTIS: Everybody is jumping to the conclusion that he had a girlfriend. He was in love with Amber Frey. He probably wanted to be with her more than Laci. There is a theory that in the house on that Christmas Eve or later, there may have been some kind of a passionate confrontation in which there was a fight and Laci was killed.

What I want to see is not his blood but blood in a house, on a tarp that was found at San Francisco Bay, in his truck, in his boat, and then you have a connection if the defense witnesses don't prove to give him a good alibi. Across the street, you will find his story actually corroborated. He said that he left for fishing on the day before Christmas at 9:30 AM, and Laci was supposed to go walking in La Loma Park (ph). Two people saw her and say that she was very pregnant. She was with a dog. They identified a white shirt, black pants. And I have not received or found a good explanation that they may be wrong. And also, there was a house burglarized across the street, proving that there were some bad guys in the neighborhood. That's what makes this case interesting. KING: Nancy Grace, do those facts give you pause?

NANCY GRACE, COURT TV: Well, frankly, Larry, they did when I first heard them. However, both of those have been thoroughly investigated by police, and it's my understanding -- and I believe this to be true -- that following the sighting of a woman, I believe in her 70s, down the street from 523 Covina, that stated she saw Laci going for a walk, the police canvassed the area and discovered three pregnant women in the same area that were similar to Laci and that one of them had stated she had walked by the witness's home, walking her dog at that time, so they ruled that eyewitness out.

As to the burglary -- the burglary happened before Laci went missing. Those people have been found and polygraphed and ruled out. Can you imagine burglarizing the house across the street and then being suspected of the murder? They would do anything to cooperate, and they did.

KING: I understand we have a sound bite from one of the witnesses who said they saw something. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's the lady I saw. And she's so striking, a beautiful lady and a beautiful dog. And he's a golden retriever. And she was so pretty, and the dog was so pretty that you couldn't help but look.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Chris Pixley, is this anything but an open-and-shut case to you?

CHRIS PIXLEY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Oh, it's definitely not an open- and-shut case at this point in time, Larry. It's evidence like this kind, Vivian Mitchell's testimony, just coming out now that we're going to be hearing more of. And what it demonstrates is that this rush to convict Scott Peterson in the media is, if anything, a sign of the weakness of the prosecution's case. An announcement just two weeks after the charge and arrest of Scott Peterson, that he, in fact, is going to be charged with the death penalty -- all of this, I think, is just a smokescreen that masks the weakness in the prosecution's factual case.

And of course, most of what we've heard to date is evidence that's really a character assassination on Scott Peterson. So it's great to see the Vivian Mitchells come forward, and I think that we're going to see more testimony, more evidence of that kind in the coming days and weeks.

KING: I want to get everybody in. Then we'll get into a free- for-all discussion here. Dr. Baden, you're not only chief medical examiner for New York City and chief forensic pathologist for New York State Police, you're part of this documentary. What's your overall read on this case? DR. MICHAEL BADEN, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Well, my read, from a forensic pathologist's point of view, is we try to determine what happened not whodunnit. And as far as what happened, that's still up in the air because the cause of Laci Peterson's death has not yet been determined or released, and that's a problem for a prosecutor -- not an insurmountable problem, but a big problem.

I think also the medical examiner in Modesto has already examined the skeletal remains. There's been some separation, according, to the media of the head. If that head has been separated by a saw, by an axe, by a knife, it will leave certain marks, tool mark evidence, that if it can be matched up -- these marks to a tool in Scott Peterson's home or somebody else's home -- that's like having a fingerprint match. And that gives you the kind of direct evidence that Mr. Kurtis alluded to. And we don't know any of this yet because the Modesto police must have a lot of stuff that they haven't -- properly -- that they haven't released yet.

KING: Dr. Kobilinsky, you are a criminalist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. You also appear in the documentary. By the way, what is a criminalist?

DR. LAWRENCE KOBILINSKY, CRIMINALIST: A criminalist is a person who uses scientific methods and technology to solve problems related to the law -- mainly, criminal law. And we attempt to associate a suspect with a crime scene or a victim, and we try to reconstruct the events during the crime and leading up to the crime and explain our results to a jury, so that they can make an informed decision.

KING: All right. Let me get a break. We'll come back. We'll get your read on this and get the panel going. We'll be including phone calls, too. And the documentary which airs tomorrow night on A&E is being produced by CBS News Productions. We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KOBILINSKY: There's very little doubt in my mind that the body was weighted down. And the fact that the body didn't come up for so many months would argue that it was weighted down with something -- an anchor, concrete.

KURTIS (voice-over): In fact, police found bags of cement in Scott's home and traces of cement in his boat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Bill Kurtis, would you say that one of the puzzling aspects of this is that Scott -- all of his actions seem to act like a guilty guy?

KURTIS: Looks like it. He changed his hair color from brown to an orange-blond. He had $10,000 in his pocket. He was 30 miles from the Mexican border. He appeared that he was ready to go. I think that's why they arrested him. He went fishing and revealed that not far from where he went fishing in San Francisco Bay, the body of Laci Peterson was found. That's very, very suspicious. The other, of course, is Amber Frey, his girlfriend. One big question I have is whether the police records will show that he called Amber Frey on Christmas night. He apparently was talking to her, we are led to believe, all the way into April. This gives him a motive, as does insurance money. But again, we're leaping to conclusions. We need more to fill in to actually get the conviction.

KING: Now, Nancy Grace has already made that leap to a conclusion. Why?

GRACE: Well, Larry, of course, I'm anxious to see what police have in their files that we don't know about yet. But you often refer to people, suspects being presumed innocent, but that's not the end of that jury charge. The full statement is -- and this is what judges charge to juries -- a suspect is presumed innocent unless and until the state pierces that presumption. From the evidence that I have heard, in my mind, he seems guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But obviously, I have not heard all of the evidence, and that presumption is in a court of law. We, obviously, are not in a court of law.

KING: Right. Right.

GRACE: We are not sitting on a jury. I am deducing...

KING: But you have -- you have made it...

GRACE: ... from what I have heard.

KING: Right. You have made a conclusion based on what you've heard.

GRACE: Unless I hear otherwise. What I know now tends to indicate that he is guilty.

KING: Now, Chris, you would take the opposite view of that?

KING: Oh, Bill, absolutely. It's so early. And take, for example something that -- excuse me -- Larry. Take, for example, something that Bill said a moment ago. We have this relationship with Amber Frey, and there's been a great deal of focus on what was going to between Scott Peterson and Amber Frey. The defense, at some point, is going to have to acknowledge that this reflects very poor judgment on Scott Peterson's part. But at the same time, looking at the duration of the relationship, the emotional commitment cannot be there over a 30-day relationship to have any role in the disappearance or death of Laci Peterson. So every time we come up against...

GRACE: That doesn't make sense.

PIXLEY: ... one of these damning pieces of evidence, we face the fact that we know very little about it.

GRACE: That really doesn't...

KING: Dr. Kobilinsky...

GRACE: ... make sense.

KOBILINSKY: Yes?

KING: Dr. Kobilinsky?

KOBILINSKY: Yes?

KING: Do we have to know the cause of death for there to be a trial?

KOBILINSKY: Well, you don't even need a body to have a trial. People have been convicted without a body. But the point is, is it's a major gap in the case. We know that it's a probable homicide, but we don't know the manner of death. Was she strangled? Was she bludgeoned? And we don't know the time of death. These are major gaps. But the thing is, is scientists don't make jumps and come to conclusions, don't make these leaps. They look at physical evidence, and they hypothesize and see if the evidence is consistent with what their theories are.

KING: Dr. Baden, would you guess that they have an awful lot of evidence?

BADEN: Yes, very much, Larry. Certainly, from day two, they were already looking into his apartment. They were sending divers down into the water. That's not the usual way that police react to a missing adult. They wait a while until they make sure the adult hasn't gone off voluntarily or something. So that they must have had a lot of stuff right away. Maybe the neighbors saw something. They talk about the tarp and the umbrellas. Maybe they found all kinds of -- see, the blood in the house isn't just a matter that she lived there, but it depends on the amount of blood, the blood spatter pattern. They did do luminol and other trace blood analysis of the home. And that would distinguish innocent blood from blood that got there in a violent manner. There's all kinds of stuff that the police must have had in order to have immediately seized on this and treated it as a homicide.

KING: We'll be back with more of the documentary. Airs tomorrow night. It's called "Who Killed Laci Peterson?" on A&E at 10:00 o'clock Eastern time. We'll be including your calls in a little while, as well. Don't go away.