Crystal violet for blood processing

[LauraT]

Just curious if anyone is familiar with the idea of using Crystal Violet (NOT Leucocrystal Violet) for processing for bloody latent prints. If so, please explain why one would choose to use it (as opposed to more familiar methods) and what it is reacting to/with in a bloody print.

Thanks

[timbo]

Crystal Violet is more commonly known as Gentian Violet. It is predominantly used for processing the adhesive side of tape. It reacts with sebaceous components, proteins and skin cells. It is also sometimes used for prints in grease.
I have not heard of it specifically being used to process prints in blood, but I would imagine that the only consideration for using it for a print in blood would be for when the print in blood is on the adhesive side of tape.
I personally find sticky side powder to work better than Gentian Violet.

[josher89]

There's literature out there that suggests using ninhydrin for bloody impressions on porous surfaces. I've never tried it myself but would be willing to see if it worked well, or at least as well as other blood enhancement reagents.

[Ernie Hamm]

There are several protein reactive solutions for blood enhancement and I got to preferring Amido Black 10B (Alcohol Base) as the solution of choice. However, you shouldn't discounted the non-destuctive techniques such as UV illumination prior to processing. There is some improvement with UV and better improvement with AB 10B. However, you never know just what reaction you will obtain and the non-destructive UV illumination can be considered.

Blood In Situ.jpg

Blood UV.jpg

Blood Amido.jpg

I have no idea how these images will be displayed. In the preview, they are quite large. Sorry, but the best I could do with my limited knowledge of posting attachements.

[LauraT]

Thanks, all. Turns out that the one source that had quoted crystal violet for blood processing had done so in error and is fixing that error. Technically, crystal violet and leucocrystal violet are related so there may be some reason to believe that crystal violet could react with blood, but not that it would be a go-to choice for processing. The agency involved has already validated crystal violet for use for blood prints (but the validation process was not very well done) and we are working to remedy the issue to get them to use a more standard process.