MISSOURI'S NEWEST CRASH UNIT USES HIGH-TECH EQUIPMENT IN INVESTIGATIONS

JACKSON -- Cameron Heath doesn't go to work until people die.

"I have a brother who calls me 'Dr. Death,'" said Heath, team leader for the state Highway Patrol's major crash investigation team in Southeast Missouri.

Sgt. Heath and two other officers have handled every multiple death accident from Ste. Genevieve to Shannon to Pemiscot counties for the past year.

Heath's is the newest of the four major crash units in the state, having begun operations a year ago last week.

The concept of doing high-tech crash investigations is still a new concept. The Highway Patrol's first unit started working October 1997.

Heath likens his job to connecting the dots.

"Anytime they need to have something diagrammed, they'll call us," he said.

Gathering such information as a car's speed, time and distance in an accident might not seem valuable to some, but it is, Heath said.

"The evidence we gather isn't always going to make or break a murder case," he said. "But many cases in court are decided by a preponderance of the evidence. We help alleviate loopholes."

Instead of using tape measures to estimate how long it took a car to stop, a car's speed and other details, these troopers work with Sokkia forensic mapping stations. The stations are more familiar to surveyors than crime fighters, but their use makes a significant difference in determining the facts of a fatal accident, Heath said.

Measurements of skid marks or the size of dents with the mapping stations are more accurate than steel tape measures. The latter are reported accurate within one-thirty-second of an inch, while the mapping stations are accurate to one-thousandth of an inch, he said.

The time difference is staggering. A wreck that would normally take two or three days at the site can now be completed within four hours or less, Heath said.

Each crash investigation unit has two of the $27,000 mapping stations. They are operated by two officers, as in surveying. The stations capture electronic measurements, which investigators reproduce into a map on an office computer.

Numerous styles of cars, road signs and other elements are placed on the map by pointing and clicking with a computer's mouse. If a type of car isn't available, officers can construct a computer model, Heath said.

Since computer-assisted accident reconstruction is new, training is constant. Heath estimates that he spent 500 hours in the past year learning more about wrecks.

Testing of different cars to see what happens in similar crashes is popular now, he said. A group will get 20 cars of the same model and, for example, run them into the rear of a tractor-trailer to see what happens to a car at different speeds.

This kind of testing to find out what happens to people is also being conducted. Certain plastic PVC pipes are so close to behaving like human bones that they have been used to determine at what speed leg amputation occurs in a pedestrian accident. It's 35 miles per hour, Heath said.

Sometimes, there just isn't enough evidence. Heath recalls an accident in Reynolds County in which one person died, another lived, but he couldn't determine who was driving. After 40 hours of work and conversations with the uncooperative survivor, he still doesn't know.

"Sometimes it's impossible to solve a simple question like who was driving without evidence," Heath said.

A typical investigation with take 60 to 80 hours in the field and office.

The work week varies. Once he responded to 10 accidents. Often, a week passes without a fatality.

The Highway Patrol has certain qualifications for a major crash:

* Three or more deaths

* Felony charges are pending

* School bus fatality

* Commercial vehicle fatality

* Highway patrol car with serious injuries

* State government vehicle with fatality

A catch-all category sets the crash units into motion at a colonel's discretion, Heath said.

Heath has also done courtesy work for other law enforcement agencies. He has worked on two murders, including the discovery of 11-year-old Keosha Rodgers' body last November in Pemiscot County. He and his two team members mapped an area covering 2.6 miles.

"The FBI was there, too," he said. "They said it would have taken them two weeks to do it with steel [measuring] tape."

Less than 1,000 accident reconstruction experts exist in the United States, which puts Heath and his colleagues in demand. Attorneys have asked him to do some moonlighting in exchange for part of a court settlement. It's against Highway Patrol rules, so he doesn't do it.

But when he has seen an accident reconstruction expert from Virginia driving a ultra high-tech bus worth $750,000, Heath admits he's jealous.

In the private sector, trucking and insurance companies pay three times what he makes with the Highway Patrol, Heath said. But the higher salary demands much more time away from home, which is a trade he doesn't want to make.

Heath would rather be seen more often in Southeast Missouri. But not at work.

"Somebody I've worked with said to me not long ago that he didn't see me as much at accidents anymore," Heath said. "I told him you don't want to see me."