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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau. True Detective season three, Coffee With a Cop and Testing Blood. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

This is episode 26 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional-quality crime-related fiction. If you have your own author business, consider joining Patreon. It's free for you, and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon.

Real quick, I wanna give a special thank you to Gold Shield patron, Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, for supporting the show at the Gold Shield level. Debra is a prolific author, having created many different urban fantasy fiction series. In fact, if you're a Kindle Unlimited member, check out the first book in Debra's White Lightning series, it's called Wooden Nickels. Moonshine, mobsters, and mages in the 1920s? That sounds awesome.

The Gold Shield tier of patronage, which Debra just joined, includes two Gold Shield members only livestreams per month which we can use for Q&A, story help, or whatever you wanna talk about.

Most importantly, I wanna thank my OPs, my original patrons: Joan Raymond; Guy Alton; Natasha Bajema, who, by the way, just launched the Authors of Mass Destruction podcast, so if you write about WMDs, definitely give that a listen; Natalie Barelli; Joe Trent; Siobhan Pope; Leah Cutter; Ryan Kinmil; Richard Phillips; Robin Lyons; Gene Desrochers; and Craig Kingsman. Your support for the show means so much to me. Thank you, I really appreciate it.

So, as a listener, please support all of these awesome authors by visiting their author websites and reading their books. You can find links to their websites in the show notes at writersdetective.com/26.

Speaking of support, last week we hit over 5,000 downloads, and we're nearly at 6,000 as I'm recording this. I'm horrible at taking the time to pause and recognize small wins like that, but I wanted to stop for a second and just say thank you. Thanks for listening, thanks for coming back every week, and thanks for sharing this podcast with your friends. Five thousand downloads for our little podcast? This milestone would not have been possible without you, quite literally. You are awesome. And don't forget, this podcast is for you. I know you have questions, so please send them in. Just go to writersdetective.com/podcast, and go ahead and ask away.

I don't know about you, but I am a fan of HBO's show True Detective. Season three launched a few weeks ago, and I think I'm on episode three, I'm a little behind. Don't worry, there are no spoilers in what I'm going to talk about, but if you're a fan of how season one unfolded with the timeline, then you'll be happy to hear that season three of True Detective uses a similar storytelling technique. Mahershala Ali gives an amazing performance that you will definitely wanna see.

But the reason I wanna talk about season three of True Detective has to do with how you choose to write your own stories. Now, I promised no spoilers, but I am going to reveal that the basic premise, the inciting incident, of the entire season is that two children go missing. I promise I'm not ruining anything about the story by telling you this. I promised no spoilers, but I'm going to reveal that the basic premise, the inciting incident, of the entire season is that two children go missing. Now, I promise, I'm not ruining anything about the story by telling you this.

So the children go off on their bikes and they're told to be home by sunset. This is pretty much how I grew up, and I imagine many of you did too. From about the time I was 10 years old or so, my bicycle was my freedom. I had a paper route, I rode to and from school on it, I mean I went all over the place on my bike. I was out of the house all the time. Honestly, it's something I should probably be doing again now.

If I didn't come home on time, what happened? I'm sure it was the same for you, your parents would call your friends' houses and try to figure out where you were. Of course, this...                                                                                                             Continue reading...                                          

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​This week on The Writer's Detective Bureau: water related deaths, bail for murder, here comes the judge, and researching the news. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

This is episode number 25 of The Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. If you have your own author business consider joining Patreon. It's free for you and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more visit WritersDetective.com/Patreon. Please join me in thanking the patrons that make this podcast possible, Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, Robin Lyons, Gene Desrochers and Craig Kingsman by visiting the links to their author websites in the show notes, which you can find at WritersDetective.com/25.

​Speaking of Gene Desrochers, he submits this week's first question. Gene writes, "Hi, Adam. Love the podcast. Succinct and to the point. In my latest novel I'm dealing with time of death in one situation where an older woman drowns in the ocean and is found a week later on the beach. Within how many hours can a not-so state-of-the-art crime lab pinpoint time of death? Minutes, hours, days? She's not been eaten, but she's been nibbled on by smaller fish during this time, and of course on the beach flies and such have gathered. Thanks for your help. Sincerely, Gene."

Gene, first of all, thank you for becoming a patron, and thank you for the question. For starters, I don't know that they would come up with an exact time of death. Knowing that she's been missing and presumed drowned for a week is already a pretty good narrowing down of the time of death window. A week is a long time for a body to be in the water. Now, I say that because from an ecosystem perspective she's a pretty significant food source for everything living in the water, whether, critters big and small are going to start doing their thing pretty quickly. Being on the beach would take less of a toll on the body. I don't think the autopsy would be as focused on the time of death specifically so much as the cause of death, especially if drowning is already the suspected cause. So if they aren't suspecting foul...           Continue reading...

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​This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, coffee mugs, double jeopardy, the hiring process and arrest warrants. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

This is episode number 24 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. If you have your own author business, consider joining Patreon. It's free for you and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit WritersDetective.com/patreon.

Please join me in thanking the patrons that make this podcast possible: Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, and Robin Lyons by visiting the links to their author websites in the show notes by going to WritersDetective.com/24.

Last week we talked about dual sovereignty and if you haven't listened to episode 23, just to catch you up, the concept of dual sovereignty is that you can be charged in both a federal court and state court for committing the same criminal act.

In that example, last week it was if you rob a bank, you can be prosecuted in federal court for the crime of bank robbery and you can also be charged in state court under the state's criminal or penal code for the crime of robbery. Now, if you're exonerated in one, meaning that you're found not guilty in, say, federal court, you can still be prosecuted in the other so you can still be prosecuted for that robbery in state court, and that led us to the topic of double jeopardy. Now double jeopardy is different and it is spelled out in the fifth amendment to the US constitution, which prohibits anyone from being prosecuted twice for substantially the same crime. What this means is that if you have gone all the way to ... Now, barring that the crime is both a federal crime and a state crime. Once your court case has attached jeopardy, meaning you will potentially be facing penalty, then you can not be prosecuted a second time for that crime.

So normally this happens when the case has been brought to a jury. And by that I mean the jury is now in deliberation. So if the jury decides that the defendant is not guilty, the prosecutor cannot file a new charge to try this case again. To use the OJ Simpson case as an example, once he was found not guilty for murder, even if new evidence came to light, you know, several decades later, the fact that he's already been found not guilty means that he will not face those charges again. The reason I mentioned double jeopardy is because it could actually be a great plot device or a progressive complication for a story that you're telling...                                                                                              Continue reading...

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This week on The Writer's Detective Bureau, line of duty death notifications, escaping your identity, and bank robberies. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is The Writer's Detective Bureau.

Happy New Year. This is episode number 23 of The Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime-related fiction.

If you have your own author business consider joining Patreon. It's free for you and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon.

Please join me in thanking the patrons that make this podcast possible, Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, and Robin Lyons, by visiting the links to their author websites in the show notes by going to writersdetective.com/23.

Speaking of our awesome Patreon patrons, my latest patron, Robin Lyons, submitted what is our first question for 2019. You can find Robin's work at robinlyons.com. That's Lyons spelled, L-Y-O-N-S.

Robin writes, "Hi, Adam. I've been listening since episode 14. Love your show and the information you provide is amazing. Thank you." Thank you, Robin. I appreciate that. "I hope I'm not asking a question that you've already addressed. I'll binge listen to episodes one through 13 soon. I'm curious about the procedure of notifying a wife when her husband, an officer, is killed in the line of duty. A super sad topic. I'm sorry. Often there is a community funeral with color guard and officers from other agencies in attendance. Is that standard? Also, I know police departments are like families, so I assume there's a lot of follow-up and assistance provided to the widow and children. Can you talk a little about the follow-up? Again, I apologize for the sad topic. Thank you for your service to the community."

Thank you for your question, Robin. Yes, the color guard and community funeral would be pretty standard for an officer killed in the line of duty. Now, to start with, I want to talk about the notification, which itself is always done in person and often with a chaplain.

I remember one night when a neighboring agency had an officer killed, but the officer lived in our jurisdiction. We accompanied the officers ​

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