Every death scene is a question. The answer is in the evidence — if you know what you’re looking at. Patrol officers are almost always the first to arrive. What they do in those first minutes determines what investigators have to work with. A compromised scene, a missed wound, a misread manner of death — these are not small errors. They are the difference between a case that closes and a case that doesn’t.

Death Investigations is a 16-hour, POST-certified course that trains officers and investigators in the full scope of death investigation — from initial response to courtroom-ready documentation. Students learn to identify injury types, manage major crime scenes, determine manner and cause of death, recognize bloodstain evidence, investigate in-custody deaths and officer-involved shootings, and apply proven investigative techniques to child death cases and complex homicides.

This course places you directly into your departments Solve Culture as it deals with interpratating the crime that matters the most. The victims can’t speak. The investigator speaks for them. That means getting the scene right, reading the evidence correctly, and building a case that holds. This is not awareness training — it is the technical foundation that s

Mike Gaynor carries a 95%+ solve rate for homicides spanning three decades — a number that is essentially 100% above the national average for homicide investigators. He built that record one case at a time, using the same investigative principles he teaches in this course. You are not learning theory. You are learning what works.

Here’s what students move through across two days:

1. ‍Establish Legal and Investigative Foundation: Search and seizure, consent procedures, Miranda application, case law, and the legal framework that governs every decision at a death scene.‍
2. Read the Scene and the Body: Natural vs. unnatural death, manner and cause determination, wound recognition across all major categories — bruising, ligature, incised wounds, gunshot — and what each tells you.‍
3. Investigate Apparent Suicide and Accidental Death: Overdose, hanging, jumpers, fire, falls, traffic fatalities, drowning, and auto-erotic incidents — each with specific evidence checklists and the indicators that distinguish accidental from criminal.‍
4. Apply Protocol to High-Stakes Cases: Child death protocol, SIDS, abuse and neglect scenarios, major crime scene management, officer-involved shootings, and in-custody deaths — including the legal and administrative separation those cases require.‍
5. Document, Interview, and Close: Evidence recognition, photography, documentation standards, witness interview technique, and real case studies — including People vs. Carrasco and People vs. Jeshurin — that show exactly how it all comes together.