About the Orange County Sheriff's Department
According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (Florida), “The first sheriff of Orange County dates from the earliest days of Florida's statehood in 1845. On January 31, 1845, the area was known as Mosquito County in Territorial Florida was renamed Orange County, a name reflective of the spreading blanket of orange groves throughout the region. Less than six weeks later, on March 3, 1845, Florida's status as a territory was changed to that of statehood. The first statewide election was conducted on May 26, 1845. William Henry Williams was elected to serve as Orange County's first sheriff.”

Today, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is a full service law enforcement agency which employees over 2,400 employees with a budget of over 140 million dollars.  The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is organized into three divisions: Uniformed Patrol, Investigative Divisions and Administrative Divisions.  In addition to being one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the Southeast United States, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is unique in that unlike most sheriff agencies it does not manage the county jails.  Management of the Orange County inmate population is accomplished the Orange County Corrections Department, a separate entity.

John F. Fischer, president of Forensic Research and Supply Corporation, worked for many years as a forensic analyst and as the director of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (Florida) crime lab.  He has also been a lecturer at the FBI Academy.  John F. Fischer is the co-author of Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detection.

According to the Library Journal, “Nickell (Pen, Ink and Evidence) and Fischer provide a comprehensive primer of forensic investigation for the uninitiated. After an introductory chapter details the proper protocol for securing a crime scene, nine chapters focus on different forms of evidence. Although the writing is uninspired, a great deal of basic information is presented. Each chapter ends with a well-known case study in which the techniques discussed played a significant role. The relatively brief case studies are the most interesting portion of the book and demonstrate the range of evidence with which investigators must deal.

A conviction was secured in the Lindbergh kidnapping by matching marks on a homemade ladder left at the crime scene with a carpenter's plane in Bruno Hauptmann's garage; a detailed fiber analysis led police to conclude that Wayne Williams was responsible for the deaths of 30 black men in Atlanta. Also discussed are firearms in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, toxicology in the investigation into Marilyn Monroe's suicide, DNA "fingerprinting" in the O.J. Simpson case and anthropological techniques in an examination of the deaths of Russia's last czar and his family. Some technical material, like how a bullet's entry hole might be smaller than the bullet making the hole, is glossed over, but there's enough here to satisfy most inquisitive readers.”