Pathology with Dr. Priya | A Zone 7 Series: What Clothes Reveal About the Crime

Zone 7 with Sheryl McCollum

iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline

True Crime

4.4 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sometimes the story is in the fabric, not the flesh—and in the right hands, clothing can speak volumes about a death investigation.

In this episode, Dr. Priya Banerjee joins Sheryl McCollum to explore how clothing can hold vital clues in a death investigation. From the first look at a scene to the autopsy table, they reveal how stains, textures, odors, and damage can tell a story the body alone might not. Dr. Priya shares real-world cases — from waterlogged jeans covered in barnacles to garments hiding trace evidence — and explains why context, culture, and condition matter.

Highlights:

(0:00) Welcome to Pathology with Dr. Priya, a Zone 7 series
(1:00) "The clothes tell me something before I even start the exam.”
(3:15) Stains, fibers, and fabric that preserve hidden evidence
(5:15) When clothing speaks louder than the wounds
(9:00) Smelling out the truth: detecting accelerants in fire cases
(10:45) Finding the unseen with alternate light sources
(12:30) What traditional dress can reveal in an investigation
(14:30) Paradoxical undressing and mismatched environments
(16:15) Rips, tears, and the unmistakable signs of struggle

About the Hosts

Dr. Priya Banerjee is a board-certified forensic pathologist with extensive experience in death investigation, clinical forensics, and courtroom testimony. A graduate of Johns Hopkins, she served for over a decade as Rhode Island’s state medical examiner and now runs a private forensic pathology practice. Her work includes military deaths, NSA cases, and high-profile investigations. Dr. Priya has also been featured as a forensic expert on platforms such as CrimeOnline and Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. She is a dedicated educator, animal lover, and proud mom.

Website: anchorforensicpathology.com
Twitter/X: @Autopsy_MD

Sheryl McCollum is an Emmy Award–winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnline, and the Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. She works as a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department and is the co-author of the textbook Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute (CCIRI), a nationally recognized nonprofit that brings together universities, law enforcement, and experts to help solve unsolved homicides, missing persons cases, and kidnappings.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter/X: @ColdCaseTips
Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
Instagram: @officialzone7podcast

📣 If this episode gave you a new understanding of the human side of forensic science, follow the show, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and leave us a review.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:12.0	Welcome to Pathology with Dr. Priya.
0:16.0	Listen, doctor, I appreciate today because I want to go one on one with you about the body.
0:27.1	And specifically, when I get to a murder scene and I am investigating and trying to analyze this body,
0:35.3	and then once you get it, how we are a team at that point.
0:39.4	Absolutely.
0:40.5	So the first thing I want to ask you, because whenever I have a homicide scene, I'm first observing
0:47.1	and trying to make sure I don't miss anything, I try to really make sure that I am looking
0:53.8	at the clothing. I want to know whether
0:56.3	it's seasonally appropriate. Is it snowing outside and they're barefoot with no shirt on? Are
1:03.1	they wearing anything that might be religious or cultural or belonging to a group? But I don't get to undress them like you do. So I may not know
1:14.4	whether or not they're wearing underwear. I may not know certain things about it, but I kind of
1:20.9	really take some time with clothing. Do you find that the same thing? Oh, absolutely. So, you know, I had a unique sort of role in my work as a medical examiner, and I think
1:33.6	that's added a lot to my practice now, which is I used to go to crime scenes, not every single
1:40.6	one, but many over my career.
1:43.3	Anything suspicious, anything that's definitely a homicide,
1:47.3	and the body's still at the scene, okay? Or anything suspicious. So it can be, you know,
1:53.7	in New England where there's a lot of water, like a water scene or snow, like even Karen
1:59.0	read how they were talking about John O'Keefe, what didn't have,
2:03.1	I don't think he had a coat on, right? He had like a shirt and pants, if I recall correctly.
2:08.5	Right, he had a sweatshirt, correct. So, I mean, all of that comes into play. And so before we even
2:15.5	touch the body, what I'm doing is observing, like you said, what is happening sort of an overall.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.