Stanton Stan O. Berg A Forensic Life : An Autobiography

While this book is the autobiography of Stanton O. Berg’s (Stan’s) life and times, it is also a short history of United States during the Great Depression and also the history of the development of the forensic sciences with some inclusion of Sherlock Holmes in that history. Stan’s four years army service in the Counter Intelligence Corp. at Baltimore, Maryland, and his weekend work with the Baltimore Police Crime Laboratory is reviewed. In looking back at Stan’s forensic science career, one will find Stan handled 1000 cases, testified in legal proceedings over 350 times. Stan with his wife, June, as his administrative assistant, attended 170 forensic science conferences in the US, Canada, and Europe. Stan often was a conference speaker and four times served as conference chairman. As Stan looks back at his career, he finds that, in some way or the other, Stan has been involved in almost every important case during the wild 60s and 70s—the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, Chicago Police shooting raid on Black Panther Headquarters, and the SLA ambush shooting of Oakland School Supt. with cyanide-tipped bullets. Stan’s career also consisted of much investigation and testimony in the area of civil litigation, gun accidents and gun safety designs.