Author donates £500,000 to crime solving college

Best-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell is donating $1m (€670,157) to a top criminal justice college for a new academy to teach crime scene investigation techniques.

The crime writer says she is taking action because she is appalled by what she has seen at crime scene investigations.

“I’ve seen cops walk through blood. I’ve seen them leave their own fingerprints on a window,” she said in an interview today.

“I’ve seen bloody clothing put in a plastic bag, instead of a paper bag, so it decomposes.”

Her funding will help start the Crime Scene Academy at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, set to open this fall with training in DNA typing, fingerprint enhancement techniques, ballistics and forensic psychology.