Author gives forensics of murders in S.C.
By Rachel Haynie

Fooling around with a Brownie camera as a gangly nine-year-old turned out to be the beginning of a career Rita Shuler says was more interesting and rewarding than she could ever have imagined. As part of South Carolina Department of Law Enforcement investigation teams for 24 years, she helped bring closure to cases and to families whose loved ones were crime victims.

Retiring in 2001 gave the Orangeburg native time to publish the stories she had been writing in her mind for years before. "I was working on the book as I prepared to give lectures or when I was driving to work," said Shuler. The writing was done before Shuler, now a Lake Murray resident, connected with The History Press, a Charleston-based publisher.

The press' release of Carolina Crimes appears in its fall catalog, and Shuler is back on the road, not to a crime site or the lab she spent so many hours in during her years at SLED. Now she is off to signing events. She will be a featured author November 11 at History Lovers' Market at the South Carolina History Center on Parklane Road, and later that day will be in Aiken for another signing event.

Rita Shuler

In just under 200 pages, Lt. Shuler provides a fo-rensic study of murders in South Carolina, choosing a dozen homicide cases to give readers an insider's look into twists and turns of each investigation. Glim-pses into the minds of notorious South Carolina killers Pee Wee Gaskins, Rudolph Tyner, and Larry Gene Bell are in Shuler's book, but she says the reading is not so much grisly as scientific.

She knows the public's fascination with forensic science has helped create a readership for her first book. She, however, is a fan of only a few of the network shows. "Some of them are overproduced and, certainly, we did not wear at SLED the kind of revealing clothes some of the TV stars wear on shows like CSI. I prefer watching Without a Trace and Cold Case because they are based on real cases."

Shuler said some of the techniques or equipment on network TV are unrealistic. "It either doesn't exist quite yet, or at least wouldn't be found in a small state lab like ours," said Shuler. "Certainly, cases don't get solved as quickly as they do in an hour-long segment." Instead, Shuler said the cases re-opened in her book were solved with good investigative work and good teamwork. Some of them took years to solve, and oftentimes came together after a new advance in forensic science came into use. A case coming full circle brought Shuler her work's greatest rewards.

Television does showcase the importance of specialized photography she employed as part of investigative teams. "As new advances became available, I went to FBI trainings to learn how we could use them to solve crimes," recalled Shuler. "It was fascinating what you could find with photography the human eye did not see."

It was Shuler's earlier career in X-ray technology that prepared her for her SLED career. "As I performed operating room photography, especially on homicide victims, I guess I was laying the groundwork, but I didn't know it at the time.Throughout all of it, my motivation has been for families to get some closure," Shuler said.