GBI scientist shares his journey through forensics
“It’s kind of tough to talk about a 30-something-year career in 20 minutes, but I’m going to try and hit a few of the highlights,” retired forensic scientist Jay Jarvis said.
Jarvis, who worked for the GBI, presented to the Rome Rotary Club on Thursday the most memorable cases of his career, like the one that involved a bank robbery and a murder in 1997 at The Peoples Bank in Eaton.
A man entered the bank at around 9 a.m. wielding a sawed-off shotgun and cut down the bank manager, who happened to be the first person he encountered. The robber, who was later identified as Anthony Veal, demanded cash from the bank teller and left the bank with $13,000 before disappearing into the nearby woods. Veal was later stopped by police and agreed to them searching his car, where they found the $13,000 with The Peoples Bank bands around the bills.
“They did a search of the lake, and one of the things they found was a sawedoff shotgun with red tape around it,” Jarvis said.
He then explained how he was able to determine that the shotgun belonged to Veal by matching the tape’s tear pattern on the shotgun with the roll found in Veal’s truck.
As Jarvis explained each case, he laid out the facts and evidence as well as how he processed it.
Jarvis lives in Armuchee with his wife after retiring from the now-closed Summerville Crime Lab in 1997. He owns his own forensic laboratory called ARMA Forensics, and has published a book on the history and development of forensic science in the State of Georgia called “Georgia’s Crime Doctor — the Story of Herman Jones and the First 20 Years of the Georgia Crime Laboratory.”