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FBI officially unveils its $130 million crime laboratory at Quantico Marine Corps Base today. Date published: 4/25/2003
They helped identify the killer of Sofia Silva and Kati and Kristin Lisk, victims of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and a serial killer operating from Texas to Kentucky. Now these high-tech and scientifically savvy sleuths have set up shop on the outskirts of Stafford County. Today, the FBI officially opens its $130 million state-of-the art crime laboratory on the grounds of the Quantico Marine Corps Base. It is a facility seven years in the making that features separate, secure space for evidence that may come in from anywhere across the globe. The lab's mission is to provide free analysis of everything from blood to bones to bomb fragments for local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies. But its examiners also work by request on international cases, Lab Director Dwight Adams said during a behind-the-scenes tour of the 463,000-square-foot structure yesterday.
The new facility--built in three adjoining, five-story towers--is the fourth home for the lab that was created 70 years ago. Until now, it had always operated in the nation's capital--first in the old Southern Railway Building at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, then within the Department of Justice and more recently at FBI headquarters inside the J. Edgar Hoover Building. But not only had the lab outgrown its space, the headquarters was never ideal for what was established to be the nation's premier crime laboratory. As Adams walked the pristine hallways of the new facility yesterday, he highlighted the value of having a building designed as a site for evaluating evidence as opposed to office space.
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