CSI chief Gil Grissom, via a video monitor, instructs a group of aspiring sleuths to look carefully at the evidence left behind at the crime scene and then wishes them luck in solving a messy murder case.

Among the would-be detectives is the dapper Bob Walsh, sporting a turned-up, Columbostyle trench coat and looking very much like Central Casting’s notion of a TV gumshoe.

With pencil and notepad in hand, Walsh, like the others, proceeds to check out a crime referred to as “A House Collided,” wherein a vehicle is lodged halfway into the living room of a home, and behind the wheel is a banged-up and bloodied dead man. All manner of evidence — from a slipper to a pizza carton — is strewn about the scene.

Welcome to CSI: The Experience at the Montreal Science Centre in the Old Port, where budding investigators, from schoolchildren to nonagenarians, have been converging to attempt to solve three different cases inspired by the CSI TV series.

This interactive exhibition not only (somewhat graphically) depicts murder scenes, but also allows sleuths the opportunity to carry out scientific testing in labs and to examine (facsimiles of ) corpses in an autopsy room before compiling a final report as to who committed this heinous deed and for what reason.

A computer then informs the would-be investigators whether they have correctly solved the case or if they would be better off delivering pizzas than embarking on a career in crime-detection.

Walsh, who is here at my request, is more familiar than most with crime detection. In the early 1990s, his company Forensic Technology, located atop a Montreal Urban Community police station across from the Cavendish Mall in Côte-StLuc, created the groundbreaking, automated Integrated Ballistics Identification System, better known as IBIS.

Simply put, this technology accurately proves that every fired bullet and cartridge casing tells its own story. That’s because every firearm, from handguns to howitzers, has unique characteristics — the equivalent of human fingerprints — that are transferred to the bullets and casings when shot.

Forensic labs — including the RCMP, INTERPOL, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the U.S. — in more than 70 countries employ this ammo-identification system (now available in 3D-HD), which has been credited with getting convictions, and has been featured in the TV crime labs of the various CSI and Law & Order series, as well as numerous films.

An engineer by trade, Walsh concedes he knew next to nothing about guns and bullets in his former life and has never been particularly wild about automatic weaponry. His specialty had been business automation, but after being approached by a former RCMP officer about developing a system for bullet prints, his career arc soon shifted into forensic analysis. Though not necessarily the analysis of a decomposing pizza carton or a dead body.

But Walsh dutifully examines the aforementioned as well as blood spatter around the deceased inside the vehicle, and the living room furniture outside.

“That looks like a bullet hole in the windshield,” says Walsh, 74, now semi-retired after stepping down as Forensic Technology president last year. “But whether that is the cause of death or if it has been set up to look that way is another matter.”

Walsh is skeptical. He is now checking out latent prints on the pizza box, footprints in the house and trace evidence from sundry fibres scattered about. Then he examines a toxicology report relating to the victim’s bloodalcohol level.

Walsh has come up with an array of theories: everything from suicide related to Vegas gambling debts to a homicide committed by a pizza-delivery driver, irate over an insufficient tip. In spite of the clues, Walsh senses something far more nefarious, particularly after learning the victim had a checkered family life.

Walsh next comes to the area with which he is most familiar — bullet and casing analysis, courtesy of an older 2D-IBIS computer.

“Prior to this technology, the identification of bullets was manual, and it really couldn’t be done effectively, given the massive volume of cases,” he says. “Law enforcement just couldn’t keep up with all these open-case files — which is why we were initially approached to develop this. Even in the early days, studies showed there was a six-fold increase in crime-solution as a result of IBIS.”

Regardless, the bullet analysis in this case yields little in terms of motive or killer. Shoe and tire prints, as well as toxicology results, provide more of a clue. As does a post-mortem, which indicates — ew — that the victim’s last meal was pizza and a couple of brewskis. There is also an indication that death was the result of blunt-force trauma and not a bullet. Then comes another fascinating detail: the vic had an identical twin brother. Hmm …

Walsh assembles all the evidence and then submits his final report. Without wishing to spoil the adventure for others by identifying the perp, it should be noted Walsh has correctly figured out who dunnit.

Way to go, Columbo.

“It’s great to solve a murder case like this in just 60 minutes,” a shrugging Walsh says. “But, unfortunately, that only happens on TV.”