UO Second Age

Does anyone remember how this used to work on Second age live?

Currently it only tells you if a person is in the thieves guild, not if they are perma grey or not. Is this all it has ever done?

Seems totally useless unless it tells you if the thief has commited a crime recently.

It is working as intended. There was a debate over this and somehow someone talked the staff into adding forensics detects perma, which was swiftly rectified by providing proper patch notes dictating that the skill never did that during this era.

If you use it on a dead body it will reveal who disturbed the body, or killed it. But since committing a murder does not leave you permagray, there's really no gain from having that information.

What I do is use Forensic Evaluation to confirm/deny whether someone is a thief.
If they are, try to steal from them (while not a member of the thief guild). If you are able to attempt to steal, then they are permagray (you won't be flagged), otherwise you get a message advising that you must be in the thief guild to steal from other players.

Hope this helps.