Week 8 - 3 June Devaney Case

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Do curso por Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Introduction to Forensic Science

457 classificações

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Introduction to Forensic Science

457 classificações

We have all seen forensic scientists in TV shows, but how do they really work? What is the science behind their work? The course aims to explain the scientific principles and techniques behind the work of forensic scientists and will be illustrated with numerous case studies from Singapore and around the world. Some questions which we will attempt to address include: How did forensics come about? What is the role of forensics in police work? Can these methods be used in non-criminal areas? Blood. What is it? How can traces of blood be found and used in evidence? Is DNA chemistry really so powerful? What happens (biologically and chemically) if someone tries to poison me? What happens if I try to poison myself? How can we tell how long someone has been dead? What if they have been dead for a really long time? Can a little piece of a carpet fluff, or a single hair, convict someone? Was Emperor Napoleon murdered by the perfidious British, or killed by his wallpaper? *For Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students, please be noted that this course will no longer be eligible for credit transfer.

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Case Studies

Opinion Poll 50:00

Week 8 - 1 King Richard III Case11:28

Week 8 - 2 Annie Le Case7:11

Week 8 - 3 June Devaney Case4:21

Week 8 - 4 JonBenét Ramsey Case14:30

Week 8 - 5 The Unabomber Case; Psychological Profiling9:19

Week 8 - 6 The Soham Murders Case8:47

Week 8 - 7 Dr. Crippen Case7:20

Conheça os instrutores

Roderick Bates
Associate Professor
Division of Chemistry & Biological Chemistry | School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences

[MUSIC]

There are many crimes with no witnesses.

This is a crime from 1948, and it concerns a three year

old girl called June Devaney, who had been in hospital with pneumonia.

She was recovering, but in the very early hours of

May 15, the nurses noticed that her cot was empty.

Under the cot was an empty water bottle, that's a bottle that

would contain medical sterile water. And prints from adult feet,

stocking-ed adult feet, could be seen going from the cot to the door.

There was a search of the hospital and the hospital grounds, and

a couple of hours later, her dead body was found in the grounds

and she'd been killed by being smashed against a wall.

So what evidence have we got?

Well from the footprints, you can see the pattern of the weave of the

socks, but more importantly on that water bottle, there were fingerprints.

Well, who's likely to handle a water bottle in a hospital?

Well, doctors, nurses, hospital staff.

So these all had to be fingerprinted, and

it was found the fingerprint didn't belong to them.

Then patients, visitors, ambulance drivers, fingerprinted, also eliminated.

That was 642 sets of fingerprints in three days.

And remember, this is 1948.

All these has to be done by fingerprint examiners.

There's no electronic databases available.

Second, they moved on to anyone familiar with the hospital.

Another 200 sets of prints, again, no matches.

The investigators, therefore, decided to fingerprint every male in the town.

Every male in this town of Blackburn over the age of 14 years.

This is a similar strategy to the one used

in our DNA lecture, in the Colin Pitchfork case.

This is a huge undertaking, 50,000 fingerprints.

And you run up against a problem, because how

do you actually know who lives in a town?

Well, one way of course is to walk around the town, knocking on every door,

but you can't guarantee that every time you

knock a door, you're going to get an answer.

Another way is to look at the tax records,

but then not everybody pays tax, so this is not perfect.

You can also look at the electoral register, but then

not everyone is registered to vote, so this is also imperfect.

However, this was Britain in 1948,

and in that post-war era of austerity, there was rationing.

Even though not everybody answers the door, not everybody

pays tax, not everybody votes, everybody's got to eat,

and the only way to get food is using coupons from ration books.

So when the next issue of ration books were

made, police were able to get the list of names.

And sure enough, there was a name on that

list that hadn't shown up on any other lists.

There was former soldier called Peter Griffiths.

He was fingerprinted and his fingerprints matched the fingerprint on the water bottle.

He was found guilty of the murder and hanged.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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