Lyons returned to the upholsterer’s shop and reinterviewed Kruger, who maintained that he’d been at work in the shop all day up until the point when he had gone with Fiorenza to deliver the sofa. Fiorenza himself had also been in the shop but had only come in at about midday; he had told Kruger that he had been visiting his parole officer, having been caught stealing a car. Lyons also learned that Fiorenza had accompanied Kruger to pick up the sofa in the first place, meaning that Nancy Titterton would have been familiar with him and might well have allowed him into the property, were he to have arrived with a plausible excuse for being there. Given this, when it was established that the parole office was actually closed on that particular day since it was Good Friday, Fiorenza became the prime suspect in the case.
The examination of hair—often using a microscope to determine distinctive characteristics such as hair diameter—is now a key part of many forensic investigations.
Lyons had Fiorenza’s criminal record looked into. He had been arrested four times for theft and had spent two years in prison. More alarming, however, was a psychiatric report from 1934 in which Fiorenza was described as “delusional” and “prone to wild fantasies.” This certainly added further weight to Lyons’s theory, but without any hard evidence to back it up, he felt arresting Fiorenza would be unproductive.
Then, on April 17, came the breakthrough Lyons had been waiting for. The provenance of the cord found beneath Nancy Titterton’s body finally came to light—it had been manufactured by the Hanover Cordage Company of York, Pennsylvania. Although it had been sold widely, Lyons’s detectives were able to track down a wholesaler who had sold a roll to somewhere highly significant: the upholstery shop where Kruger and Fiorenza worked. It was the evidence Lyons needed.
Fiorenza was promptly arrested; although he initially denied having had anything to do with the murder, he finally broke and confessed when confronted with the cord. He explained that he had visited the apartment that morning on the pretence of returning the sofa. When Nancy Titterton let him in, he attacked her. He dragged her into the bedroom and tied her hands with the cord. He then raped and strangled her before dragging her body into the bathroom and dumping it in the bath, where he “found” her later when he returned to the apartment with Kruger.
Fiorenza went to the electric chair on January 22, 1937, for the premeditated murder of Nancy Titterton. He had been more aware of the potential for forensic evidence to betray him than many criminals, and by placing the body under a running shower and removing (as far as he knew) everything he had brought with him to the scene, he thought that he had concealed his guilt. But while criminals in a hurry will almost certainly be unable to see every trace they have left behind at a scene, a meticulous forensic scientist can.
Fiber analysis also lay at the heart of a landmark case that took place in Liverpool, England. The night of November 2, 1940, was cold and wet. Fifteen-year-old Mary Hagen was therefore understandably reluctant to venture out when her father asked her to go and buy him a pack of cigarettes and a copy of the Liverpool Echo. However, at his insistence she pulled on her coat and left on the errand. She did not return.
The police were called and a search was mounted. Just five hours later, Mary’s body was discovered in a cement blockhouse nearby. She had been raped and strangled. The evening edition of the Liverpool Echo lay next to her.
Among those called to the scene was Dr. James Firth from the Home Office’s Forensic Science Laboratory in the North West, situated in Preston, Lancashire. A scrap of muddy fabric had been found near the body, and it was on this that Firth concentrated his attention. On close examination it seemed to be a bloodstained bandage. There was also a bloody thumb-print on the left side of Mary’s neck. Since none of Mary’s injuries had made her bleed, it seemed safe to assume that both the bandage and the blood had come from the killer; the bandage must have come off during the struggle and the injured thumb then pressed against Mary’s neck as she was throttled.
When the bandage was analyzed in the laboratory, an important discovery was made. The layer that would have come in contact with the wound was impregnated with a particular antiseptic called acriflavine and there were also traces of zinc ointment. The significance of this was that wartime rationing—remember, this was 1940—meant acriflavine was only commonly used for military dressings. Firth was therefore able to conclude that the killer was almost certainly a serviceman. This conclusion was supported by the evidence of a witness who had been asked the way to the local barracks by a soldier on the night of the murder. She had noticed at the time that his face was badly scratched.
As a result the police turned their attention to the nearby Royal Seaforth Barracks. It did not take them long to identify a suspect; a private in the Irish Guards by the name of Samuel Morgan had deserted some months before and was already under suspicion regarding an attack on another local woman called Anne McVitte, who had been robbed nearby. Morgan was returned to Liverpool and charged, though only with the attack on Anne McVitte.
The police, meanwhile, decided to investigate his family further. Morgan’s sister-in-law admitted to harboring him despite knowing that he was a deserter. When questioned she also said that she had treated the injury to his thumb using a dressing from Morgan’s military kit, to which she had applied zinc ointment. She said he had told her that the injury had been caused by barbed wire. She still had some of both the bandage and the ointment left, and she promptly handed these over to the police.
What happened next was very unexpected. Morgan suddenly confessed to the murder—claiming he only intended to rob Mary—but denied rape. The investigating officers grew extremely suspicious; Morgan’s confession along with the available evidence would be enough to land a conviction. But if he repealed his plea he might be able to get away. They needed more evidence, enough to convince a jury—with or without a confession.
Further forensic examination of the bandages eventually yielded the results the police were hoping for. When compared, the bandages that Morgan’s sister-in-law had handed over exactly matched those found at the scene, as well as those from a third unopened packet found in Morgan’s possession. However, military bandages were naturally prevalent across the country during the war, so this alone would not be enough to definitively tie Morgan to the crime scene. Firth began to look at Morgan’s clothing, scraping the mud and soil from his clothes. He found that these samples contained traces of manganese, copper, and lead. Examining samples from the blockhouse floor where Mary Hagen’s body had been found, he soon discovered that these too contained manganese, copper, and lead. This was strong evidence that Morgan had been at the blockhouse.
Firth then realized something else. While it was true that all the different samples of bandage that he had gathered were an overall match, those obtained at the scene and from Morgan’s sister-in-law actually differed from the other samples. They had been double-stitched by hand, whereas the others had been single-stitched by machine. In fact, every other bandage from the barracks had been single-stitched by machine.
If Morgan’s bandages had been exactly the same as all the others, his defense might have been able to argue that since there were thousands of such bandages belonging to thousands of soldiers, there was no way of proving that the one found at the scene came from the same set as those handed over by Morgan’s sister-in-law; it might have been dropped by any soldier. However, Morgan had been unfortunate enough to pick up an atypical set of bandages from the barracks store, which very definitely placed him at the scene of the crime.
His trial began on February 10, 1941. As expected, he withdrew his confession, stating that the police had used coercion to obtain it. Nevertheless, his defense was unable to explain away the dossier of evidence that Firth had carefully compiled against him, and he was hanged on April 4, 1941.
When they created the first microscope, those two Dutch lens-makers could not have known the impact their invention would have on the world, nor how vital it would prove to be in
aiding criminal investigation. It opened up the possibility of detecting and analyzing minuscule specks of material from a crime scene. Over the years the smallest pieces of trace evidence, even tiny particles of minerals or single hairs, have led to the resolution of some of the largest and most sensational criminal cases—proof, if any were needed, that Locard was right: “Every contact leaves a trace.”
Plate 1 Anthropometric photograph of the artist Ringel d’I11zach, taken by Alphonse Bertillon in 1903. The printed categories at the top demonstrate Bertillon’s careful notation of facial features and their relative size.
Plate 2 The cover of Le Petit Journal from April 16, 1892, illustrating the difficulty with which Ravachol was eventually arrested.
Plate 3 Sir William James Herschel (1833–1917) took handprints from Bengali solders to try to prevent fraudulent pension withdrawals. This was instrumental in showing that fingerprinting could be used as a reliable means of establishing identity.
Plate 4 Detail from a tenth-century banner from Dunhuang which appears to show the first depiction of both “fire-lances” and early grenades. Demons can be seen at the top right of the image, brandishing the weapons at a meditating Buddha.
Plate 5 A flintlock mechanism, showing both the spring-loaded cock and the frizzen it struck, which created sparks to ignite the gunpowder.
Plate 6 In the early twentieth century, blood analysis began to play a significant role in criminal investigations. Once Paul Uhlenhuth had devised a test to distinguish animal blood from human, killers like Ludwig Tessnow were no longer able to rely on the defense that bloodstains on their clothes were of animal origin. Tests for dried blood soon followed, and eventually tests to determine blood group. Blood analysis remains at the heart of many forensic investigations today.
Plate 7 The examination of blood spatter patterns can be extremely helpful in determining the events that took place during a violent crime. Dr. Paul Leland Kirk once remarked that “no other type of investigation of blood will yield so much useful information as an analysis of the blood distribution patterns.”
Plate 8 Two human hairs are compared underneath a microscope. As early as 1909, the close inspection of trace hairs on the body of Germaine Bichon was enough to establish that the suspected killer, Madam Bosch, had indeed been present at the scene.
Plate 9 By analyzing the composition and layering of soil collected on shoes and clothes, forensic scientists are able to build up a complete picture of where a suspect or victim has been. These techniques were already being developed over a century ago; in the case of Margarethe Filbert’s murder in 1908, Georg Popp used soil found on Andreas Schlicher’s shoes to disprove his alibi, which led to Schlicher giving a full confession.
Plate 10 A forensic investigator’s case. Bernard Spilsbury first identified the need for standardized crime-scene kits following the gruesome “Murder at the Crumbles” in 1924. Today they are essential to any criminal investigation and contain a wide variety of equipment to allow evidence to be gathered safely and effectively.
Plate 11 Facial reconstruction is now an important technique in establishing how decomposed remains might have looked when alive. The case of Buck Ruxton in 1935 employed similar methods, comparing the skulls of unidentified victims with known photographs of them to establish identity on the basis of similarity.
Plate 12 A newspaper illustration of Marie Lafarge at the time of her trial in July 1840. She was the first person to be convicted almost entirely on direct forensic toxicological evidence, after she apparently poisoned her husband to escape an unsatisfactory marriage.
Plate 13 Label from a bottle of arsenic sold by a druggist in Alabama. In spite of its potentially lethal effects, for many years arsenic was available over the counter for a variety of household purposes.
Plate 14 A cheek swab being carried out by a detention officer in order to gather a DNA sample. The advanced techniques used today mean that even a sample this small can be used to construct a DNA fingerprint, which can then be compared against evidence found at a crime scene.
Plate 15 The Romanovs, the Russian imperial family, who were put to death in Yekaterinburg in 1918. When an unmarked mass grave was later discovered nearby, it was widely assumed that the bodies it contained
5
The Body
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
One thing that every murder has in common is that it leaves behind a body. On an emotional level the physical remains of a human being can be hard for living people to face, particularly if they knew the deceased. While a corpse is clearly in some sense identical to the person who has died, and the violence done to a body is horribly evocative of their last moments, we are also keenly aware that there is something missing, that it is no longer fully a person. It is natural not to want to look closely at a dead body. However, as we have already seen in previous chapters, when studied in detail, a person’s remains can yield a wealth of information.
When a body is discovered, the first job of the police is to try to identify it. As we have already seen, there are numerous ways to establish identity, though the most common today are for some form of ID to be found on the body, or for it to be recognized by a family member or friend. Of course the body also constitutes the single greatest piece of evidence that a crime has been committed, and since in the majority of murder cases the killer is known to the victim, establishing the identity of the body can often guide police straight to the perpetrator. Criminals will therefore often go to great lengths to hide, destroy, or damage the body to prevent it being discovered and to ensure that, if it is, identifying it is extremely difficult.
However, human bodies are not easy to dispose of. They are difficult to burn or otherwise harm; bones and teeth are particularly resistant to damage. They float in water, often even when weighted down. When hidden, decomposing bodies quickly start to smell dreadful and to draw the attention of insects and other wildlife. They are easily sniffed out by dogs being walked by their owners. And with continuing advances in forensic science, even remains that stay hidden and decomposing for many years, to the point of becoming completely skeletal, are still able to offer vital clues as to their identity.
The Parkman-Webster murder case remains one of the most sensational in US legal history and provides a gruesome demonstration of the difficulties attendant on disposing of a body. It became a cause célèbre, largely on account of the horrible nature of the crime and the status of the people involved. It concerned the disappearance of a Bostonite, Dr. George Parkman, on the afternoon of November 23, 1849.
Parkman was a wealthy socialite, businessman, and philanthropist. He had a defined chin and wiry frame, and maintained a gentlemanly and restrained lifestyle. He worked hard, abstained from luxury, and was known for his amiable character. Fanny Longfellow, the poet’s wife, labeled him “the good-natured Don Quixote.” He was not without his enemies, however, with some viewing him as arrogant, money-grubbing, and vain. In 1849 he was worth approximately half a million dollars, a considerable fortune.
The other important figure in the case was John White Webster. Webster had graduated from Harvard in 1811 and in 1814 was among the founders of the Linnaean Society of New England. He went on to graduate from Harvard Medical College in 1815 and, after traveling extensively and marrying in 1818, returned to the college, having been appointed as a lecturer in chemistry, mineralogy, and geology. He was then appointed as the Erving Professor in 1821, reflecting his reputation as a popular and well-respected academic. The notable physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was a dean and contemporary of Webster’s at Harvard, and commented on his affable, if nervous, demeanour in lectures.
Webster was also known to have serious financial problems, which were in part the reason he sold off the family home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1849, opting for a more modest rented residence instead. In spite of this downsizing, his salary was still not nearly enough to cover his expens
es. The books he had written, being academic in nature, made little extra money. He had been forced to borrow from several of his friends and was now struggling to pay these debts.
Parkman was among the people who had loaned Webster money. In 1842 Webster borrowed $400 from him. Five years later this was increased to $2,432, this sum including the original loan. As a guarantee, Webster offered a cabinet of rare minerals. Unfortunately, by 1848 his situation had still not improved—in fact it had worsened. He had to borrow again, this time $1,200 from a man named Robert Shaw. In spite of the fact he had already offered it to Parkman a year previously, he once again used the cabinet of minerals as a guarantee. Unfortunately, Parkman found out about this bit of deceit and decided to confront Webster.
On November 22, 1849, Parkman visited Cambridge in search of Webster. When he was unable to find him, he called in on Mr. Pettee, the Harvard cashier, and demanded that he give him all the money Webster had made from the sales of his lecture tickets to go toward repaying his debt. Pettee refused, since he was not authorized to pay anyone but Webster. The following day Webster, clearly disturbed at this turn of events, visited Parkman at his house and suggested that they should meet at the college in order to talk the matter over. Parkman agreed. The last time he was seen alive was at 1:45 PM on November 23, entering the college along North Grove Street. He was wearing a frock coat, dark trousers, a purple satin waistcoat, and his usual top hat.
Silent Witnesses Page 14
