Beating the Devil's Game: A History of Forensic Science and Criminal (26 page)

Christie stood trial at the Old Bailey on June 22, 1953, on the charge of murdering his wife. The proceeding lasted four days. The presiding judge was Justice Finnemore and the prosecutor, Attorney General Sir Lionel Heald. Derek Curtis-Bennett defended Christie with an insanity plea. Psychiatrist Jack Abbott Hobson testified that Christie was a severe hysteric who may have known what he was doing at the time of each murder, but did not appreciate that it was wrong.

The prosecution had two distinguished professionals for rebuttal of this flimsy diagnosis, Dr. J. M. Matheson and Dr. Desmond Curran. Matheson said that Christie suffered from a hysterical personality, which was not a defect of reason, so he was not legally insane. Curran found Christie to be an “inadequate” personality with hysterical features, but with no defect of reason. Heald presented to the jury the account given by Christie of the murder of his own wife, which included evasive behaviors indicative of knowledge of wrongdoing. Thus, he had not been insane.

The defense attorney asked the jury to consider how abominable Christie’s actions were and how revelatory of madness: a man who had intercourse with dying or dead women; a man who kept a collection of pubic hairs; a man living, eating, sleeping for weeks, even years, with those bodies nearby; he couldn’t be sane.

The jury deliberated only an hour and twenty minutes before they found Christie guilty. He was sentenced to death and on July 15, he was hanged at Pentonville Prison.

That year, 1953, was groundbreaking for science. Biologists were already aware that DNA carried genetic information from one generation to the next, but no one had yet found its actual structure and hereditary mechanism. An American geneticist, James Watson, and an English physicist, Francis Crick, with Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, worked many long hours together at the University of Cambridge in England until they were able to present their discovery: the double helical structure, which would become key to molecular biology and biotechnology. They had assembled information from other scientists working on various aspects of DNA to produce their model, relying on the knowledge that DNA was based in nucleotide subunits. Each nucleotide was comprised of a sugar (deoxyribose), phosphate, and one of four different bases—the purines, adenine (A), and guanine (G) together with the pyrimidines, thymine (T), and cytosine (C). Watson and Crick knew from work in the 1940s at Columbia University that these bases may occur in varying proportions in different organisms, but that the A and T residues remain in the same ratio to one another, as do the number of C and G residues. These relationships helped to establish DNA’s three-dimensional structure and show how genetic information is encoded and passed on to successive generations. While this model was a breakthrough for science, it would not have ramifications for forensic science for three more decades.

In addition, during that decade at the University of Toronto, Dr. Robert Jervis pioneered applications of neutron activation analysis. First discovered in 1936 in Sweden by George de Hevesy and Hilde Levi, the process involved making items containing specific elements radioactive and thus identifiable via their nuclear signature. However, electronic equipment was needed, which left the application in a forensic investigation to those who had the full laboratory capability. That would occur later in the decade.

EVIDENCE ANALYSIS

In 1954, a Texas court admitted human bite-mark evidence in
Doyle
v.
State
. A grocery store had been burglarized and a piece of cheese was found on a counter, which showed the impression of teeth: The burglar had decided to grab a snack but left part of it behind. When a suspect was identified, the police asked him to bite into a similar piece of cheese, and he did. Photographs and casts were made, and a dentist affirmed that the same teeth had made the impressions on the two pieces of cheese. With this evidence and testimony, the suspect was convicted, and while his attorney appealed, it was based on the grounds that his rights had been violated rather than on challenging the bite-impression analysis. The court upheld the conviction.

Blood analysis figured into a frightening 1955–56 serial murder case in Germany. The “Düsseldorf Doubles Killer” managed three separate incidents, which always resulted in either double homicides or a murder and wounded survivor. The first incident involved two lovers who were battered and then left in their car as it was pushed or driven into a nearby pond. Two months later, two men were the victims, although one survived. A month went by and then another couple was battered and shot on February 7, 1956, and left in a burned-out haystack.

Investigators arrested and detained Erich von der Leyen, who had a reputation for behaving oddly and lived near the third crime scene. He had been home alone on the nights when each murder occurred, and police found spots in his Volkswagen that appeared to be blood. The Forensic Institute analyzed them with the Uhlenhuth method and said they were of human origin, as were stains on the suspect’s clothing, from two different blood groups. The evidence was reexamined and more blood turned up on the suspect’s trousers, but a careful analysis indicated that it was menstrual blood from a dog. Von der Leyen said that his girlfriend’s dog had been in heat and had jumped into his car. When the Forensic Institute looked at their initial results, they were forced to admit their mistake and von der Leyen was released.

On June 6, a forester spotted a man with a gun stalking a couple in a parked car near Büderich. He arrested the man, who gave his name as Werner Boost, age twenty-eight, from Düsseldorf. At first Boost protested his innocence, claiming to be a married father of two. But eventually he admitted that he wanted to frighten couples having sex to make people around the country cleave to higher moral values.

Since the lone survivor of the three attacks had indicated that two men had gotten into the car with him and his lover, it was clear to the police that they should be looking for another suspect. In Boost’s diary he’d mentioned the name “Lorbach” but the police did not need to search for him, as Franz Lorbach came in on his own to explain what he knew. He was not there to confess, however, but to turn in his partner. He said that Boost had led him into spying on courting couples, and then knocking them out with cyanide gas so they could rape the women. Lorbach insisted the one incident of murder in which he was involved had been an accident. Boost had killed one male and Lorbach had whispered to the other one to pretend to be dead, thereby saving him. Lorbach added that Boost had hypnotized him to get him to participate. While the police could not prove this last allegation one way or the other, they had enough to take both men to trial. They were convicted, and Boost was sentenced to life in prison, while Lorbach received six years.

From blood analysis to bones, the Trotter and Gleser formulae for stature estimation in human skeletal remains had been published by this time, reportedly used in the identification of Korean War dead. In 1957, American pathologists Thomas Mocker and Thomas Stewart identified skeletal growth stages, providing a basis for standardized measurements and analyses in forensic anthropology.

Also during the 1950s, a technique called neutron activation analysis, a method for testing metals, became a valuable forensic tool. Uranium and radium emit radiation rays of three types: alpha, beta, and gamma. Since the type and degree of energy emitted by a given element is unique, a scintillation counter can make a precise measurement, identifying the element via its radioactive signature. Substances not already radioactive can be made so by bombarding them with neutrons, or subatomic particles. It will give off gamma rays that can be identified via measuring their energy and intensity. This procedure was believed to assist with the identification of certain substances, specifically trace materials.

In an investigation, then, hair, soil, glass, or paint could be placed inside the core of a nuclear reactor and bombarded. The neutrons would collide with the components of the trace elements in that substance, changing them radioactively to emit gamma radiation of a characteristic energy level. With this method, a scientist could measure the sample’s constituent parts, no matter how small. In a single hair, for example, fourteen different elements could be identified, allowing for fairly precise comparisons between hair from an unknown person and hair from an identified suspect, based on composition. Whether the metal is organic or inorganic has no effect; either could be analyzed effectively with this process.

The first case to admit neutron activation analysis in court occurred in 1958 in Canada when John Vollman was prosecuted for the murder of sixteen-year-old Gaetane Bouchard, whose body had been found near Edmunston, New Brunswick. In her hand were a few strands of hair. Vollman lived in Maine, across the border, but the girl’s father was aware that he had been seeing Gaetane. In fact, witnesses placed the two together just before she was discovered dead. Mr. Bouchard went to Vollman’s home to ask about Gaetane, but Vollman said that they had broken up. He did not know how she had been killed or who might have done it.

Yet the physical evidence told a different story. A chip of green paint picked up by an observant police officer from the murder site appeared to match the color of Vollman’s car. When it was searched, a partial piece of candy was found in the glove compartment that bore a trace of lipstick the same color as that which Gaetane wore when she died. Indeed, the hair strands clutched in her hand were the same color as Vollman’s hair. Given these links, investigators asked for another examination of her body. This time, the pathologist was more thorough and a single strand of hair was found wrapped tightly around one of her fingers. It, too, was the color of Vollman’s hair.

They subjected this strand to neutron activation analysis, and did the same to samples of Gaetane’s and Vollman’s hair, which revealed that the ratio of sulphur radiation to phosporus was closer to his than to hers. Once this evidence was admitted, Vollman changed his plea to guilty of manslaughter. The jury instead found him guilty of murder.

By the end of the 1950s, forensic science had become established and was now in the process of innovation without the various fields. This involved creative thinking and talented professionals to devise new methods, as well as refine older ones (or realize their limited value). While professionals still disagreed in court over how to interpret tests and evidence, the participants in the legal arena had come to accept science as a trustworthy, if somewhat imperfect, complement to their efforts. Hereafter, scientists and technicians experienced less resistance to their presence in the courtroom, but they were still held accountable by their colleagues and by opposing attorneys for what they might offer in testimony. Without the need to prove the merit of science itself, they were free to experiment a little more and to seek different ways to apply science than had been done before. Sometimes that proved to be wonderfully innovative and sometimes a little silly.

OUTSIDE THE BOX

Knowledge of plant life peculiar to certain areas can offer important information for making decisions in criminal investigation. In June 1960, Bazil Thorne in Sydney, Australia, won a lottery, which garnered a fair amount of publicity. He had an eight-year-old son, Graeme, who was soon kidnapped on his way to school. Within an hour, the Thorne family received a call from a man with a thick accent demanding a one-quarter share of the lottery money. If it was not paid by that afternoon and done according to his directions, he stated, the boy would be fed to the sharks. Mrs. Thorne recalled a man who had come to her door a few weeks earlier asking about a family who had never lived there, and this report provided the police with a description of a viable suspect.

On July 8, the boy’s emptied school bag was found, and nearby, its contents had been scattered along the roadway. Over a month passed with no sign of Graeme, but then on August 18, his fully clothed body was discovered lying on a vacant parcel of land in Seaforth. He had been gagged and bound, wrapped in a tartan blanket and stuffed under some bushes. An autopsy showed that he had been bludgeoned with a blunt weapon. Detectives went over the blanket, looking for trace evidence. They found hair from a Pekinese dog, soil, pink limestone mortar, and seed from two rare types of cypress tree that did not grow near the body dump site. The police also knew that a blue Ford had been seen on the morning of Graeme’s abduction, so they canvassed the area, looking for cypress trees, a car, a house with pink mortar, and a man with a thick accent. It took about six weeks, but they finally found what they were looking for.

A house belonging to a Steven Bradley was made from dark brick, which had been cemented with pink mortar, and in the yard were the right type of cypress trees. The Bradleys had also once owned a Pekinese dog, which was no longer there. Inside their blue Ford, investigators found a dog brush with hair similar to that on the blanket used to wrap the victim’s body. However, to their chagrin, the house was empty and they learned that Bradley was gone from the country. They did acquire a photo, and Mrs. Thorne looked at it and identified Bradley as the man who had come to her home. In addition, pictures developed from a discarded roll of film revealed that Bradley had once owned a tartan blanket. He’d grown up in Hungary, so he had an accent.

Certain that Bradley was the kidnapper/murderer, the police located Bradley through various records and flew him back to Australia. He claimed that while he had abducted the child, the boy had died accidentally. However, this story failed to hold up, and Bradley was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Another case in England likewise provided the opportunity to try an untested technique. In London’s Cecil Court, near Charing Cross Road, Edwin Bush, twenty-one, entered an antiques shop on March 2, 1961, and asked to examine a dress sword and some daggers. The next day, a young apprentice discovered the body of a woman in the shop, stabbed deeply three times. A dagger was still sticking out of her chest. Her husband identified her as Elsie Batten, an employee of the store.