National Geographic Kids USA - June, July 2017

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC KIDS 25

SMOKING GUN

The truck rolled past the razor-wire fence
and into an abandoned warehouse. It pulled
a horse trailer, but the animals inside were
tigers bought from roadside zoos.
Two men pointed guns and shot the
endangered tigers, hoping to sell the hides,
skulls, and meat. But the suspects did a
sloppy cleanup job. When an undercover
FWS agent bought a full-body tiger-skin
rug from the ringleader, she found a bullet
in the tiger’s skull.
A gun leaves a telltale pattern of nicks
and scratches on the bullet it fires. Those
marks enable scientists to match a bullet
to a particular weapon. At the lab, scien-
tists fired a test round of bullets from
the ringleader’s gun. Using a microscope,
investigators compared the marks from
the test round to the bullet they found.
They matched. “The scientific evidence
really sealed the case,” FWS agent Tim
Santel says. The ringleader was locked
up—instead of the tigers that would
have been his next victims.

THE VICTIMS: TIGERS

THE CRIME SCENE: ILLINOIS

THE EVIDENCE: BULLET

CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE

BULLET

BAD MEAT

The meatball trail stretched two miles in the snow. Any animal would

find the treats tasty—and deadly. They were poisoned with a pesticide,

and FWS agents found the bodies of a fox, coyote, and three magpies

that had died after eating the tainted meat. Based on a tip that some-

one was using poisoned meatballs to kill wolves, which were endan-

gered at the time, agents searched a man’s garage. They discovered a

blood-stained tool and a bottle containing pesticide.

A chemist identified the bottle’s contents as the same pesticide

that was in the meatballs. Agents knew that if they could prove the

man made the meatballs, they would know he also had tried to kill

endangered wolves.

A geneticist gathered DNA samples from a meatball and the tool.

Found in the body’s cells, DNA determines the traits of all living things.

And no two living things have the same DNA. The DNA samples from

the meatball and tool matched, which proved the man had made the

poisoned meatballs. The trail of evidence led straight to the killer.

CRI

ME^ SCENE^ EVIDENCE

MEATBALLS

THE VICTIMS: FOX, COYOTE, BIRDS

THE CRIME SCENE: IDAHO

THE EVIDENCE: DNA

MICROSCOPE

DNA

CRI

ME^ SC

ENE EVIDE

NCE

natgeokids.com /photo-ark

Go online to get info on

Photo Ark,aproject that aims

to help threatened animals.

YOU CAN

HELP TOO!