July–August 2015 51information they need to make an arrest or obtain
a warrant in less than a week – a process that just a
decade ago would have taken months, if not years.
And it’s only going to get faster and cheaper. A
new instrument currently being evaluated at FASS
can perform that whole two-day, multi-room process
in just 90 minutes, and it’s small enough to be
deployed to crime scenes.
“What we’re providing is intelligence – fast
intelligence,” Sharon says. “And the biggest change is
that police are now getting information in the early
stages of their investigation.” This has changed the
way the force thinks about solving a crime, Mark
adds. “It allows us to start hunting and tracking down
individuals of interest in a matter of hours or days.
The progress of investigations is now driven by these
forensic results,” he says.I
NTERESTINGLY, NOWADAYS it’s not just regular
DNA that police can examine. In January, FASS
launched a specialist mitochondrial DNA facility.
The diff erence with this type of DNA, is that there
are thousands more copies of it in each cell – so really
old human remains, previously too decomposed to
contain useful DNA, can now be identifi ed.
And we mean really old. The technique has
already allowed scientists to identify the remains of
England’s King Richard III (1452–1485) under a
parking lot in Leicester, and, according to a slightly
controversial book released last year, it may even
have revealed that Jack the Ripper was a 23-year-old
Polish barber called Aaron Kosminski.
Molecular biologist Jari Louhelainen from the
UK’s Liverpool John Moores University was able to
fi nd traces of 127-year-old mitochondrial DNA on
a blood-stained shawl found at the scene of one of
the crimes. He compared the results with the female
descendants of the two key Jack the Ripper suspects,
and found a match with Kosminski’s relative.TYPES
OF BLOOD
STAINS
SWIPES
Made when some-
thing bloody rubs up
against a surface.BLOOD DROPS
The diameter of a blood
droplet can tell police the
height from which it was
dropped – the smaller the
droplet, the closer to the
ground it fell.TRANSFER
PATTERN
The pattern left
on a surface,
such as a bloody
footprint or
handprint.CAST-OFF
STAINS
These are made
when blood fl ies off
an object that’s
swung through
space, such as a
murder weapon.SHADOWING
An empty space within
a blood splatter, which
suggests something was
blocking the spray.EXPIRATORY
BLOOD
Blood that’s been
coughed up or
breathed out,
which creates a
misty splatter.Extracting answers. Dr Jodie Ward drills into a human leg
bone from a crime scene. The DNA extracted from the pow-
dered skeletal component may assist identifying the remains.