by Bridget Heos
Edmond Locard, founder of the world’s first crime laboratory
Though France was a leader in forensic science, even there, its use was neither widespread nor consistent. Edmond Locard hoped to change that. He had been a student of Alexandre Lacassagne, but rather than focusing on the body, Locard turned his attention to the crime scene. Sherlock Holmes could tell where in London a person had been by glancing at the mud on his shoes. Locard knew that examining evidence wasn’t as simple as that. But he was inspired by Holmes to scientifically investigate such things. In one case, Locard was able to prove that a man had visited a flour mill by examining the mud on his shoes, which included a layer of flour.
Crime scene evidence went beyond mud. The Locard Principal states: “Every contact leaves a trace.”3 The goal of the forensic scientist is to link that trace evidence to its source, which may then lead to the suspect. This process is called individualization. The trace could be a cigarette, a hair, a thread, a footprint, even makeup, as was the case in one of Locard’s most famous cases.
In 1912, Marie Latelle was found strangled to death in her parents’ home. Police suspected her boyfriend, a bank clerk named Emile Gourbin. But the boyfriend had an alibi. He’d been playing cards with friends at a country home until after one a.m., and police knew that the murder had occurred before midnight. Locard examined the body and found scratches where the girl had been strangled—likely caused by fingernails. He visited Emile and scraped under his fingernails.
When Locard examined the scrapings under the microscope, he saw transparent flakes (skin cells) but also pink dust—makeup! Unlike today, when makeup is mass-produced by large cosmetic companies, Marie’s face powder had been made locally by a druggist, so its ingredients were unique. Police took Marie’s face powder to the lab. Chemical analysis showed that both the makeup and the fingernail scrapings contained rice starch, magnesium sterate, zinc oxide, bismuth, and Venetian red. The suspect confessed to murdering Marie. To secure an alibi from his fellow card players, he had moved the hands of the clock to show one a.m. when it was really only eleven thirty p.m. Emile claimed that he had visited Marie to ask her to marry him, and when she said no, he strangled her. But because he had moved back the clock, the murder was determined to be premeditated.
Another case in which trace evidence played a starring role was the murder of Germaine Bichon, a teenage girl living in Paris. One Sunday afternoon in July of 1909, a waiter at Café Bardin heard screaming in the apartment above. He told the café owner, Madame Bardin, but she waved it off as being nothing. Soon after, he felt something warm dripping on his head while washing dishes. When a drop fell on his arm, he saw that it was blood and exclaimed, “It’s raining blood from Monsieur Albert’s apartment!”4
The other café owner, Monsieur Bardin, called for the concierge, and together they ran upstairs to investigate. The door was locked, so the concierge summoned a police officer, and together they broke a window. Inside, they found Germaine beaten to death and lying in a pool of blood. A clean hatchet was found at the scene, which appeared to have been used to break into the victim’s wardrobe. A money box had also been pried open. But there was no sign of the murderer having broken into the apartment.
On the desk was a letter:
Dear sir, this letter is written by your little “Lolotte” who in a year has become your sweetheart. I want this letter to be a reminder to you of the year we have had together. You are thirty-four years old, I am seventeen. There have daily been more joys than sorrows. . . . These months have passed like a day. You have been like a father to me. I love you beyond reason. I feel as if I were your daughter.5
The rather disturbing love letter was addressed to the apartment owner, Albert Oursel. The age difference apparently wasn’t criminal (though Germaine was in fact even younger—sixteen) but it certainly cast a suspicious light on Albert. Police learned that he ran an employment agency that placed maids in people’s homes. Germaine had been one of those maids and had moved in with Albert, supposedly as his maid but actually as his girlfriend. She was head over heels for Albert, but the feelings weren’t mutual, and he eventually broke up with her. Germaine had told friends that Albert wanted to get rid of her and was only letting her stay with him until he could find another job for her. Germaine was also pregnant.
Guilty as Albert may have seemed, the forensic evidence pointed to someone else. Germaine was found clutching several long blond and light brown hairs—likely a woman’s. Hair evidence had been analyzed since the late 1850s, and by now, investigators could distinguish between human and animal hair and, in some cases, one person’s hair from another’s. Forensic scientists Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert studied the hairs from the scene of the crime. In this case, all the hairs except one had a diameter ranging from .0024 to .0032 inches. One was unusually thick: .004 inches, and that was determined to belong to Germaine.
Seeking a female suspect, police met with Albert’s real maid, Madame Dumouchet, who said that Albert had tired of Germaine but was too weak to kick her out. She suggested that police contact Albert’s former maid Rosella, who had been a confidante to Germaine. Albert’s secretary could put them in touch. As it turned out, Albert, Germaine, and the secretary were the only three people with keys to the apartment. The secretary worked until seven every evening, even on Saturdays, and the office was attached to Albert’s apartment. That meant she was probably the last person to see Germaine alive. To complicate matters, Madame Dumouchet said the secretary didn’t care for Germaine and was rumored to have a crush on Albert.
The secretary, Madame Dessignol, became a person of interest. The night before the murder, she had gone shopping with Germaine after work, and then Germaine had walked home alone. Dessignol said it was the last she saw of the teenage girl. Police asked if Germaine would have invited a stranger in that night. Dessignol said that while she didn’t want to say anything bad about the dead, with Germaine, anything was possible. Police wrote in the margins “Hate? Jealousy?”6 But any hopes of pinning the murder on the jealous secretary were dashed when Balthazard tested Dessignol’s hairs—all were pale blond and too thin to be a match—.0024 inches or less.
Their attention, instead, turned to a mysterious woman named Angèle. The concierge said that soon after the murder was detected, the woman had stopped by the desk wearing a black scarf and asking after a servant who lived in the building. Angèle’s hair was brownish blond—just like the hairs found on the body. The case was already sensational, but when the press picked up the story of Angèle, everyone was talking about the blond woman. However, they assumed she was an accomplice, as no one at the time could imagine a woman committing a violent murder on her own.
By now, Albert had returned. A balding man with a curly mustache, he copped to hiring Germaine as his maid with the intention of seducing her. He claimed that he hadn’t realized she was only fifteen at the time. They had been together six months when he broke things off, telling her she needed to find new employment. He’d been letting her stay there temporarily, mostly ignoring her, which prompted her to write him love letters. He knew of the pregnancy but did not think the child was his. In spite of being a complete cad, it looked like he was innocent of the murder. He’d been visiting his mother in another town and had been seen out and about all day—having coffee, bicycling with a friend, and even spending the evening with the mayor. And anyway, there was the matter of the hair—definitely not Albert’s. He showed police what had been stolen, including a gold ruble.
The police spoke to other maids in the neighborhood in hopes of finding the mysterious Angèle. The maids had a strange story: a woman named Madame Bosch had asked each of them to come with her to Albert’s employment agency to collect wages owed to her. She wanted them to be witnesses when she confronted Albert. Her description matched that of Angèle. When the police finally tracked down Albert’s former maid and Germaine’s friend, Rosella Rousseau, they learned that her previous name (by marriage) was Madame Bosch. Coul
d she be Angèle, too?
Neither the maids nor the concierge could say whether Rousseau was the mysterious Madame Bosch or Angèle. Police questioned Rousseau nonetheless, and she gave a rather unflattering alibi. She had gone to an uncle’s to borrow money, and when he refused, she stole it from him. The uncle was too senile to confirm the visit. Rousseau sobbed when police brought up the murder, saying that she loved Germaine like a daughter.
A neighborhood café owner finally cracked open the hard nut that was Rousseau. He said that Rousseau owed all the cafés money and that her landlord had given her an ultimatum: pay up or get out. She’d turned up at the café on Sunday, paying part of her debt and drinking several glasses of wine. Then she went to sell something to a peddler. The peddler told police that Rousseau had tried to sell him a coin, but he didn’t purchase it. Could it have been the stolen gold ruble?
Balthazard tested Rousseau’s hair. It was a match—blond and brown in front and the right thickness. At first Rousseau didn’t admit to the crime. But when the detective held up the hairs, she broke down. She said she’d sneaked into Albert’s office the day before. She watched Germaine and the secretary leave but didn’t steal anything because she was worried that Germaine would soon return. When Germaine finally did come back, she locked the door between the office and living space. Rousseau was now trapped in the office and would have to wait until morning to get to the wardrobe in the bedroom, where she was sure the money was hidden.
The next day, when Germaine opened the door between the office and the apartment, Rousseau sneaked into the dining room. She hoped to evade Germaine, but the teenager was sitting there, eating a sausage. Rousseau lunged for Germaine, who picked up the hatchet in self-defense. Rousseau grabbed it and beat the girl with it. Rousseau then stole what she could find, washed her clothes and the hatchet, and sneaked out amid the hubbub of the murder investigation, leaving a fake name with the concierge so that she would have a reason for being in the building. She was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Random hairs are commonly found at crime scenes, not surprisingly, as hair can be pulled out during a struggle, or fall out undetected (people lose an average of a hundred hairs a day). Nowadays, hairs can be analyzed for their chemical makeup through DNA testing. Prior to that becoming available, scientists could only compare hairs based on their physical characteristics. In addition to thickness, experts could observe whether a hair was cut with scissors or a razor, and whether it was dyed (and how long ago based on the length of undyed hair toward the root). Even with such a detailed analysis, hair couldn’t be linked to any one person. That’s because two people’s hair can be very similar. But hair analysis could be used to rule out—or rule in—suspects. In the French case, it indeed ruled out the secretary and led to Rousseau’s confession.
Perhaps surprisingly, a thread from a rug, a rope, or fabric could be just as helpful in solving a crime—if not more so—than a hair in the days before DNA testing. Whereas all hairs are made of the protein keratin, fibers can be made from a variety of materials. Wool, hemp, cotton, polyester, and nylon are just a handful of options. The color of the thread can also indicate whether a unique pattern or dye was used. Once the makeup of the fiber is determined, investigators can link it to a manufacturer, who can then provide a record of sales that may lead to a buyer—and a suspect. Today, a thread may lead to a manufacturer that sells the fabric so widely that anyone could have bought it. But historically, manufacturers were smaller and sold their products regionally. Let’s look at how both a hair and a thread helped unravel a 1930s murder mystery in New York.
Things were happening for Nancy Titterton. She was happily married to an NBC radio executive, with whom she shared a love of reading and writing. After having a short story published in Story magazine, Nancy had just been awarded her first book contract. She would never see the book released. On April 10, 1936, Nancy was found strangled to death in her apartment. She is thought to have been writing the book at the time of death—a fountain pen was found on her pillow. Sixty-five detectives were assigned to the case, but it was the New York Medical Examiner’s Office that cracked it open.
Detectives determined that Nancy had been attacked in the bedroom and dragged to the bathroom. Two key pieces of evidence were found. A thirteen-inch cord lay beneath the body, and a light-colored hair was on the bedspread. Detectives assumed the hair was Nancy’s, but looking at it under the microscope, assistant medical examiner Dr. Benjamin Morgan Vance saw that it was too coarse to be human. Rather, it was horsehair. At the time, horsehair was used to stuff furniture.
Nancy Titterton, whose strangled body was found in the bathtub of her New York City apartment
That was an important clue. Nancy’s body had been found by two men delivering a couch: upholsterer Theodore Kruger and his assistant, Johnny Fiorenza. They’d also been to the apartment the day before to pick up the old couch. But they hadn’t entered the bedroom, which was at the opposite end of the apartment. Investigators wondered if the cord could be linked to the upholsterers in a more nefarious way. It was one-eighth of an inch wide and woven from Italian hemp and jute. Police sent a note to twenty-five rope makers in the New York City region. A week later, Hanover Cordage Company of York, Pennsylvania, told police that their company made that type of rope and sold it to several upholsterers. Police took a sample to Hanover Cordage. It matched the rope there. The company had a record of selling the cord to a wholesaler in New York, who in turn had sold it to Theodore Kruger, the upholsterer who’d delivered the sofa.
Soon, the police homed in on Theodore’s assistant Johnny, a painfully shy young man who had dropped out of grade school and spent time in prison for theft. Though the crime wasn’t violent, a prison psychiatrist called Johnny a “potential psychotic” who could turn violent one day.7 He now lived with his mother in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn and, according to Theodore, was a reliable and trustworthy worker.
Love seat that was used as evidence against Johnny Fiorenza for the murder of Nancy Titterton
Sadly, the psychiatrist’s prediction had come true. Ten days after the murder, Johnny confessed. When he had first seen Nancy in her apartment, he’d had evil thoughts. The next day, he returned at ten thirty in the morning, pretending to be there to take more measurements. When Nancy let him in, he assaulted and killed her. Five hours later, he accompanied his boss to deliver the couch. He had hoped that by finding the body, he would escape suspicion. But he had unwittingly left that thread of evidence.
Johnny Fiorenza (center) leaving New York City for Sing Sing Prison
Decades later, in 1981, fibers would lead to the arrest of an elusive serial killer. Police were investigating a string of murders of young men and boys. The method of murder differed in each case, but they were all linked by threads found on the bodies. Some were yellow-green and nylon, and others violet and acetate. Investigators talked to textile experts about where such threads might have come from. The killer must have read media reports of the textile investigation, because he began dumping his victims in the river, apparently so that the threads would wash away. The police began staking out bridges, and one night, an officer heard a splash. He arrested the only man driving across the bridge at the time: Wayne Williams. Williams said that he’d dumped garbage, but two days later, a body was found.
Police got a search warrant, and in Williams’s home they found what turned out to be a limited edition yellow-green carpet. Odds were one in 7,792 that it would be found by random selection. In addition, the violet threads matched Williams’s bedspread. In all, twenty-eight fibers linked Williams to the murders, including hair from his German shepherd. It became more and more likely that Williams was the killer.
The body of one of Wayne Williams’s victims is pulled from the Chattahoochee River.
In forensic science, there is a product rule. It considers the chances that each piece of evidence would occur randomly and then multiplies those chances. Let’s say that a red Ford t
ruck was seen fleeing the scene of a bank robbery. Hypothetically, if one in ten vehicles on the road is a Ford, and one in eighteen is red, and one in twelve is a truck, then by multiplying 10, 18, and 12, there is a one in 2,160 chance that a red Ford truck found by police officers is the same truck seen fleeing the scene. The fact that so many fibers were found on the bodies of the murder victims, and in Williams’s home, increased the odds that he was the murderer, and indeed, he was convicted, though he has maintained his innocence.
Another type of crime scene evidence involves impressions. These include shoe prints, tire prints, weapon marks, bite marks, and more. In forensic science, there is a maxim that no two objects—whether natural or manmade—are alike, and so they don’t leave the same mark. According to this theory, even two tires manufactured side by side in the same factory will leave slightly different tread marks on a muddy road. Legal experts are now questioning whether this theory is true in practice. While two items may leave different marks, the marks may be so similar as to be indistinguishable by an expert. Such expert testimony has been proven to be faulty by DNA evidence. But such marks can at least narrow down the pool of suspects to, say, those who wear a certain brand of shoe.
That was the case in the brutal murder of gas station worker Liaquat Ali in 1992. Rockland County medical examiner Frederick Zugibe was called to the scene after a driver found the victim dead at the gas station and called police. Ali’s injuries revealed that he had been beaten with a broomstick and garbage can lid, stabbed with a broomstick and a knife, and doused with industrial fluid, which burned his eyes and face. It had been an unthinkably violent attack, and Zugibe wondered if there were other injuries as well. He searched the body using different kinds of light, including ultraviolet. This would reveal semen, saliva, and blood, along with handprints, footprints, and shoe prints. In this case, he found the impression of a shoe tread spelling N-I-K. One suspect, Raymond Navarro, owned a pair of Nikes. They were brought to the lab and tested for blood cells. Blood cells are nearly impossible to wash away, and sure enough, blood was in the treads of Navarro’s shoe. A DNA test revealed it to be Ali’s. Police learned that Navarro, along with his pal Michael Moore, had tried to rob the gas station cash register, and when Ali fought back, they threw industrial fluid in his face, beat him, and stabbed him. After this senseless attack, Navarro and Moore pocketed just fifty dollars, a roll of quarters, four packs of cigarettes, and two lighters.