THE appetite of the reading public for crime is apparently insatiable, and
The Casebook of Forensic Detection by Colin Evans is another titbit in
the real-life genre. The subtitle, How Science Solved 100 of the World’s
Most Baffling Crimes is somewhat optimistic, and the selected cases may
give the impression that science is ousting Inspector Morse. But as every
professional involved in forensic science and medicine knows full well, crimes
are usually solved by detectives. Forensic evidence, though often indicative or
confirmatory, is rarely crucial and frequently irrelevant.

Of the 100 mainly American and British cases, many are old favourites which
are continually being dredged up. Evans does, however, relate a number of less
well-known and equally interesting stories.

The accuracy of the accounts is difficult to gauge, as the description of
some cases known to this reviewer had more than a few flaws. Maybe this is
nitpicking, but in the Mamie Stuart and George Shotton case, for example, the
“remote cottage overlooking Swansea Bay” was in fact Greyholme, one of a row of
substantial houses overlooking Caswell Bay. Nor was the body sawn into three
pieces—it was in fact sawn into six.

The book covers a series of forensic topics, such as fingerprints, DNA, time
of death, ballistics, anthropology, explosives, toxicology and so on. The
overviews are short, of necessity superficial, but often fragmentary and
sometimes outdated. A page or two of cases follow each category, describing the
perceived contribution of the scientific evidence in securing a conviction.

The summary of different forensic methods is sometimes outdated and nowhere
is this more apparent than in the section on estimating time of death. Evans’s
claim that the technique of using the postmortem increase in the potassium
concentration of the vitreous fluid of the eye is a recent development by John
Coe is incorrect—it has been around for years and although Coe was much
involved in establishing the technique, and was involved in the controversy
surrounding it, he was not responsible for its invention.

The author is also wrong in stating that temperature does not affect the rise
in potassium, as he is in claiming that the method is more reliable than other
techniques. Measuring potassium levels is potentially useful only after a body
has cooled to the ambient temperature. But even then the method is almost never
used to provide court evidence, a good indicator of the unpopularity of any
forensic technique.

Also, in the Norman Thorne case, the book claims that “in suicidal hanging,
death is due to rupture of blood vessels in the brain, obstruction of the
windpipe, or both”. This is misleading. Death from hanging is usually caused by
blockage of the carotid arteries supplying blood to the head or vagal inhibition
which causes the heart to stop.

In accounts of old cases it is hard to know if the errors Evans makes stem
from reporting the outdated knowledge of contemporary experts, or modern
misunderstanding. In either event, readers are being misinformed.

It is good to see the author hint at the fallibility of pathologist Bernard
Spilsbury. Several cases, such as those of Thorne and Sidney Fox, now throw
serious doubt on Spilsbury’s true ability. There were several occasions when his
inflexible opinions almost certainly led to fatal miscarriages of justice.

As with so many other expositions about for ensic science, the writer seems
dazzled by the apparent brilliance of scientific methods. Unless you are
actually working with cases on a daily basis you may fail to appreciate how
often the results are unhelpful, inaccurate or nonspecific.

Much forensic evidence never sees the light of day, as it does nothing to
advance the case. But it can, as with The Casebook of Forensic
Detection, make an interesting read—just keep your critical faculties
in top gear.

After Paddy Joe Hill was arrested, a forensic scientist from the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory in Chorley, Lancashire, attended the police station and swabbed his hands, as well as those of the other five suspects. The scientist was Frank Skuse, who screened the sample for certain nitro-compounds using his own modification of the standard Griess test. Skuse claimed that his test could detect the explosive nitroglycerine on the spot, but others were of the opinion that it was not specific for nitroglycerine and that to eliminate other, innocuous substances such as nitrocellulose, more extensive testing must be made in the laboratory.

Forensic evidence concerning the detection of explosive residues became one of the most controversial issues in this 16-year saga, and that, of course, is why a book nominally written by one of the “Birmingham Six” comes to be reviewed in New ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. A quick look reveals this to be a classic example of a professional biography written as autobiography. The faultless writing of the ghost author Gerard Hunt, deputy foreign editor of the Daily Mail, makes the book an easy read. The story is about a violent Belfast petty criminal who came to England to become a violent Birmingham petty criminal. Hill states this repeatedly about himself, as well as admitting to drinking, drugs and prison violence. Next to this, much of the text – such as discourses on the origins and progress of the Irish “troubles” – sticks out as pure Gerard Hunt, though it is none the worse for that.

In Skuse’s adaptation of Griess’s two-step spot test, the sample from Hill’s left hand was negative. But that from his right turned pink within ten seconds, and Skuse recorded this as a positive for nitroglycerine, stating later that he was “99 per cent certain”. Later testing on the same sample using more sophisticated methods in a laboratory, however, was negative.

Skuse also took samples from the hands to test for ammonium or nitrate ions, which could also show that they had been in contact with explosives. Hill’s left hand was positive for the separate ions – but not for the single compound ammonium nitrate.

All Hill’s clothing was tested, and all proved negative for explosive residues.

Hill claims that on the basis of these tests he was then subjected to extreme and prolonged verbal and physical abuse, the police claiming that “he was covered in gelignite”.

At the trial, Skuse repeated his findings about the Greiss test and the testing for ions, the first a “strong positive” on the right hand, the second positive on the left. He then said that he later conducted gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GCMS) and thin-layer chromatography (TLC) on the same samples; these sophisticated tests are more sensitive than the Greiss test and could be expected to detect the merest trace of nitroglycerine. Hill’s right hand was negative for all tests, the left negative for TLC, but positive for GCMS – though Skuse was unable to produce to the court any documentation or instrument printouts to prove the latter.

When challenged to explain the discrepancies between his Griess tests and the GCMS/TLC, he claimed that evaporation from the sample was responsible. He also denied that any substance other than nitroglycerine – except another explosive – could react to his modified Griess test.

The defence called Hugh Black, a chief inspector of explosives for the Home Office, who strongly disagreed with the specificity of the Griess test, especially in respect of nitrocellulose. He said that nitrocellulose could also react to this test, and that it was a common substance in the environment, easily picked up from lacquers, varnishes and so on. He claimed that Skuse’s methods were insufficient, and said that the tests should have been run in triplicate, not once only. However, the prosecution succeeded in undermining Black’s authority as a witness by pointing out that he had never performed any forensic work and had never actually carried out a Griess test himself.

Five years later, unrelated scientific work showed that other substances, such as cigarette smoke and playing cards, could give a positive Griess test. In 1985, research for a television documentary showed again that a range of substances could give a false result, including materials found in cigarette packets and postcards. ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s commissioned by the programme contacted Skuse for the exact recipe of his modified Griess reagent, and when they used it they obtained quite different results from his.

A year later, the Home Office countered with the claim that the TV tests were invalid because the scientists had not been given quite the same recipe used by Skuse.

In 1987, the Home Secretary announced that there would be an appeal. At this, Skuse was asked about the wrong Griess recipe supplied to the TV company’s scientists. He countered that he did not realise it was to do with the Birmingham case, so took the standard recipe from a textbook, not his own private modifications.

In relation to the laboratory testing, it now transpired that the whole process had originally been observed by another scientist, Janet Drayton, who up to this point had never been heard of in relation to the case. She had felt that the sample was “only ‘possible nitroglycerine”‘. The plot thickened when she admitted that several pages of her laboratory notebook has been ripped out, covering those tests and especially the purging of the apparatus to ensure that no nitroglycerine standards still contaminated the apparatus. The printout of the GCMS was also missing, as Skuse admitted at the first trial. In spite of all this, the appeal was dismissed.

It was not until 1991 that the matter came before appeal judges again. Here the chemistry was overshadowed by other issues. Drayton now said she had never claimed that the result from Hill’s hand could indicate only nitroglycerine, and that the 1987 appeal judges had misrepresented her views – ignoring her statement that it was only possible, not certain. She accepted the evidence of John Lloyd and Alan Scaplehorn, two government scientists, that a smoker’s hand, food preservatives and other substances could give a positive result.

At this late stage it also transpired that, on the night of the arrest in 1974, other scientists had used the Griess test on other suspects and obtained positive results which were soon tracked down to the handling of adhesive tape.

This fact, together with the whole sorry saga was summed up by Hill’s counsel, Michael Mansfield. It was inexplicable that this tape fact had never been provided to the defence until 1990, he said. “The Griess test, even in 1974, was regarded by most decent scientists as nothing more than a screening test. But the flawed scientific ‘evidence’ had blinded everyone involved. Police, lawyers, the judge and jury had been contaminated by the certainty of Dr Skuse’s conclusions that two of the men had handled explosives.” The convictions were overturned, and the Birmingham Six set free.

So read the book, and digest what Hunt tells you Hill did and thought. Whatever your conclusions, forensic chemistry comes out of it badly.

A huge range of queries from ‘Why do people die?’ and ‘What does an
autopsy cost?’ to ‘Are all bodies at sea eaten by fish?’ and ‘Who gets to
lie in state?’ fill the pages of Death to Dust. The author, a university
professor of surgery, has produced a fat book, which consists of hundreds
of questions and answers, that could be subtitled ‘What you always wanted
to know about death, but were afraid to ask’.

To those ‘in the trade’, such as undertakers, pathologists and vicars,
there is vast amount of useful information, but I suspect that many more
squeamish readers wouldn’t want to know some of the ans-wers, such as ‘Will
the worms crawl in?’

Although this is a very American book, much of the material in Death
to Dust is universally applicable, apart from the legal considerations and
some of the more florid excesses of the transatlantic funeral rituals which
make up the so-called ‘American way of death’.

There is a blow-by-blow account of the preparations of the corpse for
the funeral, almost a DIY guide to embalming and cosmetic restoration.

More interesting are the sections on the historical, ethnic and geographical
variations in death practices. Examples include the statistical prevalence
of cannibalism, the use of human scalps to make cloaks for Scythian warriors
and the practice of the Parsees in disposing of their dead by exposure to
vultures. As in most books on the dead, premature burial gets plenty of
attention, with drawings to illustrate the Victorian obsession with designing
safety coffins with flags and bells to summon help in the event of the corpse
waking up when six feet down.

Apart from the mass of fascinating trivial, there is a great deal more
of serious import – especially of a medical nature. This is to be expected
from a senior surgeon, so the nature of brain death, the desirability and
procedures for providing organs for transplantation, and the usefulness
of the autopsy are all discussed clearly and accurately.

A whole section is devoted to pathology and the autopsy, with practical
information about the legalities of consent and obtaining a report, as well
as the mechanics of dissection.

All in all, Iserson has written a fascinating, if gruesome book, but
I suspect that the reaction of many readers will be: ‘I don’t wish to know
łŮłó˛šłŮ’.

Bernard Knight is professor of forensic pathology, University of Wales
College of Medicine, Cardiff.

The public seems to have an insatiable appetite for crime, both in fiction
and in life. This is yet another ‘gee-whizz’ book about forensic science,
this time based on a BBC radio series. It is beautifully produced, with
excellent colour reproduction. However, for a small book of about 90 pages,
at least half of which are illustrations, it seems overpriced at ÂŁ14.95
for an hour’s read.

The weary old cliche of attaching Sherlock Holmes to any forensic investigation
is pursued by beginning each chapter with a quotation and original print
from The Strand Magazine. Like the curate’s egg, the text is good in parts,
but suffers from discontinuity and many non sequiturs, probably because
it is based on radio scripts.

I welcomed the first few pages because they emphasised the bald truth
that forensic science rarely comes up with dramatic clues or breakthroughs,
but ‘usually forms no more than one link in the chain of evidence against
a defendant’. This thoughtful first chapter gives a good explanation of
the recent forensic scandals exposed by the Court of Appeal in Britain.
It points out reasonably that one cannot judge yesterday’s failures by the
technology of today.

The account of forensic science methodology is generally good, whether
dealing with arson investigation, fingerprints or examination of firearms.
Almost of necessity, the explanation of techniques suffer from occasional
bouts of reductio ad absurdum.

But where the author describes forensic pathology, the book is a mine
of misinformation, especially in the captions to the illustrations. A flow
diagram tells us that after a body is taken to the mortuary, the police
surgeon and the Criminal Investigation Department are informed and the coroner
then chooses a pathologist – all wrong and incompatible with the facing
page where the pathologist is described at the scene of death. Incidentally,
that page carries a highly unconvincing ‘murder sketch’ where the pathologist’s
vantage point (emphasised in the caption) would mean that he couldn’t see
the body at all, as the door is in the way!

The photograph of a shot-gun entrance wound has the wrong caption –
or it’s the wrong photograph. Under a diagram about time since death, the
extraordinary statement is made that ‘more accurate methods include tests
on body fluids, the contents of the stomach and the surface of the teeth’.
Against a diagram about head injury (flatteringly copied from one of my
own books) is a hilarious caption error. Areas of brain damage are said
to show frontal ‘confusion’ instead of ‘contusion’, though perhaps the mental
result would be similar.

However, such nitpicking is unkind, though I think that the text and
captions should have been checked more thoroughly before typesetting.

Many real cases are described, which is probably a major attraction
to most readers, but conversely, some pictures have insufficient explanation
to indicate their relevance to the text.

An attractive-looking book, of interest to the studious A-level pupil,
but not as good as others in the genre. One unfortunate spin-off to volumes
of this type is that they encourage young people to yearn to become forensic
scientists and doctors, when in reality the career opportunities are minuscule
and diminishing.

Bernard Knight is Professor of Forensic Pathology and Home Office Pathologist
at Cardiff, as well as being a crime-writer.

Biographies seem to be either character studies of the subject, or a
peg on which to hang an account of what they did as a career. Witnesses
from the Grave falls firmly into the second category. Indeed, the second
chapter fails to mention its human subject at all, thought it is none the
less interesting for that.

The book describes the work of Clyde Snow, one of America’s leading
physical anthropologists, told in a series of detailed anecdotes about his
exploits in the identification of the unknown dead. Inter alia, it provides
an excellent history of that esoteric science, replete with ‘not-many-people-know-that’
insights into the close community of physical anthropologists.

Knowing Snow well, I have to agree with the description of him as ‘an
unmade bed’. He is undoubtedly the archetypal Texan, slow moving, slow talking,
with a fondness for country clothes, cigars and whisky. The son of a rural
doctor, he graduated in physiology and zoology.

Snow dodged the army draft by hiding out alone for five months in the
Sacramento Mountains, reappearing on the morning that entitled him to join
the US Air Force as a laboratory officer. He later studied archaeology and
eventually put all his skills together by working for many years for the
Federal Aviation Authority, where his interest in identifying human remains
grew out of fatal air disasters.

The chapter that fails to mention Snow is a bonus for all those interested
in the history of, and the people involved in, the identification of human
remains, especially skeletal. Developed mainly for academic purposes, in
archaeology, anthropology and ethnology, the discipline has been hijacked
for forensic uses. Putting names to fragmmented bones or decomposed remains
has become so important that a new speciality of ‘forensic anthropology’
has arisen. It is used to trace the ‘disappeared’ in Argentina, people killed
by the state or to identify homicides with buried or mutilated victims and
in mass disasters such as air crashes.

Leavened with anecdote and vivid description, Witnesses from the Grave
explains the objects and techniques of this complex process. When presumed
skeletal remains are discovered, a whole sequence of questions needs to
be asked and then answered. Are they really bones? Sometimes they are not,
as over enthusiastic citizens or even policemen bring curiously shaped stones
or wood, in the hope that they have discovered a homicide.

Next, are they human (for often the remains are animal)? If human, how
many individuals are represented? Are they male or female? This is fairly
easy to answer with adult skulls or pelvises, but difficult with infants
and near impossible with finger bones. Next, what is the height? Thanks
to the painstaking efforts of anatomists and the many war dead from Korea,
you can calculate the height even from a single long bone.

Then the race; answers here are mainly confined to the three broad ethnic
groups of Negroid, Mongoloid or Caucasoid. Even a single upper front tooth
might indicate a mongoloid origin, if it has a concave inner surface, shaped
rather like a shovel.

Finally, is there any indication of a cause of death? And, vital in
most cases, can a name be placed on the skeleton?

Snow’s decades of involvement have ranged from investigating General
George Custer’s fallen soldiers to the lost children of Argentina and from
a mummified outlaw used in a circus act to Josef Mengele the ‘Angel of Death’,
who served Adolf Hitler.

The Mengele story takes up a substantial part of the book and though
the definite identity of the hellish Nazi doctor remains controversial,
the mass of detail offered seems to leave little room for doubt that the
body exhumed in Brazil was indeed that of the doctor of Auschwitz. Snow
was centrally involved in the scientific work, but others formed part of
the team, which studied the teeth and especially the ‘photofit’ process
carried out by Dr Helmer, from the Forensic Institute in Kiel, who fitted
images of the skull to known photographs of the younger Mengele.

The book gives much information about the rising art of fitting features
to the skull – one of Snow’s closest associates is Betty Pat Gatliff, a
remarkable cowgirl-attired medical artist from Oklahoma. Though there are
many new techniques of laser, video and computer-generated facial fits,
Gatliff has the ability to study a skull and then sculpt a face around it.
A potted history of this art, pioneered by Gerasimov in the Soviet Union,
is another useful section of the book.

One of the authors, Eric Stover, is deeply involved in the human rights
movement, which has claimed much of Snow’s activities since he retired from
the Federal Aviation Authority. Snow’s major contributions to identifying
bodies in his later years have centred on the huge task of exhuming and
examining of the victims of the military regime in Argentina. So the last
third of the book is devoted to this work, how Snow has trained and worked
with his team of volunteers who have tackled the massive job of validating
the excesses of the junta and trying to put names to some of the mounds
of bones that emerged from cemeteries.

Witnesses from the Grave is an interesting and important book. It gives
even those ‘in the trade’ a lot of new information.

PATRICIA CORNWELL is a former crime reporter who went to work as a computer analyst in the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Richmond, Virginia. The CME is the American equivalent of a coroner and forensic pathologist rolled into one. During her stay, there were serial murders of five professional women, which spurred Cornwell to write a novel, written from the strongly feminist viewpoint of a mythical – but very believable – Chief Medical Examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta.

There is now a substantial stable of ‘authentic’ forensic pathologist yarns, from television’s painful Quincy to the infinitely preferable The Expert (remember Marius Goring on BBC?). Herbert Lieberman’s book City of the Dead, for example, is loosely based on the New York CME, Milton Helpern. The queen of them all is, of course, P. D. James, who writes ‘inside job’ books as Cornwell does, books that benefit from occupational exposure to the subject matter – in this case, the scientific investigation of crime. James also worked on the peri phery of forensic science and, as does Cornwell, gets it almost all right.

Cornwell begins with a night call, with her heroine driving through the streets of a city at the behest of the criminal investigation department, wondering what will be at the end of the ride. She portrays the atmosphere of a murder investigation in a gripping and compelling way.

As to the forensic science, it is difficult to know how much is due to the author’s knowledge and how much to the differences in practices between American and British detectives.

For example, in Cornwell’s murder scenes, there are no scientific officers wearing protective overalls to stop fibres from their clothes mixing with the evidence. There is no ‘taping’ of the body or clothing with adhesive strip to retrieve contact traces. Instead, the heroine fiddles about picking up minute fibres with a forceps. Scarpetta takes a (presumably rectal) temperature of the victim at the scene before any swabs are taken from that locus to test for sexual interference. The body is then removed from the house swathed in its own bedding, instead of being carefully wrapped in new polythene sheet to retain trace evidence, as it would be in Britain.

Scarpetta leaves the autopsy room and ‘walks down the third- floor hall in her blood-spattered greens’, which would give our Health and Safety Executive apoplexy, as would the electric saw ‘causing a bony dust to drift unpleasantly on the air’. I feel sure that Virginia’s Richmond morgue must have oscillating saws and down-draught ventilation.

On one page, Scarpetta is ‘up to her wrists in blood’, yet a moment later is taking photographs of her autopsy – well, maybe they like infected blood- encrusted cameras in Virginia.

Enough of nit-picking. Corn well has an excellent style that is exciting and gripping. She rather overlaces the book with technology, such as serology, the now invitable DNA analysis and her own computer speciality (part of the plot hinges on hacking). For a first novel, this is a commendable production, although perhaps not as fantastic as claimed by the over-effusive reviews on the dust jacket.

Now for the bad news. This book has one huge fault, known in the crime-writing trade as a cheat. I cannot expose this here, for the sake of those who want to read the story but, in true scientific spirit, I carried out a controlled trial. When given the book, my wife – an experienced whodunnit critic – effused over the writing but when she reached about the tenth page from the end, she threw it aside in disgust. An excellent beginning but the ends are a bit frayed.

Bernard Knight is a professor of forensic pathology and a Home Office pathologist, as well as a crime novelist and radio dramatist.

Macdonald, pp 350, Pounds sterling 12.95

THERE seems to be an insatiable appetite amongst the reading public
for books on crime, both fact and fiction. Murder, Under the Microscope
is a substantial new addition to the collection, tracing the origins and
work of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in London, colloquially
known as ‘Scotland Yard’s Crime Laboratory’.

As usual with nonfiction, a book is different things to different people
and I expect that readers will fall into two broad groups – those interested
in the London laboratory itself and those more avid for the anecdotal material
which fills the second half of the book. The cases could have come from
any ‘criminalistics’ (awful Americanism!) laboratory, from Denver to Dortmund,
to show the link between scientific method and the police investigation.
They happen to be taken from London and are very interesting in a traditionally
journalistic way, the scientific content being rather of the ‘gee-whiz’
variety. Almost all the cases are homicides, though murder forms a relatively
small part of the caseload of any forensic science establishment.

After a potted history of forensic science – with a slightly irrelevant
deviation about Louis Bertillon and the study of fingerprints, which have
never been any concern of British forensic laboratories – Philip Paul gives
a most interesting account of the machinations that led to the foundation
of the MPFSL in 1935, quite a time after the emergence of similar laboratories
elsewhere. Much of this material has not been common knowledge before and
this also applies to an extensive, frank and not always complimentary picture
of the personalities of some of the directors and staff of the laboratory
during its first 50 years.

It seems extraordinary that what is now the best-known laboratory in
the world – and one of the largest, if it does not actually hold that record
– was founded only reluctantly. A police constable virtually shamed ‘The
Met’ into doing so by setting up his own laboratory in a cupboard. He worked
in his off-duty hours with a secondhand microscope that he had bought with
Pounds sterling 3.50 of his own savings. The Commissioner at the time, Lord
Trenchard, came to hear of this and PC Cyril Cuthbert had the satisfaction
of seeing Trenchard set up a proper, if minuscule laboratory at Hendon Police
College, with a budget of Pounds sterling 500 a year. The cost in 1987/88
was almost Pounds sterling 7 million.

There are excellent chapters on the staff, structure and management
of the ‘Met Lab’. Paul also gives descriptions, and often details of the
costs, of equipment used at the MPFSL. These include scanning electron microscopes,
microspectro photometers, chronograph for firearm investigation, atomic
absorption spectrograph, induc tively coupled plasma spectro meter, automatic
particle analysis systems, the three mass-specs and an argon-ion-laser device
used by the extremely innovative Photographic Section. But Paul wisely makes
no attempt to follow the classic book by a former director, Hamish Walls,
who wrote a lucid overview of the methodology of forensic procedures for
nonspecialist scientists and the general public.

The last chapter, after the meaty homicidal histories, is a more contemplative
study of the future of the laboratory and, by inference, the main Home Office
Forensic Science Service. The Met Lab is an anomalous institution, which
fits rather uneasily into the general pattern of police resources. The six
regional laboratories plus the Central Research and Support Establishment
at Aldermaston, are directly under the control of the Home Office. The MPFSL
is exactly what it says it is, an arm of London’s police force. A recent
House of Commons Select Committee put the whole organisation of forensic
science through the wringer and, in spite of opinions expressed that the
Met Lab should be merged with the rest of the laboratory service, an excellent
defence was mounted against this which seems sure to succeed.

For those interested in laboratories, criminal or otherwise, the book
is a well-researched insight into one of Britain’s largest labs, with 250
people tucked away above a police store in the Lambeth Road, using techniques
and equipment that are right at the cutting edge of scientific progress.

Bernard Knight is professor of forensic pathology at the University
of Wales College of Medicine