Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime

by Val McDermid

The first live case to be cracked using familial searching came in 2004. Michael Little was driving his truck under a motorway overpass when someone threw a brick from overhead. It crashed through the windscreen and struck Little in the chest. He managed to steer his truck on to the hard shoulder before succumbing to a fatal heart attack. When scientists fed the LCN DNA from the brick into the database, it produced no direct match, but a familial connection led them to Craig Harman, who admitted his crime and was sentenced to six years for manslaughter. For Detective Chief Inspector Graham Hill of Surrey Police, there was only one reason a conviction was secured: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that without this groundbreaking technique this crime would have remained undetected.’