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

by Val McDermid

The thigh muscle is the most stable tissue in the body, making it a good place to find traces of poison.

flowering monkshood plant, also known as Indian aconite, thought to be the deadliest plant in the world.

also took the prints of people when they were given jail sentences, to stop convicted criminals paying others to serve their prison sentences for them.

use the physical characteristics of a fingerprint to create a unique reference number. These numbers were then used to file the fingerprints in one of 1024 pigeonholes in the police headquarters; when a new fingerprint was taken, its characteristics were coded, and the appropriate pigeonhole checked to see if it had been filed before.

The further from the heart, the more clearly differentiated they are, so the veins on the hands and the forearms are the most individual ones that our bodies display.

if you draw a circle with a circumference going through the sites of the two crimes furthest apart from each other, the culprit’s home will likely be near the centre of that circle. Research has shown this to be true of the majority of criminals who strike more than five times.

Britain’s repeal of the double jeopardy law in 2005

O. J. Simpson had spent around $10 million on his defence team, which works out at $16,000 per expert per day.)