Archive for the ‘Science and Evidence’ Category

DNA Evidence Can’t Be Used Against Twin German Jewel Thieves

A trio of thieves broke into a Berlin luxury department store, sliding down the skylight on a cable and escaping with watches and jewels worth over 6.5 million dollars. The masked men were picked up on security cameras, but the only piece of evidence linking a specific thief to the scene was a discarded rubber glove found at the scene- and specifically, the DNA evidence left inside the glove. Unfortunately, the evidence is nowunusable in German court, due to a twist:  two of the suspects are twins. Being identical twins to a point utterly indistinguishable by modern DNA tests, there is no way of conclusively showing who wore the glove. In German criminal law, each case against a criminal must be proved specifically and separately. The investigation continues, but at the current point, with no evidence of the stolen goods or of the third participant in the crime, the two are currently free of police custody.

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009