It’s all in the DNA

So late last night Michelle was plopped on the couch channel surfing when she catches this forensic program. It was called Autopsy 9: Dead Awakening and Michelle explained to me it’s a regular series on HBO (apparently her brother-in-law Rudy is a fan of the program). If you haven’t watched this program it’s very enlightening. It was interesting to see how much DNA evidence comes into play making a breakthrough in criminal cases. I should warn the weak stomached that there are some candid photographs of the murder scenes. Dinner theatre this is not.

The thing that intrigued me is some of the cases were solved over a year after the crime was committed. In one case a suspect was picked out immediately, but an undercover operation took over 15 months to draw up the proper evidence. The crime? A man poisoned his neighbors with Thallium Nitrate (commonly used in meth labs… uhm… yeah… fancy I would know that) simply because he thought the teenage boys were too loud. The wife became seriously ill, comatose and died. Her husband and two sons managed to survive. The man in his fifties, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Further investigation showed the man regularly held parties were he & his friends attempted to plot the perfect crime.

Another interesting case involved a hit & run accident. The breakthrough evidence in the case? A single hair fiber discovered on the air bag of the crashed vehicle. The puzzling thing to me is it took one year before this case was solved. Don’t know if it was a case of the police work catching up to the technology, but many of the cases shown on the evening’s program involved one piece of evidence pointing the way.

Last night’s episode provided some insight into how forensic science plays a role in police work and the cases themselves were mind-boggling. It was definitely a reality series worth watching.

Oh and in case you missed it Michelle & I did manage to see Tomb Raider yesterday.