Less than three months ago a group of three burglars lifted more than a million dollars in watches and jewlery from Kaufhaus des Westens, German's largest department store in Berlin. Police were quick to recover a glove containing fingerprints and DNA at the crime scene. The glove was then connected to Abbas and Hassan O., two German citizens who were twenty seven years old. Things seemed to be going well for the police, but there was a serious flaw in their investigation that would come back to haunt them; Abbas and Hassan are identical twins. This means that their fingerprints and DNA is identical as well. Criminalists were stumped because they could not narrow down the proper ownership of the glove recovered at the crime scene. To make it worse, both twins denied their involvement and accused their sibling for the incident. Furthermore, the German federal court system has agreed to drop the charges held against the identical twins since there is not enough evidence in possession of the authorities to convict them. Genetics has officially stumped forensics!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/world/europe/19briefs-GENETICSFOIL_BRF.html?scp=5&sq=Forensics&st=cse
2 comments:
I thought that this post was very interesting. The stolen jewelry story was out of a movie. Also, I think that the author chose a good topic to report on. This post discusses fingerprints and their importance to forensic science. Currently, we are studying fingerprints in class so this article is a great way to put some of the things we have learned into perspective. Finally, I think this post was well-written in simple terms. It was easy to understand.
To improve, perhaps the post could have been a little longer or gone into greater detail. In addition, maybe the author could have given his opinion on what will happen or what should happen.
I never thought about how identical twins could stump forensics.
Only one problem, contrary to popular belief, identical twins DO NOT have identical fingerprints.
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