Crime Scene Investigator (21 page)

The implication that the much publicised and new DNA evidence was unlikely to be useful in this case through impotency drew some questioned looks. ‘He is firing blanks,’ I explained. All the guys immediately understood.

The evidence was clear and Bill Peters’ decision was quick and to the point. The suspect was to be released immediately and his property returned to him. He was innocent and he had been eliminated.

It was a disappointment. Painful though that was to the investigation team, it was the truth and justice had been done.

The bags containing the suspect’s clothing were opened and the items returned to him. He left a free and innocent man.

The collection and identification of forensic evidence is a building process, each positive comparison or identification strengthening the case, depending on the strength of the evidence type. It is all based on context and, most importantly, probability. Occasionally a piece of simple evidence with a relatively small statistical probability to imply guilt can more powerfully eliminate a suspect from an enquiry. It is one of forensic science’s most powerful tools, the ability to exclude, to eliminate.

I wondered what would have happened to the suspect if he had matched the blood group of the offender. He would have been charged that night, that was plain, only to be eliminated, I would hope, by another grouping system which the laboratory routinely used in parallel with the ABO grouping system.

We now had to pick ourselves up and start again. At the end of a second long day I joined the DCI and his team for a drink at the local pub. I didn’t feel as if I was the most popular guy in the bar. The detectives were all disappointed, but not that the suspect had gone free. He was clearly innocent and the officers perhaps reluctantly had to accept that.

The next few days were difficult and revealed no further suspects. It appeared to be a complete-stranger rape. No finger marks were identified and the information that could be put on to databases – shoe marks, blood groups – was done.

We explored the potential reasons for the impotency of the offender in the hope that this might focus our search. The offender, whoever he was, was impotent through natural causes or perhaps through use of certain drugs. A body builder, who used anabolic steroids perhaps, was one suggestion. That line of enquiry didn’t lead anywhere useful.

The trail went cold and with no suspect the other original scene material and the clothing of the victim was placed in storage in their sealed exhibit bags.

About two years, later one of the detectives from the investigation had to go and arrest a local man for an unrelated indecent assault offence. Whilst at the man’s home the officer noticed an article of clothing which he recalled was similar to one briefly seen and mentioned in Gemma’s statement. It had the logo which Gemma had described.

The detective seized the sweater and contacted a colleague and submitted it and Gemma’s outer clothing, which was still in the original sealed bags, to the laboratory. This time the lab found fibres on the outer surface of Gemma’s clothing which matched the sweater.

The pace of the first few days of the investigation, with its highs and very low lows had given way to a long period of waiting. The discipline and professionalism paid off in time. A young woman had been raped, a young man cleared of the offence by a simple blood test, when some evidence may have convicted him. Then, after a long passage of time, a sound piece of observation by an alert detective meant that the right offender was found and his involvement proven.

Any excitement about bringing the offender to justice had long gone. It was good to know that we and Gemma knew that he had been caught. My lasting thought was for the effect that the crime had taken on that young woman’s life. To us it was a job. Yes, we had compassion and commitment to the victim, but it was still a job. I hope Gemma came to terms with her ordeal and lived a normal and full life.

‘Have you got a blood bottle?’

I had only called into the SOCO office at Edmonton Police Station that Monday lunchtime for a brief visit. As I was sitting at the desk, a detective poked his head through the door and asked.

‘What is it for?’ I replied.

‘I have just spoken to the lab about a man who claimed he had been drugged by his former wife who then abducted their daughter,’ he said.

I think we can do better that just a blood bottle, I thought.

Poisoning cases are pretty rare and I didn’t want to miss the chance of investigating one, particularly where there were great evidential opportunities.

The victim, a man in his thirties, reported that his ex-wife had arrived with a friend unexpectedly on Saturday morning at the family home. The family were Italian but had been living in north London and had a young daughter.

The relationship was pleasant, even though the father had retained custody of the child once her mother returned to Italy. So when his ex-wife turned up she was welcomed into the house.

They chatted politely and she had offered to make some coffee. On taking a sip it was so strong and hot that it burned his lips and he dropped the cup on to the carpet. It made a stain but it was quickly cleaned up using a carpet-cleaning solution.

Another cup quickly turned up, this time he managed to drink it and that was about the last thing he remembered. He awoke late on Sunday night. He was very sick but he managed to call an ambulance. He was taken to the local hospital where he had remained overnight. Police officers were made aware of his allegation in the early hours of Monday morning, but thought there was little physically they could do. They were junior in service, inexperienced and were not aware of what to do. They hadn’t asked for advice either. The officer who had approached me for the bottle had picked up the case on the Monday morning. He spoke to someone at the lab who suggested that he should get a blood sample.

I was pretty upset with our collective response so far. There was plenty we could do but we now had to act fast.

A quick call to the hospital ensured that they would collect any and every drop of urine that the victim could or would pass. Also a check to trace, recover and preserve any urine or blood samples which the hospital themselves had taken for their use. It would also be very useful to us.

I quickly went to the hospital with the detective, who was much happier now that someone seemed to know what they were doing. We managed to get a large urine sample and track down the samples the hospital had indeed taken.

Urine is a very important sample in poisoning cases which have occurred over the preceding few days. The bladder is the waste bucket of the body and many substances or their by-products stay there until the bladder is emptied. Blood is also very important but drugs and other substances can quickly metabolise and pass through into the urine.

With the detective we confirmed the victim’s story. He was still feeling the effects of whatever he had received, but there were no lasting effects and the hospital wanted to release him. So, taking that opportunity, the detective and I took him back to his house, the scene of the crime.

The house was a large detached house set back off a quiet tree-lined avenue. It was very leafy, giving an air of quiet sub-urban tranquillity.

The house was very tidy and that became a problem, because it was apparent that the victim’s house cleaner had visited the house that very morning, ignorant of her employer’s illness, and had cleaned the house.

The man showed me around the house. I was particularly interested in the staining on the carpet. If the second cup contained some poison, the first one probably had too and that had been spilled. The clean-up operation had been good. The light-coloured carpet bore only a wet patch. There was little sign of the strong coffee which the victim said he had dropped.

A quick search of the kitchen revealed that all the cups had been washed up and put away. There were no wrappers in the kitchen bin, which contained a new bag. A search of the bin outside the house revealed that even that had been emptied that very morning by the local refuse collectors. I wasn’t having much luck.

But I had one more trick up my sleeve.

Returning to the lounge I announced to the victim and the detective that I wanted to lift the carpet and see what was underneath the stained area.

The lounge was very well furnished and the carpet fitted wall to wall. It took quite a while to move the furniture to an area so that the carpet could be raised.

Slowly rolling back the carpet revealed a rubber underlay. The detective had been concerned about the disturbance I was causing but his expression changed as, directly below the wet patch, a round and distinct dark-brown shape appeared in the foam underlay.

With permission I quickly cut out a large square around the whole stain and placed it in a large glass jar. If there was any poison, it would still be in the stain.

The detective was impressed.

The hospital had already undertaken some tests of the blood sample they had taken. The Poisons Unit identified a common tranquilliser, valium, in a high enough dose to ensure a deep sleep for our victim, which indeed he had received.

Submitting the urine and foam underlay samples to the Forensic Science Laboratory, it was a few weeks before their results were available.

Their results were all the more interesting. Using the carpet sample they had managed to extract the poison from the foam. It was indeed a tranquilliser and very similar to valium but not identical. Indeed they had not seen it before. Having researched further, they manage to conclude that, although it was from the same group of drugs as valium, it was a variation only available in Italy.

Warrants were issued with Interpol for the arrest of the victims ex-wife and her friend.

A few months later the detective in the case went to Italy and asked me to accompany him. He wanted to arrest the woman and also search for the source of the drug which was only available on prescription in Italy. By that time I had moved on and was working at the laboratory. A request for me to go with the detective was turned down. The head of SO3 Branch would not allow me to go, so it fell to a colleague to make the trip.

By all accounts the expected trip to foreign lands wasn’t all it should have been. The part of Italy where they visited was in a remote country area in Sicily, and the woman’s family were well connected with the underworld. Even the local police were not very friendly to the visitors from the UK. My colleagues spent most of their time in their hotel rooms.

The matter was later settled without the criminal charges being pursued. We had gone a long way from simply supplying a glass bottle to the detective.

I was in a boxing ring and getting hit by blows from which I could not protect myself. That was how it felt. One of the consequences of working on the Flying Squad for a year or so was the steady stream of court appearances at the Central Criminal Court. I was examining in the region of ten prisoners, arrested by the Squad for armed robbery, every month. That inevitably meant that I could guarantee at least one and probably two or three calls a month to give evidence.

Armed robbery trials are generally heavily contested and attract the hardest-hitting defence barristers to defend their clients from such serious charges.

Taking a case to trial should mean that the investigation has shown there is a case to answer. My work was about establishing the truth, the facts, and leaving the justice bit up to the court.

Invariably, the defence team had done their homework. That was obviously true of the prosecution team too. Barristers can, however, be called away or delayed by other cases. This affects both defence and prosecution and undoes a lot of preparation work. From my perspective lots of hard work went into case preparation and briefing prosecution counsel. It involved getting clear dialogue with them so that they fully understood the case and the work we had done. So when there was a change of counsel the work had to be repeated. In the biggest of cases, where counsel were extensively briefed, a change of court date may be arranged. In smaller cases a replacement counsel could be appointed and brought up to speed at relatively short notice, sometimes only a day before, or even on the first day of the trial itself. On at least one occasion such a prosecution barrister was to ask (in their re-examination) seemingly irrelevant question, clearly because they had not read the case papers, rather than emphasising the evidence in chief. Occasionally whilst giving evidence I would realise that the barrister was placing some emphasis on a weak area of evidence when there was something much stronger available. It is the duty of a witness to answer the questions they are asked, however irrelevant they may seem. On only one occasion have I felt compelled to clarify a point which (from my viewpoint) had been misrepresented by the line of questioning. This may be seen by counsel as interfering, after all they are managing the line of questioning. The witness, particularly the expert witness, has a duty not to leave misleading evidence unaddressed.