Criminology - Fascinating Forensics

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

In this episode, we discuss how forensics played a pivotal role in various cases. In the case of Vincent Brothers, Entomology was the key to figuring out who really killed Vincent's family. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss some interesting aspects of the world of forensics in fighting crime. In the case of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, forensic ecology and botany were used fascinatingly to nail the person who had killed them. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 261 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morf. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. Watching some crazy news about all that smoke coming down from Canada today and, you know, thinking, hey, this is pretty scary stuff. And I saw some volcanoes erupting and just a little bit of chaos.

Let's know with you. Well, yeah, I've seen that too. It actually popped up on my weather channel app and said that New York's the worst it's ever been. Or I forget exactly what it said. But there's a lot of stuff going on. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. And then yesterday I was watching some footage of a UFO that supposedly crashed in Las Vegas

Vegas and was caught on a police officer's body cam. So it's pretty interesting, pretty interesting news cycle last couple of days. why is it always uh Vegas Nevada out that way New Mexico there's always stuff going out there yeah it's it's the area 51 probably yeah exactly let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts we had Stephanie Eagle Mary Beth Long who's been a supporter of the show for many many years optors way above the highest level she was already above the highest level and went even higher and we also had Jennifer Young so you know some great news support, some raised support. We appreciate it all. Yeah, thank you so much. There's so many kind

people that support the show, and it means a lot to us. So if you'd like to support the show, go over to patreon.com slash criminology. Borf, can you believe it? We're just over 90 days away from CrimeCon 23 in Orlando, Florida. Yeah, times flying by it. It's definitely going to be here before we know it, and it's happening September 22nd through the 24th at the World Center Marriott and Orlando. And if you're a true crime fan, it's your one-stop shop to attend different seminars, rob elbows with celebs from the true crime world, and meet with your favorite podcasters on Podcast Row. And Morph and I will certainly be there on podcast Row. It's always a blast, and there's still time to grab your badge to attend, but don't wait because time is running out.

And you can save money by going to CrimeCon.com and using our promo code criminology at checkout, which will save you 10% on your standard badges. And be sure to stay tuned to us because as we get closer to CrimeCon, we'll be planning a meetup with listeners there, and we'll share those details in future episodes. So now with all of that out of the way, it's time to jump into this episode. And this one's a bit different.

Because rather than focus on one specific case, we're looking at a number of cases and how forensics played a role in solving them, we talk about forensics in many of the cases that we cover. and how, you know, it has evolved over the years to help solve cases. We've come a long way in crime fighting techniques. If you think back to something like hair evidence, go back to the 1970s, 1980s, hairs from crime scenes were sometimes described as microscopically similar to a suspect.

We know today that's very far from being scientific. And you know more if a lot of people were convicted based on that type of testimony from a scientific expert. And then it later turned out that they couldn't have committed the crime, didn't commit the crime. So, you know, whenever we do a case and somebody says microscopically similar or said that back then, I am very dubious. With the advancements in DNA, we went from being able to generate a, DNA profile from a hair only if it had a root to now a person's maternal line being able to be traced through any portion of one strand of their hair. It's revolutionary. And to me, it's always exciting to see what that next advancement is going to be. But hairs are just one example,

just one avenue of forensic investigation. There are many other tools in the toolshed for investigators that we'll discuss in this episode, and we'll talk about how they played a role in some specific cases. One lesser talked about branch of investigation is entomology, which is a study of insects. Forensic entomology is a study of insects on a dead body, or at a crime scene. By learning about the life cycles and habitats of insects, you can start to understand how long a body has been exposed to the elements, whether it has been in one location the entire time, and even an approximate time of death in some cases. The sun exposure and ambient temperature at the crime scene will determine how quickly some insects develop.

So entomologists will often use temperature and weather to calculate the precise point in a life cycle of an insect colony. And obviously, determining a time of death can be crucial in a police investigation. So as you were talking there, Morph is really giving me a little bit of a silence of the lambs vibe. you know, there's a number of scenes in there that actually have to do with forensic entomology. And I don't know if it was my first kind of exposure to it or not. I probably had seen it on other TV shows, but it's one that really stands out in my mind. Yeah, that's one of this classic, you know, crime movie moments when that happened. I remember that clearly.

And I just the other day, I actually watched a show and they were talking about how these people that do this work, they have these farms, they're called body farms, and they actually leave bodies out in the elements, and they see how weather and insects and stuff affect these bodies at different stages, and they learn how to observe that and go back in different crimes and different cases, and they can make those determinations based off of insect activity, weather activity, stuff like that. It's really interesting, and I think it's a cool area of investigation. in some of these cases that need a different avenue to solve. Yeah, I know they have a really big one in Tennessee that comes up in a lot of true-kind cases. Entomology ended up playing a large role in the trial of a man named Vincent Brothers. Vincent Brothers was the vice principal of Fremont Elementary School in Bakersfield, California.

He had worked for the Bakersfield City School District. Since 1989, he and his wife, Joni Harper, had three children. A four-year-old son, Marcus, a two-year-old daughter, Lindsay, and a newborn named Marshall, who was just six weeks old in July 2003. On the sixth, Joni didn't make it to church, which wasn't like her at all. So after still not hearing from her for two days, a friend went to the home to check on her and see if she needed anything. According tooxygen.com, the friend told 911, she's laying on the,

the bed dead. Officers arrived to find an awful horrific scene. Joni was deceased. She had been stabbed to death. The children, Marcus and Lindsay, and baby Marshall as well, had also been killed. They had not been stabbed. They had died from gunshot wounds. Joni's 70-year-old mother, Ernestine, had also been shot to death. At first glance, it looked like the home had been burglarized. But as detectives looked closer, something seemed off. The home had definitely been ransacked, but it didn't look like anything had been taken. A television set, credit cards, and even cash were in plain view left behind. Bakersfield detective Donald Kruger told Oxygen, five people, three generations being wiped out in one moment. It was like nothing else I dealt with.

That's a lot of hate. To kill five people and not even get away with the cash didn't make any sense to savvy investigators who immediately suspected that there had been no breaking. The scene had been staged. So there's two things here for me. You know, the first is this detective talking about, you know, kind of what a monumental,

I don't even know if that's the right word, but moment this was, saying it was like nothing else I'd ever dealt with. And, you know, you and I have talked about it before, but detectives see a lot of, really horrible stuff.

I don't even know how sometimes they turn it off when they get home. And maybe some can't. It has to be a very, very tough job to get to a scene and find a mother, three children, a mother-in-law killed in the fashion that we described. That can't be easy on anyone. Yeah, that's got to be something that I assume is often burned in their brains that they're never going to be able to unsee. But, you know, the, you know, kudos to them because they do that hard work that has to get done to solve these cases. And I'm imagining walking into this scene,

you know, there has to be a motive that comes to mind. And, you know, obviously one seems to be burglary, but then again, right away, they notice nothing's taken. There's cash sitting right out there. And what kind of person burglarizes a home and leaves that many things, especially cash? It's so easy to put in your pocket. just walk out with. So I think this was a real red flag for them. Yeah. So that was my my second thing that I was going to point out. We see that in a lot of cases, right? As authorities are kind of looking at the scene, it appears to be a burglar. But these individuals do this for a living. They've seen it time and time again. And a lot of times, I mean, well, you use the word red flag, but they're able to see things that just

don't make sense. And you pointed some of those out. Anybody that is going to come in and rob a house and in the process kill five people is not going to leave behind, especially easy to take things, credit cards, cash, jewelry, stuff that can just be put in your pocket. Now, big television sets, okay, maybe somebody makes the decision that that's too much to, try to carry a television set out of the home, but to stuff cash and jewelry and credit cards in your pocket, that's pretty easy. So that's telling the detective something. Yeah, one thing I wonder about is what scenario might play out here to where these people need to be killed. Are they, is the perpetrator worried that they were going to call the police and they'd be

identified so they had to wipe them out so they couldn't talk? But even if that's the case, why kill a newborn baby? Obviously, they can't talk. They're not going to identify you. So the baby being killed in this instance really jumps out to me. And I wonder if it did to police as well. Well, I think that's why the detective told oxygen, that's a lot of hate. Because to me, hate points towards someone known to the family, maybe even part of the family.

At the time the bodies were found, Vincent Brothers was visiting his mother and Elizabeth city, North Carolina. Investigators flew out to North Carolina to speak with him about his family. An autopsy had placed the time of deaths after 1 p.m. on Sunday, July 6th. Vincent claimed that he had been in Ohio visiting his brother before heading straight to North Carolina. His alibi did seem very solid, but investigators couldn't stop coming back to him as a suspect and the fact that it seemed as though the crime scene at his home was staged, I think was a big part of it.

A closer look revealed that he and Joni had been estranged at the time of the murders, and there was said to have been bad blood between the two. Investigators tried to piece together, a motive as they looked deeper into Vincent's alibi. Police determined that on July 2nd, Vincent flew from Los Angeles to Ohio. He planned to stay with his brother, Melvin, for about a week before heading to North Carolina to see his mother. Credit card records and phone records prove that Vincent was in Ohio during that time, but detectives didn't just stop when they found the credit card use there, and they spoke to Vincent's brother Melvin, and they were able to get him the crack.

He admitted that it had been him using Vincent's credit card after being given a list of items to buy at a specific time and where to buy them at. He also admitted that between July 5th and July 8th, Vincent wasn't with him in Ohio at all. Surveillance tapes from the stores backed up Melvin's admission, that it was him that used his brother's credit card while his brother was someplace else. Detectives were able to track down a Dodge neon that Vincent booked as a rental just after he landed at the airport in Ohio. They did some really nice investigative work here. They pulled the entire rental history for the car and they looked at all the report. reported areas the car had been in and found that it had never been west of Michigan. With the help of the FBI, the air filter and the radiator from the rental car were sent for

analysis at UC Davis-Bohart Museum of Entomology. Dr. Lynn Kimsey, an entomologist and the museum director, found some damning evidence. According to Bakersfield.com, they found a series of paper wasp, two species of true bugs, and a very distinct grasshopper leg. These paper wasps, true bugs and grasshoppers, don't just live anywhere. And they don't live east of Michigan. They are only found west of the Rocky Mountains. Due to that information, police knew that the car definitely could have been in Southern California.

Not only could Dr. Kimsey tell where the car had been driven, but she could tell when. Though the bugs found in the radiator and air filter were normal for two main routes from Ohio to California, there was something suspicious missing, butterflies. Noting the absence of butterflies, Dr. Lynn was able to conclude that the car was probably only driven at night. There were several moth pieces, as well as the presence of other bugs that do not fly during the day, which confirmed that the car was being driven overnight. When you combine this insect evidence, surveillance tape, Marvin's confession, and the odometer of the Dodge neon,

showing that Vincent Brothers had driven 4,500 miles since he rented the car. A clear picture emerged. So to me more if it sounds as though he was pretty careful in his planning, right? He rented this car. It sounds like he drove only at night. And even when the FBI and the authorities looked into it, they couldn't find any documents. documentation, let's say, that the car had ever been west of Michigan, but obviously the bugs

showed something different. Prosecutors believe that Vincent brothers planned the murders of his family. He created what he thought was the perfect alibi by enlisting his brother, whom he trusted, and by driving across the country at night to avoid being spotted. He drove from Ohio to California, killed his children, his wife, and his mother-in-law, and then drove back to Ohio to retrieve his phone and credit cards before heading straight down to North Carolina to see his mom. In Vincent's mind, it was the perfect crime. But investigators knew that Vincent was lying to them. They just had to figure out how to prove it.

They asked the community at large and received tips. Someone had spotted brothers in town. in California when he said he was in Ohio. Detective Kruger explained to Oxygen the motive for Vincent Brothers, killing his wife, Joni, explaining that brothers had been having multiple affairs. Many of those relationships were concurrent, and they were occurring months before the murders. Because of the affairs, Joni wanted out of the marriage. But this still didn't explain the murder of his children, though.

Digging Moore, police found that brothers had previously tried to get his child support payments for other children he had fathered, reduced, and believed this was his motivation for getting rid of his children at the same time as his wife. Vincent Brothers had been married four times and had gone to jail for domestic violence in the past. He didn't want to pay to take care of anyone else,

and he knew that he would be the one responsible for the children after he killed their mother and their grandmother, and he didn't want that obligation. So I think one of the first questions I have to ask, Morph, is how in the world did this guy end up a school principal based on, you know, what we just talked about, domestic violence had gone to jail, things like that. You think that would have caught up to him somewhere along the way. But the other thing I want to talk about is something that we see in a lot of cases where a man

murders his wife, his children. And it's this theory, and I think in this case is probably more than a theory, but that these men want out of the relationship. You know, this guy is having multiple affairs at the same time. He wants out, but he can't just walk away and live with the consequences of that decision, whether it's paying alimony, paying child support, having to take care of the children. He didn't want any of that. So his solution was to kill everyone. And I am just, I'm so shocked every time we see it.

I don't know why I'm shocked because we've seen it so many times, but it remains shocking to me that a person can be so callous to take not only five lives, but the lives of five people who are, you know, your family, your wife, your kids, your mother-in-law, because you don't want to have to pay some money or you don't want to be quote unquote burdened with taking care of your children. Yeah, we know that in society, obviously divorces happen, you know, custody battles happen, child support has to be paid that happens on a regular basis. But overwhelmingly, no matter how bad the situation is overwhelmingly, people don't resort to, this step. So when we see it, it definitely stands out. It's very fascinating that some people

decide this is a better alternative. Yeah, I think it is fascinating because you're trying to figure out the thought process. Obviously, there was thought that went into it. This man sat around and thought, I don't want to be in this relationship. How do I get out of it without having to pay anything, do anything? I just, I just want to cut ties and do my own thing. Okay. I'm going to murder five people. That's a chilling thought. Hey, criminology listeners, Morph and I would love to tell you about a podcast we think you'll really enjoy. It's called True Crime Garage, hosted by our friends, Nick and the Captain. If you haven't heard about the True Crime Garage podcast, well, then you've really been missing out.

True Crime Garage this summer is fully loaded with real life true crime cases with a heavy focus on the unsolved mysteries and murders that you'll want to learn about. Ingram Garage covers cases that are in the news, missing persons cases, and of course, their specialty, Midwest Cold Case Unsolved Murders. Tune in and you'll be thinking what everyone else is saying. Why haven't I heard of this case before? Just last month, True Crime Garage was ranked 25th on Apple Podcasts, top subscriber shows chart.

True Crime Garage is free to listen to and available everywhere you, you get your favorite podcasts. Check out the True Crime Garage podcast today. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible.

A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Vincent Brothers was charged with five counts of first-degree murder with a special charge for multiple homicides. In 2007, he finally went to trial because he had pleaded not guilty and there were a number of delays. It was a long trial lasting four months and the jury had a lot of evidence to go through. it took them three days to make their unanimous decision and find Vincent brothers guilty on all charges. Kern County Deputy District Attorney Lisa Green was passionate in her closing, asking the jury, if not the death penalty for this case, then which case?

If not for these victims, then for which victims? Vincent was sentenced to death and placed on death row in California San Quentin prison. and he's still there. Now 60 years old, the last execution in California was in 2006. He will likely die, waiting to be executed

because in part the entomology evidence helped poke holes in his alibi, his plan, his story to the police. And I don't see California executing anyone anytime soon.

I think there are a lot of people that are just going to die in prison waiting to be executed. I don't have any issues with that. As long as these people are not back out on the street, because to me, a person who could do what Vincent brothers did, I just don't want them back in society. Who knows what they're going to do next? But as we wrap up kind of this part in this specific case, the entomology is very fascinating. You know, the FBI can't put this car west of Michigan, but the entomology can.

And so I think without that, do they even get to the point where they're able to find someone who can put Vincent Brothers in California? Maybe not. And how big does that play to the jury? when you have this scientific evidence showing that this rental car was driven X number of miles, had bugs and insects that could have only come from certain places and was most likely driven overnight. I think all of that had to play very well to the jury.

Yeah. And there's no doubt this guy put some thought into his plan. He had an alibi with his brother. he had his brother using his credit card so it made it look like he was in another state at the time. And it just proves that something small like this that he probably in his planning didn't even consider for a second that a moth or bugs on a radiator, that kind of stuff is going to help lock me up at the end of the day. And for me, it always goes back to I don't care how smart criminals think they are. most of them are never as smart as they think they are. There's no way to be able to think of everything. No matter how meticulous in the planning you are, there's just no way to think of things that maybe you have no knowledge of.

You know, like you said, moss, insects, bugs. Who would think of that? Well, certainly not Vincent Brothers. And thankfully he didn't because it put him where, you know, he deserved to be. An entomology isn't the only way to tell where someone has been. Forensic ecology and botany use plants and soil samples to do the same thing you can do with insects.

Looking at pollen on a suspect shirt, soil on her shoes, or a single seed caught in the cuff of their pants, you can learn a lot about where they've been. This has been used to find unmarked rays to help prove that a body has been moved and to help police the suspect at a particular crime scene. Forensic botany helped bring the same. suspect in a case known as the Soham murders to justice. In 2002, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were the best of friends. Both 10 years old, the two did everything together.

Just before noon on Sunday, August 4, 2002, Jessica left her home on Brook Street in Soham, England, and headed to a barbecue at Holly's home nearby in Red House Gardens. She was excited to give Holly a necklace. She had bought on a recent family vacation in Monorca, the necklace was engraved with the letter H for Holly. Jessica's older sister, Rebecca, made sure Jessica had her cell phone with her before she left. At the Wells home, Holly, Jessica, and another one of their friends, Natalie Parr, had fun hanging out for a few hours. Natalie decided to go home first, but Jessica stayed and kept playing games on the computer with Holly for a while. They ended up leaving the house to buy some can

candy, but they weren't gone long. Just after 3 p.m., the girls changed in the matching Manchester United football jerseys. Holly wore her own, and Jessica wore Holly's older brother Oliver's jersey. It was so cute that Holly's mom, the cola, took a picture of them before they sat down to dinner at around 5 p.m. After dinner, at around 6, they went back to Holly's room to play. What happened next took everyone by surprise. At 8 p.m., the cola went to Holly's room to have Holly and Jessica's say goodbye to the other guest that had been over for the barbecue that day, but they were gone. Nicola and Kevin Wells immediately started searching the neighborhood for the girls, but by 8.30, Holly's curfew, they were back home with no sign of either of them. Nicola called the Chapman

home to make sure they weren't just over at Jessica's house, but the Chapman's had also started to worry that Jessica wasn't home yet. Both families quickly searched, more of the town, but after exhausting all ideas and finding no trace of either girl, the families called the authorities. Jessica and Holly were officially reported missing at 9.55 p.m. Holly's mom later told the UK telegraph. I don't recall hearing the front door. It may have been open from bringing in the food earlier. Jessica's mom added, I kept thinking she should be home in a minute. Jessica wouldn't do this. She would always ring me. Holly's father was out all night searching. He told the telegraph, I think I got back at 6 a.m. We walked over fields, river paths,

school paths, anywhere where we thought the girls might be. Nicola waited by the phone, telling the telegraph, I remained up all night while the others went out searching. I was just waiting for news that did not come. And for me, this is kind of a, you know, a real heartbreaking moment in a lot of cases. Someone most often a child has gone missing in your heart breaks as you kind of go through the details of what the family experienced. You can't find any sign of your child or your child's friend who she's supposed to be with. The well, are worried, the Chapman's are worried. You know, just think about being out all night, searching the neighborhood, looking for your child. I mean, if that doesn't give you chills, I don't know

what does. Yeah, it's a helpless feeling to go out in the neighborhood, scour it, and hopefully you're going to find them, and to not, it's just a real sinking feeling had to come over them. Due to the young age of the girls and the time of night that they went missing, a large search was immediately launched by law enforcement. The photo that Nicola had taken of them just hours before, the two of them in the matching Manchester United shirts, was released to the public. To have a photo taken of someone in the hours just before they vanished was very helpful. Not many photos in missing persons cases have the missing person wearing exactly what they went missing in. With two girls in matching attire, they would be hard to.

to miss for any member of the public who had heard the news. And this is probably something that we don't talk about very often, but, you know, obviously one thing that that has to happen very early on in a case where someone goes missing is that the family has to provide a photo. Now, most of us have tons of photos of people in our family, but to have a photo, like you said, Morph, that was taken just a few hours before they went missing and showed exactly what they were wearing. Think about being able to put that out to various media outlets. It's one thing to see, let's say, you know, a young girl and ask yourself, is that the person that I just saw in the photograph on TV? Well, a little bit easier if you see

two girls wearing matching football jerseys that's really going to stand out. Yeah, and on top of that, they're going to have the same hairstyle. Everything is going to be as fresh as can be versus using an old picture that may show differences. They may look younger. They may have different hairstyles, that kind of thing. Every single registered sex offender in Cambridge, sure, and Lincolnshire was questioned in the girl's disappearance. Eventually, over 260 more across the entire United Kingdom were questioned. Still, there weren't really any.

real leads to follow. The girls were in the home one second and simply gone the next. By August, investigators had pieced together that Holly and Jessica had left the Wells home around 6.15 p.m. without telling Holly's parents or anyone else at the home, they had simply left quietly and unannounced. It was still lied outside and they most likely thought that they would be home soon before they were even missed. Prosecutor Richard Lathor, told the Sydney Morning Herald, no doubt, they felt secure and confident in an area with which they were entirely familiar. They lived there. They went to school there.

They would have thought they were surrounded by faces they knew. Using a combination of surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts, investigators determined that by 6.28 p.m., the girls had made it to a local sports center where they were caught on the surveillance camera using the vending machine to buy some sort of snack or candy. 28-year-old Ian Huntley, the caretaker at Soham Village College, near the Sports Center, said he saw the girls around 10 to 6. He said they had asked him about his girlfriend, Maxine Carr. She had been the girls' teaching assistant that year, and the girls were very fond of her. They knew she was up for a permanent job and were wondering whether or not she'd be staying on.

He told the girls that Maxine wasn't home, and that she hadn't been hired permanently. The girls then headed toward a bridge near college road. The next witness saw the girls in their distinct matching jerseys, a man named Mark Tuck, and his wife were driving on Sand Street in the Soam Town Center around 6.30 when he saw Holly and Jessica, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, he said to his wife, Lucy, look, two little Beckham's. And obviously that's a reference to David Beckham. Around the same time, a woman named Karen Greenwood also saw. all the girls walking arm and arm down college road just two minutes after mark tuck had seen them.

It seemed like they were heading back to the Wells home on Red House Gardens, but they never made it back. This initial timeline of the girls didn't make sense to investigators and they would have to figure out where it was off. So you have investigators out doing their work. They're finding people who claim to have seen the girls. They're trying to nail down the timeline, but the timeline doesn't make sense. And this is fascinating to me in many cases. Is everyone telling the truth? Or are people, you know, not sure about times, but giving times that they think are true and accurate that later turn out not to be? Or is there more sinister reason why someone, would, you know, say they saw the girls at a certain time.

That's what investigators have to figure out. And it's a fascinating part of a case to me. And I think if they find out someone is intentionally misleading them about a time, then that leads to the question, why is that? Yeah, and they're going to want to look at that person closer. Just afternoon on August 17th, 48-year-old gamekeeper Keith Pryor found the missing girls' bodies in a ditch in Suffolk, more than 10 miles away from Selham. A few days earlier he had noticed a horrendous

smell in the area, and that day two of his friends drove up to visit him, and they smelled it too. The three of them decided to investigate the source of the odor. The Standard UK reported that they all began to walk toward the ditch behind the pheasant pens when Pryor's friend, Adrian Lawrence, yelled to the other friend, do not come any further, Helen, go back to the van. Adrian and Pryor continued and prior noticed a smell of rotting flound. In the ditch, about six feet wide and four feet deep, they saw the two bodies of the girls lying side by side face up. They were badly decomposed, and they were also charred.

Keith Pryor told the paper, I immediately thought of the two missing girls from Sown, and Adrian rang the police on his mobile phone. And obviously, Morf, this is the worst possible outcome. You know, and in any missing person's case, there's the hope that you're going to find them. They ran off. They got lost, whatever it might be. But to get the news that definitively, they're dead. Their bodies have been found. It's got to be heartbreaking. Yeah. And then on top of that, it obviously seems that there's foul play involved. Someone tried to burn the body. So the police are going to have their work cut out from trying to figure out who did this and what the motive was.

But I always go back to, you know, hearing a lot of people talk about the not knowing is the worst part. And I know that seems strange to say, but I do think it's true. No doubt, nobody ever wants to find out that a loved one is dead, but to never know what happened to them. People say is actually worse. And my wife and I have been watching this show called Missing. It only ran for like two seasons. I think it might have been on stars. four, five, six years ago, it's a really good show set over in France about an English couple on vacation who loses their son. And the links they go to and the toll it takes on their relationship because the show spans like maybe nine years. It's really fascinating. Yeah, I watched that show

too. I thought it was pretty good. Ian Huntley had helped search for the girls and even unlocked to school. So, that authorities could search for them on the campus. He had also been very persistent in asking questions. He also even comforted Holly's dad once saying to him, Kevin, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize it was your daughter. Sure, he was a concerned citizen, a resident of the area, and loosely connected to the girls. So it's natural he would care. But he didn't just want to know things like how the investigation was going. He wanted to know, like, how long it took for DNA to naturally degrade and be unusable in talking to officers so much it gave one of them plenty of time to notice that there were

three small scratches on his cheek. The officer asked Huntley about the scratches and he claimed it was from his dog, Sadie. Investigators were suspicious of Ian Huntley. He seemed to have been injecting himself into the case too much, something murderers often do in police investigations. And, you know, it's something that we've seen time and time again. These murderers injecting themselves into the investigation, why? Because they want to keep tabs on it. They want to know what the police know. Or because there's a sick twisted thrill to being that close.

to, you know, detectives, to the investigation, almost like, ha, ha, you don't know it's me. And in this instance, maybe he's asking these technical questions because he's a true crime podcast listener, and he's just intrigued by the process of this. On the other hand, he could be worried that he's left evidence at the scene if he's the perpetrator in this crime. Yeah, I mean, asking questions just by, you know, its nature doesn't mean you're a killer. But, you know, I think in this case, what it did was that it caused investigators to look at him closer. And looking further into Ian Huntley's background at the suggestion of caller from Grimsby, authorities found that he had been accused of sexually motivated attacks. One against an 11-year-old girl, they dragged into an orchard.

This propelled him to the top of the suspect list. On August 16th, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were both questioned by police for the first time. Maxine claimed that she was at home with Ian the day the girls vanished, but authorities had received tips from the public that she had been in Grimsby at the time the girls disappeared, and Huntley himself had admitted that he told the girls that she wasn't home when they asked about her. Ian Huntley's home, car, and the college grounds were searched in a trash bin at the college. investigators found bits of Manchester United shirts that had been burned. Huntley's fingerprints were on the bin, and fibers on the charged shirts matched fibers from

Huntley's clothes. His car had been cleaned very thoroughly, but there was dust, a mixture of chalk, concrete, and brick around the pedals and in the wheel wells. This dust was the same kind used to pave the road near the ditch where the girls were found. Both Maxine Carr and Ian Huntley were arrested. Maxine Carr quickly broke down and confessed the lying for Huntley. He had called her the day the girls disappeared and told her that he had seen the girls and they had come inside because Holly had a nosebleed and Huntley had been outside when they were passing by. He told her that he was nervous, that he would be blamed for their disappearance. even though he was innocent. He said he had been walking their dog Sadie around 1045 when he

encountered neighbors out looking for the girls and that's when he became aware they were missing. Maxine agreed to help provide him with a false alibi. Ian Huntley was charged with two counts of murder and Maxine was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice and two counts of assisting an offender. They may have gone easier on her if it weren't for a witness statement implying that she knew much more than she was letting on. When Ian Huntley picked up Maxine from her mom's house in Grimsby, on the 10th, a neighbor, Marion Cliff, saw the two standing outside next to Antley's car. The car's trunk was open, and both of them appeared to be looking into it. Maxine was sobbing. Authorities found that a piece of the trunk carpet had been removed and replaced with

household carpet. This heavily points to at least one of the girls having been in the trunk, and Maxine actually seeing them, were evidence of them having been there, as a opposed to just providing an alibi for Ian. Maxine had also argued with an officer about what Ian Huntley was wearing the day the girls disappeared. So Maxine Carr is kind of an interesting figure in this case. No doubt, she provided a false alibi for Ian Huntley. The question is, why did she do it?

Was it because, as Ian claimed, he told her that he thought he would be accused of the crime that he didn't commit, or was it because she knew exactly what it happened, had even seen the girl's bodies, at least one of them, and was trying to cover up not only for him, but for her too. And you could say she's just trying to protect Ian because she thinks he's going to be unfairly fingered as a suspect. And maybe some people wouldn't fault her for that. But if she had knowledge that something had happened to these girls and they had been in that trunk and she still went along with it, well, that's a whole other story because that's helping to cover up this terrible crime.

This is also where the fascinating forensics came into play in this case when forensic botanist Patricia Wiltshire was able to match the pollen found on Huntley shoots with the pollen found in the ditch near the girl's bodies. She was also able to tell investigators when the girls were placed in the ditch and the route that Huntley took through the nettles growing nearby. Looking at side shoots in the nettles, which only happened when a plant has been stepped on. She saw a path through the brush. By looking at their growth, she was able to tell that the plants had been stepped on within 24 hours of the girl's disappearance. And it's not very often that we talk about forensic, botany. But to me, it's just as fascinating as, you know, some of the other forensic techniques. I mean, this woman was able to pinpoint a time frame of when these plants were stepped on,

which is amazing to me. And then on top of that, tie Huntley to the area through matching pollen found on his shoes. Okay. Is it as sexy as forensic genealogy, ballistics. Okay, maybe not. But it's, you got to say, it's just as fascinating. And maybe more so because we don't hear about it as often. I think it's just one more of those things that criminals, no matter how great a job they do or they think they do, covering up their crime, thinking they're going to get away with it, something like this can help tell the truth and point to them. And I go back to Huntley, you know, cleaning his car. He probably thought he did a great job, but didn't realize that, you know,

there was a mixture of things on the pedals and the wheel wells and that that was also going to tie him because it was, you know, the same type of dust that would have come from the road paving near the ditch where the girls were found. A jury of seven women and five men deliberated for just four days. On December 17, 2003, Ian Huntley was found guilty of two counts of murder, and Maxine Carr was found not guilty of assisting an offender, but due to her guilty plea to the charge of perverting the course of justice, she was sentenced to serve three and a half years in prison. She was released from H.M. Prison, Fauston Hall, on May 14, 2004, after serving a total of 21 months. She planned on releasing an autobiography with Mirage publishing, but they withdrew their offer due to the public

backlash that she shouldn't profit from a crime she had a key rolling. It's not exactly known where Maxine is today, but there have been reports of multiple women being attacked when her purported whereabouts have been released. According to the Irish mirror, she has a new identity now. So let's talk about Maxine for just a minute. I mean, I think first and foremost, when you get out, you have to get a new identity, right? I mean, this woman was so despised that people were attacking women that they thought might be her lived around where she was reported to live. That's, that's some hate right there on the part of whoever was going after her and these other women.

And I just wonder, Morf, is it because people thought that she played a much bigger role in this case than for what she was held accountable? I don't know that to be a fact, but it, it, it, kind of is leading me to believe that, that she didn't get what she had coming to her in the eyes of some people. But I also want to talk about this autobiography. You know, somebody set to publish it until they get to public backlash. And then they walk away,

which makes sense from a business standpoint. But what's fascinating to me is how adamant. so many people are about people not profiting from a crime that they committed or even one that they were reportedly involved in to some degree. I think it really says something about Maxine that she doesn't seem to have a conscience. You know, she knows she had a role in this and here she is trying to turn a dollar on it. Like she has no remorse. It's just, okay, I'm out of prison now.

Let me make some money off of this. But, you know, in this instance, the public backlash was just too much. And the publishing company said, no, we'll pass. Yeah, I always think that, you know, people when they get out, okay, change your name, kind of lay low, don't invite public scrutiny. Well, obviously, that's not what she did. She tried to publish a book. It was reported that Ian Huntley was given two life sentences, although a few sources,

specifically, say, 40 years. So there may be a minimum of 40 years served before the possibility of any kind of parole. His life in prison has not been an easy one. On September 14, 2005, Spree killer Mark Hobson burned Huntley with boiling water. That same month, Huntley tried to take his life by overdosing on antidepressants when he was found his cell was surged for more medical and authorities found a cassette tape with a recorded confession that differed from the other known version of events. He claimed he had confessed the vaccine and she had slapped him and told him not to risk her teaching job. On March 22nd, 2010, Huntley was attacked by Damien Fowkes, who was serving time for armed robbery. Huntley's throat was cut and he required medical treatment.

Ian Huntley is still in prison today. So this guy has been repeatedly attacked. And one thing that, you know, we've learned is that other prisoners, no matter what heinous crime, you know, they're incarcerated for, do not look kindly on inmates who hurt children. Yeah, I think that's a common theme, whether it's in the United States or across the pond in the UK. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be confined. Right? That, that seems to exist all over. Crimes against children, kind of put you at the bottom of the pecking order. And you are going to be a target.

And I wonder if Huntley hadn't been caught and sent to prison. If he had gotten away with this somehow, would there have been other victims? We know he had attacked young girls in the past. He committed this crime. What else might he have done had he not? up and sent to prison. Well, and I always think the worst, rightly or wrongly, I always believe that, you know, if some of these people are not caught, they're not stopping on their own. They're going to keep doing bad things because for whatever reason, it's what they want to do. They get a thrill out of it. They have a compulsion. You can go down the line of possible reasons, but they're going to commit more crimes, I think more often than not. But we have to talk about this confession,

this recorded confession where Huntley is saying that Maxine knew everything and that basically she didn't want him to risk her teaching job. Now, we don't know if that's exactly what happened. But if so, makes her look even worse. Thankfully, it was just one more case of these fascinating Forensics helping to punish Ian and Maxine in this case. And we've only touched on a few kinds of fascinating forensics, and there are undoubtedly even more cases that have been solved or moved along by these different branches of forensic investigation. Like all the other areas of forensics, fingerprints, blood spatter, DNA,

there will be advances in these fields, too. Who knew that Nettles could trace the path of your crime? Ian Huntley had claimed to wear plastic trash bags over his shoes to keep the mud in the area off of them. But it wasn't enough. Pollin still got in his shoes and in his car. And in the first case, we discussed, who knew that you needed to make sure a rental car

had previously traveled far enough west to not implicate you in the murder you were planning? Due to insects on the radiator. These details were certainly fascinating in these cases. Yeah, no doubt about that. I mean, we know that killers can try very hard to cover up their tracks. They, you know, make up alibis, use gloves.

make sure that there are no phone pings. But can they think of everything? That's the big question. Did they get all the dust? Are there butterflies in the radiator? Do they know what kinds of plants or around their intended disposal site? Is the soil around their makeshift graves common? You know, this is a lot to think about, especially in the midst of trying to get away with a crime.

And you and I have talked about it before. It is getting harder and harder to get away with crimes, but it's not just due to phone pings, Google searches, surveillance, and DNA. The more these other methods are used, the more they are accepted by courts and juries, and then they'll be used even more frequently. Just one more tool for police to catch these criminals.

Hopefully in future episodes of criminology, we'll hear many more instances of how these fascinating forensics help solve crimes that not too far in the distant past may have been unsolvable. And I think for me, that's what it boils down to. And when you look at some of the older unsolved crimes, I always wonder, would they have been solved back then if we had X, right? What we have today. And I think the answer for a lot of those cases is yes.

Now, even though we had the advancements today, it's hard to solve some of those older cases because because that wasn't available back then, maybe the evidence wasn't collected correctly. They didn't know that something could or would be useful. And it's definitely an exciting time now, crime fighting with all these different things coming online and being more recognized to help solve crimes. And I imagine the people that focus on these different fields that are, trained and work in these different fields, they've got to feel like their field is certainly becoming more relevant in crime fighting because we're seeing it in just a few of these cases

we discussed. But you know, as we wrap up this episode, the one thing that gets me is that with all these advancements, you would think criminals would be much more leery. But I don't know that they are. I don't know that these advancements are stopping people from committing crimes for whatever reason. I go back to the compulsion, the need, the thrill, whatever it is they get out of it. Does that override the increased chance that they'll be caught? And I think for a lot of people it does. But that's it for our episode on fascinating forensics. If you love the show, But haven't done so yet. Take a minute.

Go out, give us a rating. You can leave a review. Also, keep telling your friends. The word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash criminology podcast. Or you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of Criminology.

But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.