Introduction
The case I chose to write on is based on a DVD that we watched in class called ‘Beaten by a hair’. In this case, a woman was reported missing after she went to work and never returned home. After the police discovered a bloody pillow case in the woods, near her house, they linked it to the missing pillow case in the woman’s room, and then realized that they had a murder case on their hands. A mystery in the case was that one of the local neighbors had mentioned seeing the woman leave through the front door of her house but the evidence says different, so investigators had to find out who left the house that morning. I am interested in this case because it was very intriguing how the forensic officers put all the pieces together and discovered the missing woman and her murderer. It was also interesting that if the forensic officers had not gone through every single hair fiber on the brush they had found, they could not have had enough evidence to convict the killer.
Science and Methods Used In this case there were many different scientific methods such as an ultraviolet light test, a luminol test, an amido black test, and the use of a highly trained dog. Two main scientific methods used in the solving of this case were hair and DNA analysis and the use of mass spectrometry. When the woman was missing and the only lead the forensic officers had was the bloody pillow case; they had to use various scientific methods in order to solve the case. The forensic officers started using their methods where they suspected the crime had taken place which was in the woman’s bedroom. They noticed that woman’s bed was clean and had no blood on it. They suspected that the blood might have been cleaned up and decided to use luminol. “Luminol is the most sensitive test that is capable of presumptively detecting bloodstains diluted to as little as 1 in 100,000;