The Analysis of Crime Scenes

Background

FORENSIC SCIENCE TIMELINE

 BCE- Fingerprints were found in early paintings and in rock carvings of prehistoric humans.

700s- Chinese used fingerprints to establish identity of documents and clay sculpture, but without any formal classification system.

ca. 1000- Quintilian, an attorney in the Roman courts, showed that bloody palm prints were meant to frame a blind man of his mother's murder.

1248- A Chinese book, Hsi Duan Yu (the washing away of wrongs), contains a description of how to distinguish drowning from strangulation. This was the first recorded application of medical knowledge to the solution of crime.

1784- In Lancaster, England, John Toms was convicted of murder on the basis of the torn edge of wad of newspaper in a pistol matching a remaining piece in his pocket. This was one of the first documented uses of physical matching.

ca. 1800s- Thomas Bewick, an English naturalist, used engravings of his own fingerprints to identify books he published.

1813- Mathiew Orfila, a Spaniard who became professor of medicinal/forensic chemistry at University of Paris, published Traite des Poisons Tires des Regnes Mineral, Vegetal et Animal, ou Toxicologie General l. Orfila is considered the father of modern toxicology. He also made significant contributions to the development of tests for the presence of blood in a forensic context and is credited as the first to attempt the use of a microscope in the assessment of blood and semen stains.

1823- John Evangelist Purkinji, a professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, Czecheslovakia, published the first paper on the nature of fingerprints and suggested a classification system based on nine major types. However, he failed to recognize their individualizing potential.

1828- William Nichol invented the polarizing light microscope.

ca. 1830s- Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian statistician, provided the foundation for Bertillon's work by stating his belief that no two human bodies were exactly alike.

1835- Henry Goddard, one of Scotland Yard's original Bow Street Runners, first used bullet comparison to catch a murderer. His comparison was based on a visible flaw in the bullet which was traced back to a mold.

1836- James Marsh, an Scottish chemist, was the first to use toxicology (arsenic detection) in a jury trial.

1839- H. Bayard published the first reliable procedures for the microscopic detection of sperm. He also noted the different microscopic characteristics of various different substrate fabrics.

1851- Jean Servais Stas, a chemistry professor from Brussels, Belgium, was the first successfully to identify vegetable poisons in body tissue.

1853- Ludwig Teichmann, in Kracow, Poland, developed the first microscopic crystal test for hemoglobin using hemin crystals.

1854- An English physician, Maddox, developed dry plate photography, eclipsing M. Daguerre's wet plate on tin method. This made practical the photographing of inmates for prison records.

1863- The German scientist Schönbein first discovered the ability of hemoglobin to oxidize hydrogen peroxide making it foam. This resulted in first presumptive test for blood.

1864- Odelbrecht first advocated the use of photography for the identification of criminals and the documentation of evidence and crime scenes.

1877- Thomas Taylor, microscopist to U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested that markings of the palms of the hands and the tips of the fingers could be used for identification in criminal cases. Although reported in the American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science and Scientific American, the idea was apparently never pursued from this source.

1879- Rudolph Virchow, a German pathologist, was one of the first to both study hair and recognize its limitations.

1880- Henry Faulds, a Scottish physician working in Tokyo, published a paper in the journal Nature suggesting that fingerprints at the scene of a crime could identify the offender. In one of the first recorded uses of fingerprints to solve a crime, Faulds used fingerprints to eliminate an innocent suspect and indicate a perpetrator in a Tokyo burglary.

1891- Hans Gross, examining magistrate and professor of criminal law at the University of Graz, Austria, published Criminal Investigation, the first comprehensive description of uses of physical evidence in solving crime. Gross is also sometimes credited with coining the word criminalistics.

1892- (Sir) Francis Galton published Fingerprints, the first comprehensive book on the nature of fingerprints and their use in solving crime.

1894- Alfred Dreyfus of France was convicted of treason based on a mistaken handwriting identification by Bertillon.

1896- Sir Edward Richard Henry developed the print classification system that would come to be used in Europe and North America. He published Classification and Uses of Finger Prints.

1898- Paul Jesrich, a forensic chemist working in Berlin, Germany, took photomicrographs of two bullets to compare, and subsequently individualize, the minutiae.

1900- Karl Landsteiner first discovered human blood groups and was awarded the Nobel prize for his work in 1930. Max Richter adapted the technique to type stains. This is one of the first instances of performing validation experiments specifically to adapt a method for forensic science. Landsteiner's continued work on the detection of blood, its species, and its type formed the basis of practically all subsequent work.

1901- Sir Edward Richard Henry was appointed head of Scotland Yard and forced the adoption of fingerprint identification to replace anthropometry.

1903- The New York State Prison system began the first systematic use of fingerprints in United States for criminal identification.

1904- Oskar and Rudolf Adler developed a presumptive test for blood based on benzidine, a new chemical developed by Merk.

1905- American President Theodore Roosevelt established Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

1910- Victor Balthazard, professor of forensic medicine at the Sorbonne, with Marcelle Lambert, published the first comprehensive hair study, Le poil de l'homme et des animaux. In one of the first cases involving hairs, Rosella Rousseau was convinced to confess to murder of Germaine Bichon. Balthazard also used photographic enlargements of bullets and cartridge cases to determining weapon type and was among the first to attempt to individualize a bullet to a weapon.

1912- Masaeo Takayama developed another microscopic crystal test for hemoglobin using hemochromogen crystals.

1913- Victor Balthazard, professor of forensic medicine at the Sorbonne, published the first article on individualizing bullet markings.

1915- Leone Lattes, professor at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Turin Italy, developed the first antibody test for ABO blood groups. He first used the test in casework to resolve a marital dispute. He published L'Individualità del sangue nella biologia, nella clinica, nella medicina, legale, the first book dealing not only with clinical issues, but heritability, paternity, and typing of dried stains.

1915- International Association for Criminal Identification, (to become The International Association of Identification (IAI), was organized in Oakland, California.

1918- Edmond Locard first suggested 12 matching points as a positive fingerprint identification.

1920s- Georg Popp pioneered the use of botanical identification in forensic work.

1921- John Larson and Leonard Keeler designed the portable polygraph.

1923- Vittorio Siracusa, working at the Institute of Legal Medicine of the R. University of Messina, Italy, developed the absorbtion-elution test for ABO blood typing of stains. Along with his mentor, Lattes also performed significant work on the absorbtion-inhibition technique.

1924- August Vollmer, as chief of police in Los Angeles, California, implemented the first U.S. police crime laboratory.

1925- Saburo Sirai, a Japanese scientist, is credited with the first recognition of secretion of group-specific antigens into body fluids other than blood.

1927- Landsteiner and Levine first detected the M, N, and P blood factors leading to development of the MNSs and P typing systems.

1929- K. I. Yosida, a Japanese scientist, conducted the first comprehensive investigation establishing the existence of serological isoantibodies in body fluids other than blood.

1929- Calvin Goddard's work on the St. Valentine's day massacre led to the founding of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory on the campus of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

1930- American Journal of Police Science was founded and published by staff of Goddard's Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Chicago. In 1932, it was absorbed by Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, becoming the Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and police science.

1931- Franz Josef Holzer, an Austrian scientist, working at the Institute for Forensic Medicine of the University of Innsbruck, developed the absorbtion-inhibition ABO typing technique that became the basis of that commonly used in forensic laboratories. It was based on the prior work of Siracusa and Lattes.

1932- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crime laboratory was created.

1938- M. Polonovski and M. Jayle first identified haptoglobin.

1940- Landsteiner and A.S. Wiener first described Rh blood groups.

1941- Murray Hill of Bell Labs initiated the study voiceprint identification. The technique was refined by L.G. Kersta.

1945- Frank Lundquist, working at the Legal Medicine Unit at the University of Copenhagen, developed the acid phosphatase test for semen.

1946- Mourant first described the Lewis blood group system.

1950- M. Cutbush, and colleagues first described the Duffy blood group system.

1951- F. H. Allen and colleagues first described the Kidd blood grouping system.

1953- Kirk published Crime Investigation, one of the first comprehensive criminalistics and crime investigation texts that encompassed theory in addition to practice.

1958- A. S. Weiner and colleagues introduced the use of H-lectin to determine positively O blood type.

1959- Hirshfeld first identified the polymorphic nature of group specific component (Gc).

1960- Lucas, in Canada, described the application of gas chromatography (GC) to the identification of petroleum products in the forensic laboratory and discussed potential limitations in the brand identity of gasoline.

1963- D.A. Hopkinson and colleagues first identified the polymorphic nature of erythrocyte acid phosphatase (EAP).

1967- Culliford, of the British Metropolitan Police Laboratory, initiated the development of gel-based methods to test for isoenzymes in dried bloodstains. He was also instrumental in the development and dissemination of methods for testing proteins and isoenzymes in both blood and other body fluids and secretions.

1968- Spencer and colleagues first identified the polymorphic nature of red cell adenosine deaminase (ADA).

1971- Culliford published The Examination and Typing of Bloodstains in the Crime Laboratory, generally accepted as responsible for disseminating reliable protocols for the typing of polymorphic protein and enzyme markers to the United States and worldwide.

1974- The detection of gunshot residue (GSR) using scanning electron microscopy with electron dispersive X-rays (SEM-EDX) technology was developed by J. E. Wessel, P. F. Jones, Q. Y. Kwan, R. S. Nesbitt and E. J. Rattin at Aerospace Corporation.

1976- Zoro and Hadley in the United Kingdom first evaluated GC-MS for forensic purposes.

1977- Fuseo Matsumur, a trace evidence examiner at the Saga Prefectural Crime Laboratory of the National Police Agency of Japan, notices his own fingerprints developing on microscope slides while mounting hairs from a taxi driver murder case. He relates the information to co-worker Masato Soba, a latent print examiner. Soba would later that year be the first to develop latent prints intentionally by "Superglue(r)" fuming.

ca. 1977- The fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer (FTIR) is adapted for use in the forensic laboratory.

1984- (Sir) Alec Jeffreys developed the first DNA profiling test. It involved detection of a multilocus RFLP pattern. He published his findings in Nature in 1985.

1986- In the first use of DNA to solve a crime, Jeffreys used DNA profiling to identify Colin Pitchfork as the murderer of two young girls in the English Midlands. Significantly, in the course of the investigation, DNA was first used to exonerate an innocent suspect.

1987- DNA profiling was introduced for the first time in a U.S. criminal court. Based on RFLP analysis performed by Lifecodes, Tommy Lee Andrews was convicted of a series of sexual assaults in Orlando, Florida.

1990       K. Kasai and colleagues published the first paper suggesting the D1S80 locus (pMCT118) for forensic DNA analysis. D1S80 was subsequently developed by Cetus (subsequently Roche Molecular Systems) corporation as a commercially available forensic DNA typing system.

1991- Walsh Automation Inc., in Montreal, launched development of an automated imaging system called the Integrated Ballistics Identification System, or IBIS, for comparison of the marks left on fired bullets, cartridge cases, and shell casings. This system was subsequently developed for the U.S. market in collaboration with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).

1992- In response to concerns about the practice of forensic DNA analysis and interpretation of the results, the National Research Council Committee on Forensic DNA (NRC I) published DNA Technology in Forensic Science.

1993- In Daubert et al. v. Merrell Dow, a U.S. federal court relaxed the Frye standard for admission of scientific evidence and conferred on the judge a "gatekeeping" role. The ruling cited Karl Popper's views that scientific theories are falsifiable as a criterion for whether something is "scientific knowledge" and should be admissible. 

ca. 1994- Roche Molecular Systems (formerly Cetus) released a set of five additional DNA markers ("polymarker") to add to the HLA-DQA1 forensic DNA typing system.

1996- In response to continued concerns about the statistical interpretation of forensic DNA evidence, a second National Research Council Committee on Forensic DNA (NRC II) was convened and published The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence.

1998- An FBI DNA database, NIDIS, enabling interstate cooperation in linking crimes, was put into practice.

1999- The FBI upgraded its computerized fingerprint database and implemented the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), allowing paperless submission, storage, and search capabilities directly to the national database maintained at the FBI.

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