Silent Witnesses (18 page)

Tessier was promptly arrested but, in spite of the now compelling evidence against him (it was even discovered that he had been in debt but had suddenly been able to pay off his creditors), he still denied all charges. Although the police case was already strong, Bayle decided to return to the cellar for one more look, this time bringing a powerful lamp with him. With it he discovered what seemed to be spots of blood close to an area that had recently been repainted. He also found a bloodstain at the foot of the stairs and was subsequently able to prove that this was of human origin using the Uhlenhuth test, which contradicted Tessier's immediate claim
that it had come from a cat. Finally, another tenant in the building mentioned that he had allowed Tessier to use his cellar upon occasion, and that when he had complained about an unpleasant odor emanating from it, Tessier had told him that it was coming from the drains, and that he would have them fixed. However, this was later attributed to the smell of Boulay's body rotting in the basement. Bayle checked the drains and, inside them, found the sightless beetles he had been looking for.

Tessier went to trial still denying the murder, in spite of the extraordinary weight of forensic evidence against him. He was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, while Bayle was hailed throughout France for his incredible investigative powers. Ultimately, however, his career would end in tragedy.

In mid-September 1929, having only just taken up the running of the Forensic Science Department in Bertillon's stead, Bayle was asked to examine a document that had been used by a traveling salesman, Joseph-Emile Philipponet, to procure money from his landlord. Bayle looked over the document in his laboratory for some time before eventually concluding that it was a forgery. When Philipponet was told, he took the news badly. Three days later, he managed to gain access to Bayle's laboratory and shot him three times in the back. Bayle died immediately. When he was arrested, Philipponet claimed: “Monsieur Bayle committed an act of bad faith! My document was genuine! What I have done was worth the death of a father of five children!”

So ended the life of one of the finest exponents of forensic science; it was a great loss to criminal detection.

The United States was not slow to realize the usefulness of the microscope and the enormous crime-solving potential of trace evidence. Probably the finest example of these techniques being successfully used in the United States is the case of the murder of New York novelist Nancy Titterton in 1936.

Thirty-four-year-old Titterton lived with her husband Lewis (an NBC executive) at 22 Beekman Place, in an area popular with New York's literary set. She was a well-respected book reviewer and was considered a promising novelist. On Good Friday 1936, two men from a local furniture upholsterer's climbed the stairs to the fourth-floor apartment carrying a couch that the Tittertons had sent to be repaired. On arrival they found the door unexpectedly open. The older of the two, Theodore Kruger, called out to announce their presence. When he received no reply, he tentatively entered the apartment, followed by his young assistant, John Fiorenza. They found no one inside and, since that seemed rather unusual, began to check the other rooms.

Looking into one of the bedrooms, they found the bed disheveled, with the bedspread and ripped underwear strewn across the floor. Moments later they realized that the bathroom light was on and the shower was running. They stood outside the door and called out repeatedly, but once again there was no response. By now they had the definite feeling that something was amiss. Slowly they opened the bathroom door and peered inside.

Nancy Titterton's naked body was lying face down in the empty bath. She had been strangled with her own pajama jacket, which was still wrapped tightly around her throat. Understandably
appalled by the dreadful scene, Kruger turned off the shower and hastened to call the police.

Because of Titterton's relatively high profile and the importance of her husband, a sixty-five-person team was formed to investigate the crime under the leadership of Assistant Chief Inspector John Lyons. Several significant discoveries were made almost at once. Traces of green paint were found on the bedspread, and mud on the carpet. The biggest clue, however, came when Titterton's body was lifted from the bath. A cleanly severed thirteen-inch length of cord was discovered beneath it. Given the bruises evident on Titterton's wrists and the torn underwear in the bedroom, it seemed clear that the crime was sexually motivated and that the cord had been used to tie her hands before she was raped.

After murdering her, the killer had cut the cord in order to take it away from the scene with him, thereby leaving as little evidence as possible. Such careful planning suggested that perhaps the killer wasn't new to this; leaving the body in the bath with the shower running was also a clear attempt to destroy forensic evidence. Luckily for the investigative team, in his hurry to flee, the killer had failed to notice the stray section of cord hidden beneath the body.

In spite of the fact that there were several evidential leads to follow up on, initial forensic analyses of the scene proved disappointing. The mud on the carpet was discovered to contain traces of lint of the sort commonly found in upholstery shops; it had clearly been brought in by the two delivery men. The traces of green paint were revealed to have come from a decorator's can—the outside of the building was being painted. Apparently there were four men involved in this work, but
other tenants in the building confirmed that only one had been in on the day of Titterton's death, and that he had been working on another floor at the time when the murder must have occurred.

Given these disappointments, the police began to pin a lot of hope on gleaning some information from the length of cord. They started by checking with all the cord manufacturers in the New York area, to see if it had come from any of them. This proved fruitless, and they were forced to expand the search to cover not only New York but three more states as well. Tracing the cord might yet prove to be useful, but it was clearly going to take some time.

In the meantime John Lyons continued to ponder the case. There were a number of elements that puzzled him. First, the fact that the cord had been brought to the scene clearly showed that the murder had been planned, yet nobody had seen anyone suspicious in or near the building on the day. Besides, Nancy Titterton was a nervous woman, and it therefore seemed unlikely that she would have let a complete stranger into the apartment. That meant either the killer had broken into the apartment somehow and surprised her or she had known the person. Lyons was convinced that it was the latter—but who was the culprit?

A discovery made by Dr. Alexander Gettler, a chemist from the city's toxicology department, at last began to guide Lyons towards a solution. Gettler had subjected the bedclothes in the disarrayed bedroom to close scrutiny with a magnifying glass and had been rewarded with the discovery of a stiff white hair about half an inch long that he was unable to account for. Examination under a powerful microscope allowed him to determine that it was a horsehair of the sort used to stuff
furniture. When it was compared to the hair used to upholster the sofa that Kruger and Fiorenza had delivered on the day of the murder, it was found to be a clear match. This might not appear to be of particular significance; after all, there were bound to be a few bits of the horsehair from the sofa in the apartment. However, the hair was too heavy to have simply blown into the bedroom, meaning it must have been carried there in some way.

Working on Locard's basic principle that “every contact leaves a trace,” Lyons pondered this development. It was of course possible that one of the detectives examining the scene had carried the hair into the room with them, but Lyons felt it was more likely that either Kruger or Fiorenza had done so, since they would have had a great deal more contact with the sofa and the horsehair it was stuffed with. However, both had stated that they hadn't actually entered the room, only stood by the door looking in for a short time. What, Lyons began to imagine, if one or even both of them had visited the apartment earlier that day? It was something of a long shot, but in the absence of any other evidence, he decided to explore this theory.

Lyons returned to the upholsterer's shop and reinterviewed Kruger, who maintained that he'd been at work in the shop all day up until the point when he had gone with Fiorenza to deliver the sofa. Fiorenza himself had also been in the shop but had only come in at about midday; he had told Kruger that he had been visiting his parole officer, having been caught stealing a car. Lyons also learned that Fiorenza had accompanied Kruger to pick up the sofa in the first place, meaning that Nancy Titterton would have been familiar with him and might well have allowed him into the property, were he to have arrived with a plausible excuse for being there. Given this, when it was established that the parole office was actually closed on that particular day since it was Good Friday, Fiorenza became the prime suspect in the case.

The examination of hair—often using a microscope to determine distinctive characteristics such as hair diameter—is now a key part of many forensic investigations.

Lyons had Fiorenza's criminal record looked into. He had been arrested four times for theft and had spent two years in prison. More alarming, however, was a psychiatric report from 1934 in which Fiorenza was described as “delusional” and “prone to wild fantasies.” This certainly added further weight to Lyons's theory, but without any hard evidence to back it up, he felt arresting Fiorenza would be unproductive.

Then, on April 17, came the breakthrough Lyons had been waiting for. The provenance of the cord found beneath Nancy Titterton's body finally came to light—it had been manufactured by the Hanover Cordage Company of York, Pennsylvania. Although it had been sold widely, Lyons's detectives were able to track down a wholesaler who had sold a roll to somewhere highly significant: the upholstery shop where Kruger and Fiorenza worked. It was the evidence Lyons needed.

Fiorenza was promptly arrested; although he initially denied having had anything to do with the murder, he finally broke and confessed when confronted with the cord. He explained that he had visited the apartment that morning on the pretence of returning the sofa. When Nancy Titterton let him in, he attacked her. He dragged her into the bedroom and tied her hands with the cord. He then raped and strangled her before dragging her body into the bathroom and dumping it in the bath, where he “found” her later when he returned to the apartment with Kruger.

Fiorenza went to the electric chair on January 22, 1937, for the premeditated murder of Nancy Titterton. He had been more aware of the potential for forensic evidence to betray him than many criminals, and by placing the body under a running shower and removing (as far as he knew) everything he had brought with him to the scene, he thought that he had concealed his guilt. But while criminals in a hurry will almost certainly be unable to see every trace they have left behind at a scene, a meticulous forensic scientist can.

Fiber analysis also lay at the heart of a landmark case that took place in Liverpool, England. The night of November 2, 1940, was cold and wet. Fifteen-year-old Mary Hagen was therefore understandably reluctant to venture out when her father asked her to go and buy him a pack of cigarettes and a copy of the
Liverpool Echo.
However, at his insistence she pulled on her coat and left on the errand. She did not return.

The police were called and a search was mounted. Just five hours later, Mary's body was discovered in a cement blockhouse nearby. She had been raped and strangled. The evening edition of the
Liverpool Echo
lay next to her.

Among those called to the scene was Dr. James Firth from the Home Office's Forensic Science Laboratory in the North West, situated in Preston, Lancashire. A scrap of muddy fabric had been found near the body, and it was on this that Firth concentrated his attention. On close examination it seemed to be a bloodstained bandage. There was also a bloody thumb-print on the left side of Mary's neck. Since none of Mary's injuries had made her bleed, it seemed safe to assume that both the bandage and the blood had come from the killer; the bandage must have come off during the struggle and the
injured thumb then pressed against Mary's neck as she was throttled.

When the bandage was analyzed in the laboratory, an important discovery was made. The layer that would have come in contact with the wound was impregnated with a particular antiseptic called acriflavine and there were also traces of zinc ointment. The significance of this was that wartime rationing—remember, this was 1940—meant acriflavine was only commonly used for military dressings. Firth was therefore able to conclude that the killer was almost certainly a serviceman. This conclusion was supported by the evidence of a witness who had been asked the way to the local barracks by a soldier on the night of the murder. She had noticed at the time that his face was badly scratched.