Silent Witnesses (3 page)

When they received this information, the first thing the team did was compare Pitchfork's signature on the house-to-house pro forma from the Lynda Mann inquiry with that from his blooding in January of that year. The two didn't match. On the morning of September 19, Ian Kelly was arrested by Detective Inspector Derek Pearce for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He was taken to Wigstone Police Station to be interviewed. He didn't hold back, telling the police everything they needed to know and naming Pitchfork as the man he had given blood for. For the first time in many months, the team started to become excited.

At 5:45
PM
the same day, detectives visited Colin Pitchfork's house. They identified themselves and were allowed inside. They took Pitchfork into the kitchen alone and informed him, “From inquiries we've made, we believe you're responsible for the murder of Dawn Ashworth on July 31, 1986.” They also told him that they were aware that someone had given blood for him. All Pitchfork said was, “First give me a few minutes to speak to my wife.” As he was leaving the room, one of the detectives asked, “Why Dawn Ashworth?” Pitchfork turned and replied, “She was there, I was there.” Although the police now felt certain that they had their man, they were also aware that they had made a mistake before. It was down to Jeffreys once again to provide the final proof. This time the DNA test came back positive: Pitchfork really was the murderer of both Dawn Ashworth and Lynda Mann.

Pitchfork made a full and detailed confession. He was tried at Leicester Crown Court on January 22, 1988. He was given a double life sentence for the murders, a ten-year sentence for each of the rapes, and three years each for sexual assaults committed in 1979 and 1985, plus a further three years for the conspiracy involving Ian Kelly. When he gave his sentence, the judge, Mr. Justice Otton, commented, “The rapes and murders were of a particularly sadistic kind. And if it wasn't for DNA, you might still be at large today and other women would be in danger.”

DNA testing, the greatest advance in forensic science for over a hundred years, had come of age. It would go on to affect the outcome of criminal cases around the world; its importance in establishing guilt or innocence cannot be overstated. Today, despite concerns and challenges, it is clear that Dr. Jeffreys's remarkable discovery is here to stay.

The case of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth serves to show just what a powerful tool genetic fingerprinting is for a forensic scientist—it offers perhaps the most incontrovertible proof of a person's connection to a scene. But there are, of course, many other techniques at an investigator's disposal. Innovations and advances are continually being made in this field. It is this incredible variety of approaches that makes the history of forensic science such a fascinating subject. For each forensic technique, from ballistic analysis to old-fashioned fingerprinting, there are cases that highlight the real practical value of new developments. In this book I look at some of the most important of these cases, and through them demonstrate that a person still has a story to tell long after he or she is dead.

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901–78)

F
orensic investigation is concerned primarily with piecing together the disparate clues left at a scene in order to form a coherent picture of events and, crucially, to establish the identities of those involved or—equally importantly —those who were not. However, it wasn't until the nineteenth century that the need for a reliable, systematized method of identifying the people involved in a crime was recognized. Prior to then, the most common ways of doing so were eyewitness accounts and information extracted by torture. Needless to say, both could easily provide a faulty account; as this was recognized, various experts rose to the challenge of improving matters. The pioneering French forensics expert Edmond Locard (1877–1966) once said that “to write a history of identification is to write the history of criminality,” and of course most forensic science is concerned either with establishing identity or with linking an individual to a crime scene. This chapter looks at the first, most
basic steps in this direction—the early attempts to define and catalog a person's physical characteristics. There was a pressing need to formalize methods of identification, as the case of Lesurques and Dubosq in France showed.

On April 27, 1796, the Lyon mail coach failed to arrive in Melun, a small hamlet south of Paris. Concerned, the people of Melun assembled a search party. It did not take them long to discover the coach, and the sight that greeted them was a gruesome one. Both the driver and the postboy had been hacked to death and their bodies badly mutilated. The apparent motive for the crime became clear when it was found that more than five million francs had been stolen from the coach. One of the horses had also been taken.

Since the coach's only passenger was not among the dead and had, in fact, completely vanished, it seemed pretty clear to the authorities that he had been part of the gang that had committed the murderous robbery. He had claimed to be a wine merchant, but in fact must have been acting as the gang's inside man all along. It also came to light that he had been seen prior to boarding the coach carrying a large cavalry sword; given the condition of the bodies, it seemed that this might very well have been used as one of the murder weapons. After a short investigation, it was established that the gang likely comprised four other members, who had also been heavily armed—a gang of four such men had eaten in the nearby village of Montgeron a few hours before the coach was due to arrive there and had been acting suspiciously.

The police quickly picked up the gang's scent. The missing horse, which had been taken from the coach, was discovered
in Paris the following day, and not long afterward a stable keeper reported that four sweating horses had been returned to his stable during the early hours of the morning by a man who gave his name as Couriol. Couriol was eventually traced to a village just north of Paris and arrested. Both he and his premises were searched, and over a million francs were recovered. The police were convinced that they had their man, and he was taken to Paris to answer further questions and be put before the Palais de Justice. The case then took an unusual turn.

A man by the name of Charles Guenot had been found in the same house as Couriol. Although after questioning him they had decided he was not a suspect, the police had taken some papers from him. As a result, Guenot was forced to go to Paris the following day in order to retrieve them. On his way he bumped into an old friend by the name of Joseph Lesurques, a rich businessman from Douai in northern France. Guenot explained what had happened, and Lesurques, sympathizing with his situation, agreed to go with him. By a strange coincidence, the two barmaids from Montgeron who had served the gang their meal on the fateful day were also there, helping with the inquiry. When they saw Guenot and Lesurques together, they pointed at them and denounced them, convinced that they recognized them both as members of the group.

Guenot and Lesurques were immediately arrested on the basis of this evidence. Despite fervently protesting their innocence, they were tried along with Couriol and three other men who were accused of being accomplices. Guenot was acquitted, but all the other men, including the hapless Lesurques, were found guilty and sentenced to death. The conviction of Lesurques seemed especially bizarre considering that no fewer than fifteen
witnesses provided him with an alibi, while a further eighty-three spoke highly of his character and respectability. For some reason all this evidence was ignored by the court and the evidence of the two women, who never wavered in their account and their identification of Lesurques as one of the men who had attacked the coach, carried the day.

On hearing himself condemned, Lesurques, who had remained confident and assured throughout the trial, finally lost his self-control. Raising his hands to the heavens he declared: “The crime which is imputed to me is indeed atrocious and deserves death; but if it is horrible to murder on the high road it is no less so to abuse the law and convict an innocent man. A day will come when my innocence will be recognized, and then may my blood fall upon the jurors who have so lightly convicted me, and on the judges who have influenced their decision.”

Immediately after the trial in an act of contrition, Couriol, who was indeed guilty, made it clear that Lesurques really was completely innocent and had taken no part whatsoever in the crime. The judge who had ordered Lesurques's arrest, a man by the name of Daubanton, was so disturbed by this revelation that he went to see Couriol in prison to speak to him personally. Couriol stuck to his story, explaining that the waitresses were wrong and had mistaken Lesurques for the real culprit, a man by the name of Dubosq who looked similar. The major difference between the two men was that Dubosq, unlike Lesurques, had dark hair. However, at the time of the robbery (and for some time beforehand), Dubosq had worn a blond wig in order to disguise himself.

To his credit, Daubanton had the case reopened and a commission was established to reexamine the evidence against Lesurques.
It was pointed out to them that Lesurques had no possible motive to get involved in highway robbery, as he was already rich. He was also, as we have already noted, very respectable—not the kind of man likely to carry a heavy sword around with him, or to have any idea how to use it if he did. However, in an extraordinary piece of deduction, the commission decided that perhaps Lesurques's relatives had bribed Couriol's relatives in order to persuade him to declare Lesurques innocent. Despite there being no evidence whatsoever to support this ridiculous theory, the Minister of Justice agreed and the sentence of death was upheld. Given the insanity of this decision, I for one have often wondered whether there wasn't more to this case than has ever been revealed—but then perhaps it was just stupidity on a grand scale.

On October 30, 1796, the members of the gang, along with the unfortunate Lesurques, were taken from their prison cells and prepared for execution. The twenty-minute journey from the Conciergerie to the Place de Grève where the guillotining was to take place was the most moving anyone present could remember. As the wagon rolled through the streets, Couriol, standing at the front, repeated over and over to the crowd, “I am guilty, Lesurques is innocent!” People were horrified. Even on the scaffold, moments before the blade silenced him forever, Couriol screamed, “Lesurques is innocent!”

It made no difference; after hugging his wife and children, a tearful Lesurques went to his death.

Dubosq, the man named by Couriol, was finally captured. He did indeed bear a remarkable likeness to Lesurques. He was eventually tried and executed, four years after Lesurques had answered for the same crime. To this day, despite a general acceptance that he was innocent, Lesurques has never been reprieved.

In many cases victims of a crime might need to be identified too, particularly when that crime is murder. The earlier case of Catherine and John Hayes provides a grisly example of this.

At around dawn on March 2, 1725, a watchman discovered the severed head of a man lying on the muddy foreshore of the River Thames at Westminster in London. It had obviously not been there very long, as decomposition was yet to really set in. The facial features were still intact, meaning that with luck someone might recognize the unfortunate individual. The head was presented to local magistrates, who ordered that it should be cleaned up and its hair combed. After it had been prepared in this way, it was taken to St. Margaret's Parish Church and stuck on a pole for all to see. The queue to view the remains was apparently so long that vendors worked the crowd selling food and water. Parish constables were stationed near the head and around the graveyard, the idea being that the guilty party would surely react in some way if they saw the head. There was also an age-old belief that if a murderer touched the corpse of their victim, it would bleed. Therefore anyone who seemed particularly upset at seeing the head was forced by the constables to touch it so that they could observe whether blood oozed forth from it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this approach failed to produce a suspect, and it was not long before the head began to decay and to be pecked at by the local birds. Fearful of it becoming unrecognizable, the magistrates ordered that it be immersed in a large jar of gin to preserve it, then taken inside the church. This was duly done and that, for the time being, was that.

Catherine Hall was a dominant, attractive woman who drew admirers easily. She was born near Birmingham, England, in 1690, the daughter of a pauper, and left home at the age of
fifteen to seek her fortune in London. On her way she fell in with several military officers, who took a shine to her and brought her with them to their billets at Ombersley, Worcestershire, where she stayed with them for some time. She eventually left them and was next picked up by a respectable farmer called Hayes. He was much older than she, and she quickly formed a relationship with his son John instead. The two were married in secret. When John's father found out, seeing that it was too late to do anything about the relationship, he set up his son in business as a carpenter. However, the rural life wasn't enough for Catherine—she wanted more. She wanted London and all that it had to offer her. After putting considerable pressure on her new husband, she finally convinced him to move there. The pair established a lodging house and soon also became successful coal merchants, moneylenders, and pawnbrokers. They quickly amassed considerable savings. Later, Catherine took in two young lodgers called Thomas Wood and Thomas Billings.

An organ-builder's apprentice by the name of Bennet had by now seen the head on display in St. Margaret's. Having done so, he felt compelled to call on Catherine at her residence on Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street), to tell her that he believed the head to be that of her husband, John, with whom he had once worked. Catherine was incensed. She assured Bennet that John was quite well and warned him that if he continued to spread such nasty false rumors, she would have to ask the police to arrest him.