“Dusting for prints” has been a mainstay of forensic investigations since the late 1880s — employing a developer powder to add enough contrast for the fingerprint to show up in photographs. But what about latent prints or those on visually dense, multi-colour surfaces? The Crime-lite ASV System can image them — with infrared lasers.
This six-inch black blade belonged to the man on the left. His name is Sir John Williams — the surgeon of Queen Victoria and one of the main suspects in the eleven Whitechapel murders. This may be Jack the Ripper’s weapon.
The jelly-like thing you see here is called GelSight. It’s a synthetic rubber substance that can measure and visualise even microscopic surfaces, and it promises to revolutionise both forensics and medicine after some more study.
We’ve covered some of the screenshot shenanigans before, but heads up if you weren’t aware. PC Pro’s look into “for hire” and police-lead smartphone forensics is an eye-opening account of just how much data lives in your pocket.
Everyone knows the cops have tools to get inside your phone. But what do they do? They suck your phone’s entire soul in 15 minutes. With one single click. This is what it looks like.
Using delicate lasers to ionise but not burn difference sections of your hair for precise chemical analysis, this new forensic method can theoretically tell what you ate and where you were in the world on an hour by hour basis. (Usually, the entire hair gets mashed up into one vague average sample.)
This week’s excerpt is not for the the faint of heart! We recount the savage murder and grisly disposal of Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé as well as the groundbreaking forensic techniques used by Dr Alexandre Lacassagne to bring his killers to justice.
This is Peter Paul Biro. Depending on who you ask, he’s either using fingerprinting, forensic science and state of the art spectral cameras to uncover lost art masterpieces, or using that same technology to manufacture them.
