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Cotton Swabs are the Prime Suspect In 8-Year Phantom Chase

Posted by samzenpus on from the mom-always-said-to-wash-your-hands dept.

matt4077 writes "For eight years, several hundred police officers across multiple European countries have been chasing a phantom woman whose DNA had been found in almost 20 crimes (including two murders) across central Europe. It now turns out that contaminated cotton swabs might be responsible for this highly unusual investigation. After being puzzled by the apparent randomness of the crimes, investigators noticed that all cotton swabs had been sourced from the same company. They also noted that the DNA was never found in crimes in Bavaria, a German state located at the center of the crimes' locations. It turns out that Bavaria buys its swabs from a different supplier."

3 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sigh by tick-tock-atona · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7341360.stm Until that server comes back up, here is an article from a year ago about the case. Makes for hilarious reading now!

  2. Re:Sigh by complete+loony · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the wikipedia page about the case. I think the original source of the news is in German though.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  3. Re:CSI to the rescue by aix+tom · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh, it can still be perfectly sterile.

    Sterilizing something, that is killing off everything on and in it that lives, is pretty easy.

    But completely removing DNA and other particles isn't. There could still be DNA particles from the person who picked the cotton in the cotton swabs.

    When you have a little cell in the swab, there is no easy way to figure out if that is a human cell or a cotton cell, and remove all human cells.

    And there *definitely* still is cotton DNA in the cotton swab.