Slashdot Mirror
Cotton Swabs are the Prime Suspect In 8-Year Phantom Chase
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."
So they shredded a woman for swabs? I thought we were only good for barbecue, masks, book covers, lampshades and creepy garments.
Bet you'll find her at the end of the packing line completely unaware she's a highly adept and wanted criminal. Or what a brilliant cover if she was guilty ;)
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
It's a new spin off!
CSI: You're Doing It Wrong
First thing I was taught in my high school class on problem solving. Always state your assumptions, right underneath stating your explicit goal. We were also taught that if you start running into dead ends, circle back to your assumptions and review them critically to see that they are 1) all inclusive, and 2) actually true. Oh, and never use contaminated cotton swabs. I think that was day two.
That's a good question. Cops aren't really all that bright, they are methodical and when applied properly, it gets the job done but they aren't exactly the smartest group of people. It's entirely possible that a lot of evidence and/or leads have been discarded or neglected because of this.
Before anyone flames me for stating that cops aren't the brightest of the bunch, when doing science it's often the case where a sample of something is tested before it it treated with the substance being tested. These provide baselines for comparative results and it isn't uncommon for them to be randomly done throughout the course of the experiments because you need a control. Now, if they were the slightest bit intelligent in the subject, they would test raw material periodically to ensure it wasn't contaminated in the same ways they shoot and clean their own guns periodically to ensure they are ready for use. This entire mysterious woman contamination could have been caught before it ever effected one crime scene if something was periodically done to validate the test equipment they are using. Instead, they treat it with less suspicion then a flashlight and just assume that it works as advertised instead of "checking the batteries" every once in a while. Doesn't seem to bright to me.
Wait... Are you bitching that you can't read the article? As in, you wanted to read the article before making a post?
I feel... like I've seen a unicorn or something...
How about how scary it would have been for the woman? Just imagine if the government got a hold of her DNA in a few years as part of some new Not-Really-Totalitarian-Fascist-Plot-We-Are-Really-Your-Friend program to grab DNA data for massive profiles of their citizens? She gets handed her ID card back and then picked up by the police a few hours later as the databases are furiously matching old crimes to new citizen data. She has no idea what is going on, just that they state they have DNA evidence of her involved in crimes all over the EU.
Considering how much the police and the courts blindly trust all the data coming from forensic laboratories, she would be well and truly fucked.
This sounds similar to the case of Ireland's most reckless driver.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
This reminds me of the "Prawo Jazdy" story. The Irish police were looking for this dude "Prawo Jazdy" who accumulated a very large number of speeding tickets. He kept committing infractions all across Ireland but always got away whenever he was stopped by giving a different address each time. They thought they had a supercriminal fugitive speeder on their hands until someone noticed that his name was Polish for "driver's license".
We should NEVER have developed human-cotton hybrids.
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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!
All points bulletin: be on the lookout for woman with extremely clean ears!
I never said or implied that. "Blind trust" was the word I used which indicates negligence, and not stupidity.
Unfortunately, that does happen quite often. There are plenty of men that have been released from prison after 10-20 years for precisely just that.
That's meaningless. I find it hard to categorize any of the actions of the U.S, Canada, U.K, France, Australia, etc. as reasonable. Most people don't, or have you not read most of the posts on Slashdot? In an unreasonable nation they would not need a computer in the first place. Your guilty only because it serves the purpose of somebody that wants you out of the way for whatever reason.
Gotta? Really? As in, for sure? Fo Shizzle?
The investigating officers don't "gotta" do anything. The only choice they have is to 100% rely on the veracity of the findings by their forensic technicians. Anything less puts the whole system in doubt which greatly hampers any investigations by the officers.
When faced with forensic evidence across many crime scenes I don't find it reasonable that the vast majority of investigating officers will be second guessing the findings to figure out how they may be wrong. More likely, they will try to construct a "reality" that fits the findings. That is the danger.
Once it leaves the investigating officers hands, it reaches the courts. The prosecutors don't give two shits about the defendant, the victims, or the truth. They only care about ONE THING, AND ONE THING ONLY. That is, "Can I get a conviction?". I highly doubt any prosecutor has ever thought long and hard about the veracity of any of the evidence in front of them that they are using. As far as the other side, "discredit, discredit, discredit".
Prosecutors and Politicians have one thing in common. They are both whores. In fact, good prosecutors turn into Politicians, and the vast majority of Politicians started as lawyers anyways. Their jobs are not to find the truth, but to bend the truth to whatever agenda they are trying to accomplish. Cynical, I know....
The problem here is the forensic technicians. Every single one of them needs to be fired. Not only could this woman have been at risk, but possibly many others as they clearly did not take the time to do proper science in any, way, shape or form. A lot of victims probably lost out as well since if they could not be competent in the bare fundamentals, what leads us to believe they did not miss huge amounts of evidence?
ALL of the evidence this lab produced is suspect going back at least as far as the first sample was taken in this case. That opens the flood gates for lawyers to get convictions turned over based on this negligence alone. Certainly new trials where the laws allow it.
I realize you are coming to the defense of the authorities here, but this is indefensible. Investigating officers and the courts cannot afford to ever second guess the technicians, so when something like this happens it is perfectly reasonable for people like me to suspect that innocent people have been made victims.
Keep in mind, this was across many laboratories
In other news, Irish police, working on the theory that such a well-travelled criminal may have been been provided with transport by an accomplice, have apparently identified her driver:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0219/1224241418104.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7899171.stm
The truth is she's a very smart serial killer who managed to get herself hired at the coton swab factory with the sole intention of contaminating them with her DNA so that if caught she could use it to get any trial against her dismissed... brilliant!
Yeah, that's why I leave my semen in every room I every visit, and on every person I meet.
You're probably right, but I think the OP's point stands, nonetheless. A non-citizen, possibly lacking the right language skills, and maybe not the most sophisticated person in the world, might get railroaded. In the US, at least, juries tend to give overwhelming weight to scientific or expert testimony of any kind, regardless of how certain or flawed the science is. Even if not, that woman's life would still go to hell the minute the cops found her.
Police and the scientific method are like politicians and economic theory: They talk about the principles, they often appear to use and apply the academic insights, but they tend to throw anything out that doesn't match their pre-existing bias, without a second thought.
I'm not saying that all cops just think "The cuffs are on her: Therefore, she must be guilty." But police work tends to reward and glamorize a dogged pursuit of a conclusion based on a hunch. If a scientific researcher:
* becomes emotionally involved in the outcome of his or her work, developing a substantial personal need to see it succeed, AND
* eschews open, independent peer review and only seeks collaborative opinions from people likely to sympathize with the researcher, generally,
it's a recipe for disaster--cold-fusion, antigravity, perpetual motion machines, etc. Academia has a LOT of braking mechanisms to prevent bad science from getting to the publishing stage, and more mechanisms designed to suppress whatever happens to slip through. Police departments have far fewer checks.
Historically, bad police work hasn't carried much of a risk to the cops who did it--you could railroad a poor, ignorant, minority defendant on a sensational charge without much worry that he would somehow exonerate himself, later. That's starting to change (Project Innocence being the big example), but old attitudes and methods are deeply ingrained in police culture, and won't change quickly.
Anyway, the point is, that these cops devoted hundreds of police and several years of investigations to this case--millions of dollars in costs. But since police labs don't try to have independent outsiders replicate and repeat their experiments, nobody caught this before it turned into a circus.