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00:00It is Crime Night, the show that goes beneath the surface to uncover the ideas, science and psychology behind crime.
00:06Tonight we're putting forensics under the microscope.
00:09How it became central to justice.
00:11How we use it and what happens when science becomes junk science.
00:15But before we dive into the evidence, let's meet our panel.
00:18She's an academic, Dean of Griffith University and an expert in offender psychology.
00:23Lie down on the couch and open your mind.
00:25It's Professor Danielle Reynolds.
00:30Danielle, what first drew you into the world of criminology and was it a TV show?
00:35Well, it actually was.
00:37So I am originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.
00:40So it would have to be a Caribbean soap opera, a classic Trinidadian soap opera called No Boundaries.
00:47And it was full of drama, crime, police investigations and I always dreamed that that would be me.
00:55Good to you fulfilling every single fantasy, how marvellous.
00:58He spent his career studying crime prevention and risk management.
01:02So if anything goes wrong tonight, we're blaming him.
01:04Please welcome Dr David Bartlett.
01:11Now David, what intrigues you most about crime?
01:13So like Danielle, I've got a psychology background, so it's the why.
01:16So why is it that some people do certain things, why do they do it in those places, when and those sorts of things.
01:22Because if we understand that, we can actually start to think about crime prevention and the best way to address offending.
01:26And how long did it take you to complete your PhD?
01:29Oh, just over 11 years.
01:3111 years.
01:32I mean, anyone can do it.
01:37And we're joined by a writer and an actor who recently was diagnosed with ADHD.
01:42At least we know they aren't involved in organised crime.
01:45It's Reece Nicholson.
01:46Now Reece, I wonder what crime would you have the attention span to commit?
01:53Illegally downloading Caribbean TV shows.
01:58And finally, a comedian who grew up working in her parents' plant nursery.
02:02She's perfect for this show because she spent a lifetime around blood and bone.
02:06It's Claire Hooper.
02:07That's right.
02:08And I can dig a deep hole too.
02:13Now Claire, have you ever been in trouble with a law?
02:19Um, just for the obvious.
02:21Looking this good.
02:23From blood spatter to browser histories, forensics blend science with logic.
02:31In a world of lies, it promised evidence you could test, measure and analyse.
02:35And if nothing else, it's inspired a lot of television that always seems to start exactly the same way.
02:40A featured extra rolls into a car park, spots a dead body and boom, they're in a crime scene.
02:47With acting like that, they won't be back.
02:49Then in comes the detective.
02:51Emotionally unavailable, complex backstory, holding a takeaway coffee they'll never drink.
02:56They're soon joined by painfully cool lab tech who has tattoos, glasses and tweezers.
03:01So you know they're legit.
03:03We found a single fibre from a crocheted card he sold exclusively at store 67A at the Queen Victoria markets.
03:10Exactly 42 and a half minutes later, who did it?
03:13Of course, we saw them in the opening frame.
03:15It's the guest star trying to prove they're more than just a quiz show host.
03:22Case closed.
03:24I know, I can't unsee that crocheted card again.
03:30No.
03:31Moby looks great.
03:33Today, forensics is everywhere.
03:37In our courtrooms, our headlines, even our family ancestry kits.
03:41It feels objective, conclusive and public faith is high.
03:45Danielle, what makes forensic evidence so important?
03:48Forensics has provided one of the biggest breakthroughs in criminal justice and in policing in the last century.
03:54If you think about what police had to rely on in terms of evidence before forensics, it was things like eyewitness testimony, which we know is flawed, offender confessions, which we know could be coerced.
04:05It also provided this scientific standard of proof.
04:08So, it is subject to evidence-driven approaches, testing, analysis that's usually pretty rigorous.
04:16Most importantly, forensics has allowed us to identify offenders.
04:20So, we can now link suspects to crime scenes, to victims, to weapons with greater precision.
04:26And the cool thing these days is there's so many different types of forensics.
04:29So, you think about it, you've got fingerprints, you've got DNA, you've got ballistics, you've got forensic toxicology.
04:35And what it means is that at a particular crime scene, there can just be so many different types of forensics.
04:40In 2017, in South America, there was this case, it was a heist and there were sort of lots of offenders involved.
04:46They went in and processed that scene and they found 457 different types of forensic evidence.
04:53Oh my God. Which is crazy. They actually used that evidence to go back and solve crimes from almost a decade earlier.
04:59It's 457. Are there that many bodily fluids?
05:04I only know three. Yeah. And four?
05:09Rhys, have you ever used forensics to uncover any crimes?
05:13When I'm away, when I'm on tour, because the rule in our house is our dog doesn't sleep on our bed.
05:19But when I come home, on my side of the bed, there's always a perfect egg shape that is exactly the same circumference as my dog curled up in a tight little egg.
05:30Or my husband's having an affair with a tiny woman.
05:34On screen, forensics is flawless. Clues are crystal clear and lab results are back in minutes, ensuring cases are tied up neatly before the credits roll.
05:46It's great drama, but it's also warped how we think about real life evidence, especially in the jury box.
05:51That phenomenon even has a name.
05:53It's called the CSI effect. The highly seductive notion that forensic science, at least on television, never fails.
06:02But in the real world, say the experts, forensic evidence is complex and maddeningly inconclusive.
06:09The CSI effect attracts unreasonable jury expectations and the belief that a single fingerprint can solve everything.
06:16Thanks to TV, we imagine DNA smeared everywhere, perfectly preserved crime scenes and dimly lit labs that solve murders in under an hour.
06:25I mean, please, I couldn't read a restaurant menu in that light.
06:29But in reality, forensic evidence analysis is slow, costly and not as conclusive as TV suggests.
06:35Danielle, how real a problem is the CSI effect?
06:38We know the jurors expect forensic evidence on cases. And when there's no forensic evidence on cases, they tend to view those cases as weaker.
06:47The public has this expectation that if there is DNA evidence, the crimes are going to get solved much more quickly.
06:54That is not the case in real life. We know that testing takes weeks, sometimes months.
07:00And there are even cases we know of here in some jurisdictions in Australia where sometimes there are backlogs in terms of testing.
07:07There was a report that came out in New South Wales that showed that 74 out of the 80 police commands reported that they have to manage incorrect public expectations and assumptions about forensics and about testing times.
07:22We love these TV shows. I mean, we've all got our favourites. But how do they misrepresent forensics?
07:27They misrepresent it in so many ways. So we think about fingerprints, for example, because that's the one that people are most familiar with.
07:33So you watch these shows, you would think that you can take a fingerprint off any surface. And that's just not the case.
07:39You can't take a fingerprint off a wet surface, for example, a drink bottle that's got condensation on the outside.
07:44The other issue about fingerprints is that they can't be dated. So you can leave a fingerprint somewhere.
07:51It could have been there for years. So just think about this. So think about the last time that you slept away somewhere from home.
07:57So it might be a hotel room or a friend's house or a beach house or wherever.
08:01I spend half of my life in hotel rooms. What are you about to tell me?
08:04So there's a pretty good chance that you've left fingerprints in that room, right?
08:09Now those fingerprints could still be there. Now think about if a murder happened in that particular room tonight.
08:15If the crime scene investigators go in, they're liable to find your fingerprints at that murder scene.
08:20But that fingerprint could have been days, months, weeks. In some cases, defence lawyers have argued that their client's fingerprint was left there two years before the actual crime happened.
08:30Claire, what new kind of CSI show would you love to watch or indeed be in?
08:35CSI Home Makeover, where after they've solved the crime, they clean up the blood, they replace the carpet and the curtains, give it a lick of paint and some new curtains and the grieving family gets the entertaining space they always drink.
08:47Every time we move through space, we leave a little forensic trail behind. Fingerprints, fibres and if you're enthusiastic enough, maybe even a little DNA. No judgement.
09:06Just how much evidence are we dropping without even realising? We find out in our experiment of the week.
09:12Like most of us, Claire Hooper and Reece Nicholson are no stranger to forensic crime shows, but the real question is, did it sink in or will it sink them?
09:26This is the ABC Green Room where Reece and Claire are joining us for what they think is a script read through with a producer.
09:32Oh my God.
09:33But what they don't know is that they're on camera.
09:35Oh, that's cute.
09:36And that the Crime Night team have rigged the room with bits and bobs to try and encourage them to be a little more messy than usual.
09:46Do we like pizza?
09:47Yes.
09:48They look like they've travelled a long way.
09:50They're from Italy actually.
09:53Beautiful.
09:54Thanks.
09:55Reece instantly makes themselves at home.
09:58Nope.
09:59Enter.
10:00Producer Dave.
10:01OK.
10:02Since this is the forensics episode, we're going to do a little experiment with you.
10:17And that experiment starts right now.
10:20OK.
10:21Good.
10:22Good news.
10:23Good news.
10:24So, you've been in here for a while.
10:26We're going to give you two minutes to clear this room of any forensic material you might have left in here.
10:32We shouldn't have had that spitting on each other competition.
10:35After that, the forensics team's going to come in.
10:37They're going to sweep the room.
10:38Your two minutes starts now.
10:41Oh God.
10:44OK.
10:45Yeah, get them.
10:47I touched that.
10:48We touched that.
10:49This is all going in.
10:53All right, so I touched that.
10:57We need a cloth.
10:58Get a make-up wipe.
10:59I think we just have to eat the whole pizza.
11:04How do I?
11:05Do I lint roll?
11:06You were brushing your hair!
11:08They did not have any shovels or lime.
11:12Get in!
11:16Time's up.
11:17The scene is sealed off and samples are taken from Reece and Claire.
11:21Oh, there's going to be an internal.
11:22One cheek first.
11:24Oh!
11:26You got beautiful fingerprints.
11:29Let's go to jail!
11:31It's now over to the forensics to see what they can find.
11:35Firstly, they photograph the potential pieces of evidence.
11:38Then they swab possible sources for saliva.
11:42They use a technique called oblique lighting to look for evidence on the floor.
11:46Fluorescent dust is used to locate and lift fingerprints.
11:52And UV light to detect fibres.
11:57Time to take this to the lab.
11:58How did Reece and Claire go in the forensic face-off?
12:08Were they successful in removing traces of themselves from the scene?
12:11We'll find out later, because that was our experiment of the week.
12:15Oh!
12:19Forensics is often seen as flawless, the courtroom's most reliable witness.
12:23But in reality, you're not just trusting the science, you're trusting the expert interpreting it.
12:28And sometimes that science is really what the field politely calls junk science.
12:32David, when we say junk science, what are we actually talking about?
12:36Junk science is a set of techniques that are very subjective.
12:39So they rely more upon the subjectivity of the scientist rather than the actual scientific result.
12:45And we think here things like, for example, bite marks, tyre impressions, blood splatter.
12:50Bite marks are open to interpretation.
12:51I thought everyone would have a very individual set of teeth.
12:54You can't really tell the difference?
12:55No.
12:56I mean, English teeth, surely.
12:59Few cases have exposed the flaws in forensic science.
13:01More clearly than one of Australia's most infamous miscarriages of justice.
13:05The Chamberlain case.
13:07Well, I just yelled out, has anyone got a torch?
13:09A dingo's got my baby.
13:11Michael and Lindy Chamberlain were on a family camping trip at Uluru in 1980,
13:16when their nine-week-old daughter, Azaria, disappeared from their tent.
13:20Lindy said a dingo had taken her baby, who was wearing a crocheted matinee jacket at the time.
13:26But police didn't believe her and instead charged her with murder.
13:28The prosecution leaned heavily on forensic evidence that sounded convincing until you looked at the details.
13:35The British forensic expert who testified about the dingo bite marks had never seen a dingo.
13:41Remarkable considering dingoes were central to the case.
13:44That dramatic blood stain under the Chamberlain's car dashboard, the supposed murder scene, turned out to be old milkshake and factory applied sound deadening spray.
13:52And the biologist who swore it was blood later admitted her testing was wrong and she couldn't recall how she came to make the error.
14:01The Chamberlain case was a master class in forensics gone wrong, a mix of poorly collected data and mistaken analysis.
14:07Three years later, Azaria's missing jacket was found, blood stained and buried near a dingoes lair and the verdict was overturned.
14:16Lindy Chamberlain has been released from Darwin jail and she won't be going back.
14:21At the same time, the Northern Territory government has announced there will be a new inquiry into the Chamberlain case.
14:26It took until 32 years and four inquiries later to officially state what Lindy had claimed since day one.
14:34A dingo did take her baby.
14:36David, how did these flawed forensics end up delivering a guilty verdict?
14:41This case really is a master class in forensic disasters and it's a forensic disgrace quite frankly.
14:46So what essentially happened is the police relatively early on formed the view that Lindy was guilty and they built a circumstantial case around that.
14:54And that case was pretty weak to be honest until they had that forensic evidence.
14:59So the forensic evidence was the tears in the baby's clothes and the scientists testified that they were in fact caused by scissors as opposed to dingo bite marks.
15:09But also there was the blood splatter.
15:11And what we now know is that the kit used by the scientist to actually test that blood gave a false positive.
15:18So when she tested it, it actually tested positive for baby's blood, fetal blood.
15:22What we now know is that particular test kit gives false positives in relation to copper.
15:28So there was copper inside the car, there were sort of 22 individual sort of blood splatters in that car.
15:33But it was testing positive each time to copper.
15:36I can't wrap my head around how this went so wrong.
15:39I think a big part of this is that this case became this sensational media spectacle.
15:43There was so much intense national and international media scrutiny.
15:49And I think when you see that in cases, it puts an incredible amount of pressure on investigators to come up with a conclusive outcome and to do it quickly.
15:58And I think that is what led to some of the flawed investigative processes here.
16:02There were also significant mistakes that were made by the investigators in their decision making throughout the process.
16:10So the fact that they dismissed all of the alternative early explanations.
16:15So the dingo explanation was dismissed really early on because there was no precedent for the dingo taking a baby before.
16:22This case was the perfect storm. It was just littered with significant investigative errors.
16:29The media went crazy at that time. And a big part of it was the fact that this was a woman who didn't look like she was a grieving mother.
16:36She was a Seventh-day Adventist. You know, she was different. There was a real agenda.
16:40Absolutely. I mean, there were people talked about the fact that she didn't seem like she was emotional enough.
16:45Looking back on it with 2020 Vision, it's like rampant sexism, right? Like, it's a whole country looking at someone going,
16:52oh, you're not the type of woman I think you should be being about this. You're not crying. You're not grieving in the same way.
16:59I reckon there would still be people walking around thinking about Lindy Chamberlain going, hmm, I don't know.
17:03Like, it's such a strange thing.
17:05It's such a wild fluke that the matinee jacket was found because it was only, you know, like years later and it was someone else's accident that led them to find it.
17:14Do you think there's any chance that we would have gone back and assessed the forensic evidence again with fresh eyes if that jacket hadn't been found?
17:24She would still be in jail?
17:25I reckon she'd absolutely still be in jail.
17:27So there was a backpacker who decided to climb Uluru. He ended up falling and ultimately died.
17:32But the rescue team were out looking for his body and in that process, one of the searchers stumbled upon the matinee jacket.
17:38Now, he knew straight away what he'd found because he had been in the original search party looking for Azaria.
17:43What?
17:45Yeah. I've got shivers just talking about it.
17:47And as soon as he saw it, he said he knew straight away that that was Azaria's matinee jacket.
17:51He knew exactly what he'd found.
17:52I think the other piece to this case that's also mind-blowing is that there were legit experts that worked on this case who got it wrong.
18:01There was Dr James Cameron, who was an experienced forensic scientist from the UK.
18:07There was Joy Kuehl, an experienced forensic biologist from New South Wales.
18:11These guys worked on a lot of cases and both of them got it wrong.
18:17What this case has really shown us is that forensics is like any other form of evidence.
18:22It needs to be questioned, it needs to be tested in court to essentially establish that it's reliable.
18:29In the mid-80s, everything changed when a chance discovery transformed the way crimes could be solved.
18:34British geneticist Sir Alec Jeffries stumbled upon the idea that each of us carries a unique molecular fingerprint.
18:42A kind of genetic barcode.
18:44Don't you just love it when that happens?
18:46The only thing I've stumbled on lately is the fact that I now make a noise every time I get up from the couch.
18:51Jeffries had uncovered the foundation of DNA profiling and since then it hasn't just transformed how we solve crime.
18:58It's redefined the very concept of evidence.
19:00DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, when she's feeling fancy, changed the game.
19:06David, how did DNA testing change forensics forever?
19:10So DNA is both unique and accurate.
19:12The chances of people, other than identical twins, sharing the same DNA profile is about one in a billion.
19:18And some people even say it's as high as one in a trillion.
19:21But the actual scientific testing of it as well is really accurate.
19:24So it's about 99.5% accurate.
19:26And in really well controlled labs, it's as high as 100%.
19:30So unlike junk science like bite marks and things like that, where there's a lot of subjectivity on the basis of the scientist,
19:37it's actually the science itself that's proving whether or not this is a match.
19:41I think it's been a game changer.
19:43It's given us the ability to solve cold cases once DNA testing has become available.
19:48And that's enabled us to prosecute people who've evaded conviction.
19:51It's also given us the power to overturn wrongful convictions.
19:55And one of the best things about the effect that DNA evidence has given us is what we see in the US Innocence Project,
20:02where they've used DNA evidence to free over 375 people, 21 of whom are on death row.
20:10So I think DNA evidence genuinely saves people's lives.
20:13These days DNA doesn't just stay at the crime scene, it can turn up in the past, in places you'd never expect, with some very surprising results.
20:23Lou Wall takes a closer look.
20:25So you've sorted your super, prepaid your funeral, and now you're ready to tackle life's biggest question.
20:32What percentage Viking am I?
20:35Truthfully, I just got one of these genealogy testing kits to see if I could get an EU passport.
20:39And to confirm some deeply held suspicions about Grandad's secret second family.
20:44Genealogy websites used to be harmless retirement projects, a fun way to figure out which side of the family gave you webbed feet.
20:53It was mum's.
20:55But now, thanks to a growing DNA database of people willing to give up their genetic material, you might also help uncover something unexpected.
21:02Instead of red streams, it's now DNA strands connecting the dots of blood to the suspects.
21:09Forensic genealogy can match DNA from those public databases to crime scene DNA in order to solve cold cases.
21:16One minute, it's your 8% Icelandic. Knew it.
21:20The next, it's your cousin's a serial killer. Did not knew it.
21:23In Australia, police can only access data from public opt-in genealogy websites.
21:28But in the US, they can get data from companies like Ancestry and 23andMe with a warrant.
21:34It's how they nailed the infamous Golden State Killer in 2018.
21:38Joseph James D'Angelo was finally unmasked thanks to a distant relative's DNA being uploaded to a public genealogy website.
21:46Investigators built out a family tree, narrowed it down, and then followed him until he left behind a used napkin.
21:51He literally wiped away his freedom.
21:55Police in Australia have their own databases which hold 1.7 million profiles, but commercial databases hold millions more.
22:04And whilst your data is private, once you've handed over that cheek swab, technically it can be searched, sold, or quietly shared in future.
22:13Even if you haven't taken a test, chances are a curious relative has, and sometimes that's all it takes.
22:19One sample can generate hundreds, even thousands, of connections.
22:25And this DNA family tree is growing faster than you can say Bob's your uncle.
22:31And possibly a drug lord.
22:35Bitter.
22:37Too much Aunt Joan.
22:38DNA might feel like the end game to us, but it's actually just a step.
22:47Danielle, what can we expect next in the world of forensics?
22:50Microbiomes.
22:51What?
22:52Isn't that in my gut?
22:54Yeah.
22:55It is actually in your gut.
22:56So human microbiomes, they're microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, viruses.
23:02They live in and on your body.
23:05In your gut, on your skin, in your mouth, in your respiratory tract, in your urogenital tract.
23:12We're talking farts, right?
23:15We mean farts?
23:17Is it farts?
23:18Danielle, is it farts?
23:20You do expel them all the time through your breath, your urine, your feces.
23:27And your farts.
23:29With microbiomes, we can finally figure out who dealt it.
23:33Microbiomes, it's really in the experimental phase.
23:37OK, so there's a lot of work to be done to see whether we can actually use this or not.
23:42But there's some really cool features.
23:43So think about before when I was talking about the fingerprint and leaving the fingerprint in the last place you stayed.
23:48And you can't date that, so you don't know when it was left.
23:50The cool thing about microbiomes is there's the potential to figure out when they were left there.
23:56By the way they multiply and mutate and things like that.
23:59But there are risks to it because, as David said, it's still in the experimental phase.
24:03We know much more about DNA than we know about microbiomes.
24:06And one of the risks is its variability, right?
24:09Microbiomes can change over time with diets, travel, illness, even if you take antibiotics.
24:17But it's really cool when you think about combining what we know from DNA with microbiomes.
24:23That's the next new thing.
24:25Earlier, Rhys and Claire tried to wipe their prints, fibres and DNA from our green room.
24:31Forensics bagged and tagged, sent it to the lab and the results are in.
24:34But who disappeared best?
24:37It's time for this week's End Game.
24:39Wipe Right.
24:45Now Rhys, do you think you were able to remove all traces of you from the green room?
24:50No, I reckon there's every chance I've absolutely scattered that place with my DNA.
24:57And do you remember the things you touched where you might have left your DNA?
25:00Hey, that's a private question.
25:02I touched the pizza and then I touched everything.
25:05Definitely touched a bottle of water at one point.
25:08I'm a touchy guy but not in like a HR kind of way.
25:12Yeah, I touched everything.
25:14So fingerprints would be everywhere.
25:16What about you, Claire? How do you think you went?
25:18Honestly, I don't know. We met the two forensic scientists and they did seem smarter than us.
25:25Oh, yeah.
25:26I'd be pretty surprised if we outwitted them.
25:30Let's take a look.
25:32So forensics have gathered quite a few fingerprints from the scene.
25:35We've got a green powdered fingerprint taken from a glass lolly jar.
25:40The unknown fingerprint perfectly overlays with the reference fingerprint from Rhys.
25:46The best result that we obtained was from the pen lid.
25:50We can see that we have a full DNA profile that suggests it's from a single source.
25:56What we would do now is compare this to the reference samples that we obtained from our suspects.
26:02And we've got a match.
26:04The donor of the DNA profile on the pen lid is most likely Rhys.
26:09Based on my comparisons, Claire has not contributed to any of the crime scene sample DNA.
26:13So this is the reference sample of Rhys.
26:18It's a really exciting one, actually, because what you can see here is it's coloured.
26:23Very distinctly coloured. It's got this beautiful red colour.
26:26In fact, this person loves their hair and it must be a very expensive colour job, too.
26:31You can see the consistency of it, how even it is.
26:34Excellent hair colour job.
26:36Claire's reference sample is here.
26:38You can see it's got that lightish colour to it.
26:40The end of the hair, we actually have damage.
26:43And this is heat-based damage.
26:45And as you go along, it gets this kind of stringy appearance.
26:48And it almost looks like it's melting.
26:50So in this particular case, we have three evidence samples.
26:54All of the three evidence samples are actually really nice.
26:57We have the whole length of the hair from at least the root.
27:00So looking at Rhys's hair here at the moment, because it has dyed, we can exclude it immediately.
27:07However, from the analysis, there's some unique damage within Claire's hair, which is consistent with hair too.
27:14Some would say is a match.
27:15What a thrill that I'm going to get caught for the crime, but I'm going to have the best hair in jail.
27:30I mean, he was so excited.
27:33They toned him down.
27:35Claire, how did you feel watching that?
27:37I mean, I feel a bit triggered by that myself.
27:41I just feel outraged because Rhys was the one brushing their hair for about 20 minutes.
27:48I'm like, how did I shed?
27:51Yeah, and that's why it's such good quality hair.
27:54I look after it. I'm brushing it for 20 minutes a day because I'm childless.
27:57So Rhys, the full analysis showed that your fingerprints showed up in four different places around the room, and of course your DNA was all over that pen lid.
28:08On the other hand, Claire, you left behind no prints at all.
28:13The only thing that could tie you to the room was a single, extremely damaged hair.
28:17Wow.
28:19I'll tell you why it was damaged.
28:21Because someone had been carrying it in their pocket and they planted it all.
28:22Please give a huge thank you to our guests, Rhys Nicholson and Claire Hooper.
28:32And of course, our resident experts, Professor Danielle Reynold and Dr David Bartlett.
28:41This week on Crime Night, we learned that forensic science isn't always fast, flawless or foolproof.
28:46But when it works, it can solve cold cases, free the innocent and rewrite the story entirely.
28:52Just maybe don't build your entire scientific knowledge from NCIS Sydney.
28:57I'm Julia Zemiro. Good night.
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