156: Forensic Breakthrough: Colin Pitchfork - DNA Fingerprinting

Corpus Delicti

CDM Productions

True Crime

4.5 • 608 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The crux of modern forensics is DNA. DNA has been around for a long time. But how did it find its place in solving crimes? It started with two rapes and murders of teenage girls along footpaths in England. Authorities thought they found their man, but a Geneticist named Alec Jeffreys showed them this was not the case. Today's story is the first time mass DNA screening was used, someone was convicted due to DNA evidence, and someone was exonerated due to DNA evidence... all in the same case.

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Music by:
Kai Engel
"Daemones"
Blooper music by:
Art of Escapism
"Coal Miners"
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Sources:
Pitchfork, R v [2009] EWCA Crim 963 (14 May 2009) (bailii.org)
DNA fingerprinting | Definition, Examples, & Facts | Britannica
Killer breakthrough – the day DNA evidence first nailed a murderer | Crime | The Guardian
No parole for Colin Pitchfork: First killer caught by DNA - BBC News
BBC NEWS | UK | England | Leicestershire | Anger over child killer's artwork
Colin Pitchfork: First killer caught by DNA "should move to open prison" - BBC News
Colin Pitchfork | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers
Double child killer Colin Pitchfork allowed to go shopping | | Express Digest
Killer Colin Pitchfork seen shopping on day release from prison - Hinckley Times
Forensic Files Season 1 Episode 4 - “The Footpath Murders” - https://youtu.be/8wMzNinS2oY
Book - The Blooding: The Dramatic True Story of the first Murder Case Solved by Genetic Fingerprinting - Joseph Wambaugh

Transcript

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0:00.0	Everyone, it's Jen.
0:06.0	Hey, everyone, it's Jen.
0:23.2	And this is Lindsay.
0:24.5	And welcome back to Corpus DeLecti the podcast.
0:27.5	We are still within our series of forensic breakthroughs where science was used to solve cases and some really terrifying cases that rocked communities.
0:38.9	Yeah, this one that is coming up today, I think this is a bold statement here,
0:45.3	but I think is in my top something of cases we've done.
0:50.6	Top five, top 10, 15 maybe.
0:53.2	I don't know.
0:53.6	It's so hard to narrow down. But this case,
0:56.0	for some reason, was absolutely fascinating to me. I think it's really interesting and I can't
1:02.3	wait to talk it through with you because there's so much here. So let's just jump right in and
1:07.8	get started because there is a whole lot to cover. When we think about
1:12.9	this series and forensic breakthroughs, probably the biggest benefit to modern forensics is what
1:20.5	would you guys say? DNA, right? It is the most solid thing we've got. It's the most
1:26.3	damning evidence out there as of right now because DNA is so specific to the individual person that it's hard to dispute. We have known about DNA for quite a long time now, obviously from a scientific and biological perspective. But when and how did it enter the forensic world?
1:47.6	Well, that is what we are going to talk about tonight.
1:49.9	This case is a story of the first person to be caught due to a mass DNA screening and to be convicted on DNA evidence, setting the president for everything that we have seen,
2:03.8	especially the most recent with the Golden State Killer.
2:08.4	It involves the first person to be cleared by DNA fingerprinting.
2:13.6	Not only do you have the first person to be caught and convicted using DNA, but it's also the first person to be cleared using DNA.
2:22.6	So there's just so much that happened in this one story that set the stage for everything.
	...

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