Cotton Swabs are the Prime Suspect In 8-Year Phantom Chase 344
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."
Re:Sherlock Holmes (Score:4, Interesting)
Aliens did it?
Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really too much to ask for a SERVER at the other end of that hyperlink?
nyud.net doesn't seem to have it cached, neither does Google. And MirrorDot is no help at all:
Are there any newer slashdot caching tools I don't know about? Specifically one that has this article?
Re:This is actually pretty scary (Score:1, Interesting)
On the other hand..
How is her DNA getting on these cotton swabs, anyway? Is it OK that it's getting on there, the CSIs might not be the only ones buying cotton swabs from this company, and they might need to be hygienic in other applications...
negative controls?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Police labs are incredibly sloppy. You have to either have negative controls or some sort of validation or acceptance testing on your chemicals and supplies. They have all of these chain-of-custody rituals, but then they use supplies from Wal-Mart.
Re:Always state your assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
It reminds me of early MOSFET technology. No one could get MOSFET's to work on the same level of BJT's because there was horrible leakage in the gate. After several years it became apparent that the gate oxide was contaminated by sodium ions that carried current through the gate.
(Disclamer: This story was relayed to me by one of my professors. I'm not sure how accurate it is.)
Re:This is actually pretty scary (Score:5, Interesting)
Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Paging George Kaplan (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd hate to be that woman. In fiction it's Hitchcock but in real life it would be Kafka (unless she is guilty AND works in a cotton swab factory).
Re:thats an interesting defence (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have to explain my DNA being at the crime scene, I have to explain DNA that matched mine being at the lab.
You took a sample of my DNA. You took it to the lab. Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn't screw up and contaminate a sample somewhere with my DNA. [nacdl.org]
Furthermore, spurious DNA matches are not as improbable as cops and prosecutors like to suggest [latimes.com].
DNA is lousy forensic evidence, and should be used only for exoneration.
And the scary thing is that other forensic "science" is even worse [newscientist.com].
I hope they throw her in jail! (Score:1, Interesting)
Getting her DNA in sufficient amounts on all those swabs pretty much means she was sabotaging the process. Either from malice, or just because of being a bitter old hag who feels compelled to disobey work instructions from her superiors.
It reminds me of when I worked at an assembly line and we got a new type of screws which had some pink goo on them to prevent the product from falling apart due to vibrations. We were also given gloves to wear at all times when handling the screws, and a colleague of mine refused to wear them since "the old screws could survive my dirty fingers just fine". I never bothered to tell her the pink goo would give her cancer.
Re:negative controls?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Police labs are incredibly sloppy. You have to either have negative controls or some sort of validation or acceptance testing on your chemicals and supplies. They have all of these chain-of-custody rituals, but then they use supplies from Wal-Mart.
In the Jayden Leskie [wikipedia.org] case the lab which searched for DNA on the victims body detected the DNA of an unrelated rape victim. Samples from the owner of the DNA had been processed by the same lab earlier in the same day.
control experiments (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why scientists use double blind experiments and control experiments. So, with every cotton swab taken from a crime scene, forensic labs should get one or more "blank" ones to test, without knowing which is which.
Re:This is actually pretty scary (Score:5, Interesting)
The police actively don't hire [nytimes.com] people that are too smart. Which scares the shit out of me.
Intellectual outliers destabilize control structures.
Being predictable to your teammates/backup under all circumstances is an essential part of performing a life and death job - whether performing undersea construction or policing the 'projects.'
Having a tendency to come up with bright ideas under pressure is simply a liability in the world of street level law enforcement.
Q & A..... (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the few instances where an answer is found out BEFORE the question is asked.....
Answer: "It now turns out that contaminated cotton swabs might be responsible for this highly unusual investigation." .....And now the question:
How, exactly, did the DNA get *onto* the swab in the first place?
Re:Always state your assumptions (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and never use contaminated cotton swabs. I think that was day two.
Tell that to the Manchester police, who used swabs that had been stored in alcohol [independent.co.uk] to test alcohol-levels in drivers...
Re:This is actually pretty scary (Score:3, Interesting)
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.
Because this statement makes just as much sense:
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who was foreign was rejected.
That judge needs a new job fast.
Re:Could happen to anyone... (Score:3, Interesting)
Almost all evidence is circumstantial. Nearly all trials contain *only* circumstantial evidence. Oh, and witnesses are generally less reliable than circumstantial evidence...
Re:Great way to hide (Score:3, Interesting)
If the contamination screwed up the law enforcement customers' tests, I wonder what other customers' tests it screwed up. Does the vendor sell these swabs to hospitals, for example?
Re:This is actually pretty scary (Score:3, Interesting)
The police actively don't hire people that are too smart. Which scares the shit out of me.
You're talking about US police. The requirements for aspiring police officers in Germany are significantly higher.
They only let in ubermensch?