Defrosting Cold Cases

Recap #CrimeChat Feb 16, 2013 Subject: King Richard III A fascinating 90+ minutes with a line-up of great people on Twitter all discussing the finding of Richard’s skeleton, his armour, his reign and fate, and of course … could he have killed his older brother’s children. As requested, some links: my mini-series on the cold [...]

Tags: #crimechat, armour, DNA, Evidence, Forensics, Henry Tudor, minority rulers, Mitochondrial DNA, Princes in the Tower, regicide, Richard III, Richard III Society, the Battle of Bosworth, UK

This week, several cold cases were in the news.  Rockfort Police (IL) announced an arrest in the 1998 murder of Debbie Lynn Logsdon. “Richard L. Brown was served a warrant last Friday for first-degree murder. Deputy Police Chief Greg Lindmark would not say what new piece of evidence led police to Brown, but he attributed the [...]

Tags: Crime, Hawley Harvey Crippen, Joe Arridy, Lucely "Lily" Aramburi, Mental Retardation, Mitochondrial DNA, William Thomas Zeigler

A state judge has ordered East Texas prosecutors to hand over key evidence from a 1989 murder case to the Innocence Project and The Texas Observer for DNA testing—analysis that may prove for the first time that Texas executed an innocent man. The Innocence Project and the Observer filed suit in 2007 to obtain a [...]

Tags: Actual Innocence, Capital Punishment, Claude Jones, Crime Labs, Crime Scene, Death Row, DNA, DNA Database, Evidence, Expert Testimony, Forensics, Identification, Miscarriage of Justice, Mitochondrial DNA, Police, Texas, Victim, Wrongful Convictions

The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury This book combines Vidocq’s passion for historical mysteries, cold cases, and forensics! My interest was peaked after watching the movie “the Scarlet Pimpernel” with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour. The book by Baroness Emmuska Orczy was tedious and less amusing than the movie. Vidocq’s attraction to “the Scarlet Pimpernel” is easily [...]

Tags: Anastasia Romanov, Anthony Andrews, Austria, Book Reviews, Burial, Child Abuse, Cruelty, Deborah Cadbury, DNA, Execution, Forensics, France, Historical Mystery, Louis-Charles, Marie-Therese, Maternal Line, Mitochondrial DNA, Prince, Princess, Public Execution, Queen, Robespierre, Royalist, Saint-Denis, Scarlet Pimpernel, the Dauphin