10 crimes, has forever changed the world criminology

If not for people who committed horrible and mysterious crime, crime would never have reached its heights

In this article, we learn about the real origin of many of the concepts used in modern criminology. Readers familiar with these concepts from books and films in the popular genre of the detective.

1. Science insanity

Gabrielle Bompard

Gabrielle Bompard Michel Eyraud and were quite unpleasant pair before being killed Tussal Augustus Guffe, and after that only became worse. By the time their protracted case came to court in 1890, everyone knew that Bompard lured Guffe to his apartment, where Eyraud hid behind a curtain and tightened the noose around the neck Guffe, and then they shoved the corpse in the trunk and took off him into a ravine. Not been established just how Eyraud, hypnotist, subdued Bompard will.

In the investigation and at the trial used terms such as hypnosis and mesmerism. The fact that at the time discussed by experts, would today be called insanity. As a young, poor and prone to physical violence Bompard could resist her lover? Instead of calling ordinary people to give evidence of ill-effects or the nature of Bompard, law enforcement officers called practicing psychologists and neurologists (one of the experts was Freud's teacher) for a scientific explanation of the foundations of the human mind. It seems to be working. Both were convicted, but only Eyraud was executed.

2. The exhumation

In the early 1800s, court officials have not yet looked into the people's minds. And they are still working on how to study the human body. The process was complicated by the fact that these bodies are badly maintained. Many were buried before forensic experts could examine them, and they had to exhume them. A Spanish scientist, an expert witness, has earned a bad reputation among prosecutors in Paris. Mathieu Orfila found that in cases where the victim has been buried for some time, the body can absorb arsenic from the soil. And the accused could be convicted for the death of "victims", who died of natural causes. Its the same philosophy of hitting it in the 1830s, when he was called to the court to the prosecution in the case of a man who was accused of poisoning her own son. The body was exhumed, and in it found traces of arsenic. Defense insisted that the arsenic was absorbed out of the ground in which the body was buried. Orfila struggled to start conducting research on how the body gets the arsenic out of the ground, and then check the ground for traces of arsenic. He proved that although the body and can absorb arsenic from the ground, this time it did not happen. The man was convicted, and since then the exhumation of bodies going well and soil samples.

3. Sketch of the crime scene

Hans Gross

Even before there was a picture and before someone thought to preserve the crime scene, there was a coroner in the Austrian named Hans Gross. One day in the mid-1800s he was called in the case of suicide. Very sick man interrupted his life by hanging himself on one of the rafters of his house. Gross took the album and quickly made a sketch of the scene before the body was removed.

Only after a while, looking at the sketch, Gross realized that the body was hanging in the middle of the room, and there was no chair for him, and thus no way for a sick person to stand up and to hang on to a beam. It was not a suicide. In one of the few relatively innocent Result History of Forensic Science's death it is not technically a murder. Gross brought into the house of the two servants for questioning. They admitted that they left the old man of the evening, and when they returned home, he was already dead. They staged suicide to avoid being branded as a drop-disabled. They did not realize that by doing this, they will look like a killer. Gross later founded the Institute of Criminology at the nearby law school and standardized the technique of photography and preserve the crime scene.

4. The fall Bertillon system

Alphonse Bertillon

Gross was not the only person who tried to apply a scientific system in the investigation of crimes. Perhaps the most famous investigator of the 1800s was Alphonse Bertillon. He, like Gross, insisted on photographing the crime scene and in the end, I realized that the crime scene can be reconstructed. He also developed the "Bertillon system," a complex set of measurements from the hands of the length to the length of the offender's ears. The problem was that the Bertillon system was hard, and required to make dozens of measurements, which could happen error, but even precise measurements could change with the aging man.

When in vogue fingerprints Bertillon could not bear even the idea. In 1903 in the penitentiary in Leavenworth were two Will West, and two cards Will West identified as the killer. In accordance with the Bertillon measurements, they were identical. They had the same name. One claimed that he - not the one describe both cards, and insisted that he should not be imprisoned. In prison, just turned two identical cards Will West. Fingerprinting has been in vogue, despite the efforts of Bertillon, and now has his fingerprints on the card for each offender. Using fingerprints, investigators could compare each of Will West with his card and his murder. Case "Brothers West" was the beginning of the end of the Bertillon system and the adoption of a system of fingerprint.

5. The first fingerprint

Juan Vucetich

When the ten years before the case "West brothers" took off the first fingerprint, it was a remarkable progress. Juan Vucetich was born in Croatia, but has lived and worked in Argentina. He was a police officer, to learn new techniques of criminology, including the idea of ​​using fingerprints at the crime scene as evidence. Soon, he was given a chance to apply science to practice in a very unpleasant way. Francis Rojas shocked Buenos Aires, when one day she was found next to the bodies of her two young sons. She was awful, but not deadly wound in the throat. She insisted that an intruder killed her sons and attacked her. Vucetich thoroughly searched the scene and found the bloody print attacker fingers on the door frame of the house. When he checked the prints Rojas fingers, they coincided with the imprints "attacker". Rojas became the first person convicted through fingerprints.

6. Forgotten deal by which won two court

John Bodle received a death sentence because of Marie Lafarge. He did not conduct a judicial inquiry. He did not even know it. He's just pissed a very important person. Bodle killed his father in order to receive the inheritance. We know this, because soon after Bodle was acquitted, he boasted a successful offense. But he was acquitted because John Marsh, a chemist, is responsible for proof of use of poisons, came to court empty-handed.

This was no fault of March. The results of the test for arsenic while quickly disappeared, and the jury had to believe in the word chemist. Marsh heard of justification Bodley, went back to work and set up a test for arsenic, which gives consistent results. Although the preservation of judicial records has been standard practice since the 1400s (and in some places even earlier), and now there was a shift towards conservation of absolutely all the evidence, including the chemical. The trial of Lafarge was the debut of March. Prosecutors Lafarge checked her husband's body, poisoned simple eggnog, but found nothing. However, Marsh found a lot of arsenic in the eggnog, and Lafarge has been condemned. At that time she sympathized, she wrote memoirs in prison, and some still believe that she was innocent.

7. A comparison of crime and weapons of

George "Bugs" Moran

February 14, 1929, the year of five gang members George "Bugs" Moran tried to steal the party whiskey designed to Al Capone. When they occupied the garage, which was supposed to arrive cargo, four strangers came up to him. Two men in police uniforms ordered Moran gang to stand against the wall. When the band lined up, strangers opened fire. One used a twelve-gauge shotgun, and two others - Thompson submachine machines.

Calvin Hooker Goddard

Very little of this was known immediately after the crime. Although one of the gang members had survived for several hours, he did not say anything. Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, how it came to be called, did not leave survivors and direct witnesses, although some suspected that the case had involved the police. To business joined Dr. Calvin Hooker Goddard scientist who began seriously to examine the weapon even during World War I. He realized that the grooves on the bullets - all the same, that fingerprints. He could identify the weapon model of Evidence left behind at the crime scene. In the case of the mass murder he first rule used in police models of weapons and cleanse the reputation of the police. He even proved that he can identify a single weapon. When the shooting of a police officer was arrested Fred Burke, and his home found two machine gun Thompson, Goddard recognize in them the weapon used in the massacre. He became a man, proved by science and the public, it is possible to monitor not only the people but also weapons.

8. The first time

Take a look at the popular books on forensic science and, as a rule, you will find all references to a certain case. In 1784, the year John Edward Kulshou Toms killed by shooting him in the head with a pistol. But it does not indicate why Toms did it. Only mentioned that Toms was a scrap of paper in his pocket. In Kulshou in the head was found a matching piece of newspaper. At that time, people used paper, to carry gunpowder and bullets. The fact that Thomson was a matching piece of paper, proves that he is a murderer. This, apparently, is the first time that a forensic examination was used. However, let's look at it from the point of view of Thomson. The very first time in human history when she became employed such a science, and you got caught. That's bad luck.

9. The criterion Fry

The case reached the Supreme Court. In November 1920, Dr. Robert Brown, was shot dead in his office. Young man running away from the office, pursued Brown colleague. The young man took a few shots at the pursuer, but missed. Some time later, the young man, who was arrested for burglary, confessed to the murder. This recognition is still a matter of controversy. By the time the case was brought to court, the young man, James Fry, renounced his recognition of the murder and said that at the time of the crime was at the other. His lawyer asked him to undergo a new type of test, conducted by William Moulton Marston.

According to Marston, "lie detector test" proved that Fry was not guilty, but the judge did not consider the test results, and Fry was convicted. Fry's lawyer has filed an appeal, saying that the test result was scientifically justified, and the judge did not have to throw it away. In the end, it Fry came to the Supreme Court. Fry the case for many countries to establish criteria that can and can not be regarded as a scientific expert testimony and evidence.

10. The end spirits certificate

The trial of Salem witches are not renowned for the use of scientific evidence, but he was a small victory of science. Appeal to the ghosts considered a miscarriage of justice, even at the time. The villagers of Salem were known for being at odds with each other and deceiving everyone else. When it became known that they use 'spirits evidence "in court, the people in the nearby villages rolled their eyes. The term "certificate of spirits" is literal. Prosecutors accused saw a ghost often in the courtroom, and their testimony about the actions of these phantoms were used as evidence. All this ended when executed Sarah Good and John Proctor, because several teenage girls insisted that they are pinched and strangled straight to court. William Phipps

Even in the Salem did not debate whether it should be used as evidence. But it stopped only when someone accused wife province of Massachusetts Bay Governor William Phipps in the fact that she was a witch. Then everything changed quickly. Now, not all of the charges received in court. Courts have closed. And within a few months the Governor Phipps put an end to the use of perfume evidence in court. He considered it their far-fetched, but not scientific.

11. Bonus: one sentence for one thing

Adelaide Bartlett

In Adelaide and Edwin Bartlett it was not a very happy marriage. She was in love with a local pastor. He was convinced that he had syphilis, and tried to treat a large amount of mercury. They are no longer shared the same bed, but slept in the same room. Death Edwin one morning in 1886, the year was not a surprise. What was surprising was that he died of a large dose of chloroform. It is well known that the chloroform evaporates quickly. Furthermore, chloroform was detected in his stomach, lung and not as usually happens when swallowing. However, chloroform was not in his accounts. Adelaide asked the pastor to buy poison for her.

Adelaide admitted not only that she sent her lover for the poison that killed her husband, but also in the fact that it constantly hounded. The disease was driving him mad with desire, and she gave him chloroform, to defend himself. However, she argued that it is not poisoned her husband that night. Adelaide said that Edwin was a hypochondriac and tried all that medicine could give him. He probably just took the bottle of chloroform and drank it at night. It looks unlikely. In chloroform terrible smell and taste bad, and Edwin knew that he could not drink it himself. In the end, a jury found her not guilty. The case has caused such interest in the nascent forensics, that the head of the local hospital said: "Now, when it is declared innocent and can not be convicted again, she has to tell us how she did it." Only if you did.