SOLVE A COLD CASE
Criminologist DAVID WILSON and actor EMILIA FOX WUG OQFGTP UEKGPVKƂE OGVJQFU VQ re-examine the Jack the Ripper murders for a new BBC One science documentary. And thanks to these techniques, Wilson believes he’s found the culprit. Here, he takes us through three of the methods he employed to solve this cold case
1. THE HOLMES COMPUTER
HOLMES stands for the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, and it was set up by the police in the wake of the Yorkshire Ripper murders in the 1970s and 1980s. Police officers input the details of every violent crime that they investigate. Specific details might include the type of weapon that was used, where the body of the victim was found, or what sort of wounds the victim sustained. Over time, you can ask the filing system which other victims shared those same characteristics, and gradually you can interpret whether or not seemingly disparate events are connected.
2. GEOGRAPHIC PROFILING
A criminologist would use geographic profiling to investigate the pattern of where crimes have occurred in the hope of being able to establish whereabouts the killer might be based. It considers that crimes are less likely to occur further away from an offender’s home base, that crimes occur in places that offenders and victims regularly visit, and that crime sites are not random, among other things.
3. ANATOMAGE TABLES
Anatomage tables allow us to explore injuries on the human body without the need to dissect a cadaver. It’s a screen displaying the image of a woman who died about 10 years ago and gave her body to science. All parts of the woman’s body, down to her organs, have been photographed millions of times. The table can take away the top layer of skin so you can examine the liver, the kidneys and so on. We were able to input all the injuries that the victims sustained onto an anatomage table so that we could really see what this killer was trying to do, and how what he was trying to do evolved over time.