Catching History's Criminals: The Forensics Story

An insight into the development of forensic science as a way of catching murderers over the past 200 years, charting the scientific breakthroughs that have changed the course of justice. Surgeon and writer Gabriel Weston begins by looking at the difficulty of identifying the body in a murder case, from charred bones to bodies completely dissolved in acid. She focuses on the use of teeth and bite marks to identify a victim or killer, traces the uses of insects to pinpoint the time of death, and meets the geneticist who pioneered the technique of DNA profiling.