Word: dna
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...death" card with the message "Mister Policeman, I am God." The card, which may turn out to be a prank by someone familiar with the Vietnam War habit of leaving calling cards on the bodies of Viet Cong, was sent to the feds to be analyzed for fingerprints and DNA. The card, it would later be reported, also contained a request not to tell the media about its existence. "There is often an indignation on the part of serial killers at news reports about them that are inaccurate, so they start giving little hints about who they really are, what...
...picking off more victims last week, authorities unleashed an unprecedented arsenal of tools to crack the case: geographic-profiling computers to try to pinpoint the killer's home, ballistics databases intended to link his unique bullet markings to other crimes and trace-substance technology to lift whatever clues (fingerprints, DNA) might adhere to a shell casing or a tarot card...
...would make it seem. Investigations can take months, evidence can get muddled and courts, dubious about all the new gadgetry, are often reluctant to trust it. And that doesn't touch the swamp of constitutional questions raised when a prosecutor tries to wade into a suspect's brain and DNA. "TV has romanticized forensic science," says Susan Narveson, head of the forensics lab of the Phoenix, Ariz., police department and president of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors. All this creates unrealistic expectations in the minds of the public and juries...
Ever since the evidentiary orgy of the O.J. Simpson trial, forensics for many people has been associated with one thing: DNA. And with good reason. The ability to extract cells from body fluids or tissue and use them to identify a person with near certainty has shaken up criminalistics like nothing before. As technicians have got better at extracting DNA from ever smaller samples, the technology has become increasingly useful, allowing evidence-rich cells to be drawn from traces of sweat, tears, saliva and blood spots a tenth of an inch across. Says Barry Fischer, director of the Los Angeles...
...cells in our bodies die, not because they just run out of steam, but because their DNA tells them it's time to go - to make room for new cells, for example. When the process goes out of control, though, diseases like stroke, heart attack and degeneratative illnesses of the central nervous system can result; when it fails, you can get the unrelenting growth of cancer...