> The Phantom of Heilbronn, often alternatively referred to as the "Woman Without a Face", was a hypothesized unknown female serial killer whose existence was inferred from DNA evidence found at numerous crime scenes in Austria, France and Germany from 1993 to 2009. The six murders among these included that of police officer Michèle Kiesewetter, in Heilbronn, Germany on 25 April 2007.
> The only connection between the crimes was the presence of DNA from a single female, which had been recovered from 40 crime scenes, ranging from murders to burglaries. In late March 2009, investigators concluded that there was no "phantom criminal", and the DNA had already been present on the cotton swabs used for collecting DNA samples; it belonged to a woman who worked at the factory where they were made.[1]
Lydia Fairchild was told that her two children were not a genetic match with her and that therefore, biologically, she could not be their mother. The state accused Fairchild of fraud and filed a lawsuit against her. Researchers later determined that the genetic mismatch was due to chimerism.
The DNA information did show relation, but suggested that she was the aunt rather than the mother of the children. In some sense, due to mosaicism, the mother was her own sister. One "sister" showed up in the cheek swabs, and the other "sister" produced the eggs.
To keep it short, it was all a contamination of the swabs used by forensics. The DNA belonged to a worker in a factory where the swabs were produced. It took the police 15 years to find out. 15 years!
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if that woman had by accident become a suspect in a crime and her DNA run through the police's DNA database.
Throughout my career as scientist (I'm an ex-scientist now) and machine learning, I came to the conclusion that false positive rates must be kept extremely low for people to trust the system, because of the consequence of false positives.
It is one of those things that reminds me that most people with a science degree do not actually practice science.
The people who don't understand the limitations of science and possible errors in certain methods are clueless jurors and the cops who pay a random person $800 to sit on the stand, say they are "and expert" and claim there's a trillion to one odds that two people could have "the same" DNA, even though that isn't even remotely what was tested!
Courts allow basically anything as long as you can pay a guy to say they are an expert and parrot whatever you want. But somehow that's treated as if it's the fault of biologists and others who do DNA analysis?
Maybe our courts shouldn't be based on "Trust anything a cop says, period"
Thinking that scientists have always known the limitations kind of proves my point about even most highly educated people not understanding science.
The rot has metastasized into plain view with hokum like "911 call psychology", maliciously incompetent evidence handling, arson analysis, bullet analysis, civil forfeiture, and has even compromised previously honorable and integrity-backed professions with embarrassments like shaken baby syndrome.
Bring any of this up and you'll get excluded from jury duty at /voir dire/.
Hair sample that put a man in prison turned out to be dog hair - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39110088 - Jan 2024 (41 comments)
Back in the 90s police had found DNA on her leggings/pantyhose, which years later matched with him.
But they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the DNA had gotten there through direct physical contact - as his DNA could have gotten there by them simply sharing some surface, like sitting on the same chair at a gas station.
It's horrifying.
"Civil rights advocates object to [familial DNA] because it means that simply being related to an offender can make you a person of interest." If Hampikian knows that DNA can snare the innocent, shouldn't he be opposing any use of familial DNA rather than helping people use it in their appeals?
Frankly, they had no probable cause to compell a DNA sample from that guys son. Probable cause is supposed to be that by a preponderance of the evidence that the person has committed the crime. That's clearly not the case as it could be anyone in that family, and with multiple suspects it's not 'more likely than not' that the individual is guilty. Instead the courts allow fishing trips.
Really? IANAL, but this sounds like a muddling of what is required for arrest and what is the evidentiary standard for resolving a civil case in the US.
I think realistically the trigger for a search or an arrest is going to be much less than what is necessary to successfully convict in a criminal case or to prevail in a civil case.
This story isn't even about DNA evidence.
Confessions could still be used by police as leads. While all "eyewitness testimony" is defective evidence, confessions are the most defective of all. Humans have weird psychology, but the psychology around confessions is the weirdest of all. It's why it's been exploited by the Catholic religion (and others). It causes strange (and not always unpleasant) emotions in those confessing, those hearing the confession, and even those confessing falsely. It causes them in those who confess because they were coerced, it causes them in those who choose to falsely confess without coercion. To those who are familiar with them, those pleasant feelings can become an irresistible temptation to falsely confess.
On top of that, it's been what, nearly 70 years since shows like the Twilight Zone introduced the idea to everyone that in unusual circumstances we might have done things we don't even remember. So when someone starts to break after long and even tortuous interrogations, they might themselves start to worry that they are guilty and their memories are faulty.
The purpose of confession in the religious sense has nothing to do with the purpose of confession in the judicial sense. The judicial purpose is to convict you of a crime. The religious purpose is to examine your flaws with a trusted counselor (in this case a member of the clergy), and try to become a better person. I hope it's obvious why these are not the same.
Literally 98% of cases plea out^1, bypassing the entire system of court procedure that is supposed to resolve these issues.
1:https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...
For ever Dollar a government gives to the prosecutors office, a dollar should be budgeted for public defense.
currently in most states is like 10%, if that