On December 5, 1872, the crew of the British brigantine Dei Gratia spotted a silhouette drifting erratically in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 400 miles east of the Azores. The ship was the Mary Celeste, a 103-foot merchant brigantine that had departed New York City nearly a month prior, bound for Genoa, Italy. When the boarding … Read more
For decades, forensic DNA profiling was viewed as the ultimate mathematical absolute in criminal justice. If a perpetrator left biological material at a crime scene, law enforcement could isolate the sample, run it through a database, and wait for a match. But for thousands of cold cases dating from the 1960s through the early 2000s, … Read more
In the realm of criminal investigation, time is both the ultimate adversary and the most impartial witness. When a major investigation stalls and eventually transitions into a “cold case,” the public often assumes the stoppage was caused by a lack of physical clues or an absence of suspects. However, forensic analysts know a different truth: … Read more