History of Crime Scene Investigations

First Foresic

300

Fingerprints are used on clay tablets

First Lie Detector

750

Erasistratus, an ancient Greek physician, discovers that his patients’ pulse rates increase when they are telling lies, which led to the first lie detector test.

Learning to find murder weapons

1235

A murder was committed using a sickle. All those in the village who owned a sickle were made to bring them out and lay them in the sun. Eventually flies gathered on one particular sickle, identifying it as the murder weapon.

Using physical matching

1786

John Toms of Lancaster is convicted of murder on the basis of a torn wad of paper found in a pistol matching a remaining piece in his pocket. One of the first documented uses of physical matching.

Bullet comparison

1835

Henry Goddard first uses bullet comparison to catch a murderer. The comparison was based in a visible flaw in the bullet, traced back to a mold.

Photographing evidence

1864

First advocation of the use of photography for the identification of criminals and the documentation of evidence and crime scenes.

Using Fingerprints to determine Crime

1880

Henry Faulds of Scotland publishes a paper suggesting fingerprints at the scene of a crime could identify the offender. Faulds uses fingerprints to eliminate an innocent suspect and indicate a perpetrator in a Tokyo burglary.

FBI Crime Lab

1932

FBI Crime Lab is invented

Using Dental Records

1940

Dental records are compared with teeth from corpses.

Starting DNA Recognition

1980

American geneticists discover a region of DNA that does not hold any genetic information and is extremely variable between individuals.

Using DNA to Catch a Criminal

1986

First time DNA was used to catch a criminal,

Footwear Detection Intelligence

2007

The Forensic Science Service launches the UK’s first online footwear coding and detection management system