The oldest existing forensic science text is The Washing Away of Wrongs (also known as the Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified, or Hsi yuan chi lu), written around 1247 CE. Sung Tz’u (or Song Ci), who is considered to be… Read More ›
Forensic Science
The vampire slayings of 19th century New England
The vampire myth originates in ancient beliefs in demons or evil spirits who feed on the blood and flesh of the living. Cultures all over the world have a version of a blood-sucking creature that returns from the grave to… Read More ›
Who killed Australia’s Rack Man?
I used to associate decomposing human remains strapped to metal racks with medieval European torture devices. I guess I underestimated the creative and innovative ways in which modern murderers torture and/or dispose of their victim’s bodies. That changed when I read an extract from… Read More ›
Relics of junk science: Bally’s 19th century miniature plaster heads
The Science Museum of London has a set of 60 eerie little plaster heads that look like miniature death masks. Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832), a well-known 19th century phrenologist, commissioned these bizarre relics to help his students study phrenology. As phrenology… Read More ›
A pharaonic murder mystery that was solved with forensic analysis
Forensic analyses of two Egyptian mummies published in the British Medical Journal in 2012 may have answered questions scholars had about the outcome of an ancient conspiracy against Pharaoh Ramesses III and the identity of a contorted mummy believed to… Read More ›
[Open Post] Updates on the Dozier Reform School excavation and identifications
The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys was an infamous reform school in the Florida panhandle opened in 1900. It was closed in 2011 following a Department of Justice investigation into allegations of abuse and murder. Some former students, who were at… Read More ›
The ordeal of the bleeding corpse
The history of criminal justice and forensic science is really interesting because of all the absurd rituals and superstitions courts relied on to determine guilt or innocence right up until the 19th century. Before the advent of blood tests, fingerprint analysis, and… Read More ›
5 historical figures whose heads have been stolen
The graves of famous people have been plundered for hundreds of years. Bodies and body parts have been stolen by guards trusted to keep corpses safe, scientists determined to study them, and even admirers with good intentions (i.e. Thomas Paine)…. Read More ›
An anatomist, a sculptor, and the first facial reconstruction
Outside of St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, Germany stands an eight-foot tall bronze statue of Johann Sebastian Bach, the legendary 17th century composer, which was built to honor the man who is entombed inside. The monument is the result of… Read More ›
The case of the murder and scalping of Jane McCrea during the American Revolution
Jane McCrea was a Loyalist who was killed and scalped during the American Revolution on the way to meet her fiancé in a British camp. According to the most widely accepted account of her death, Jane was murdered by Wyandot… Read More ›
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