Week 3B - 5 Lord Lucan Case; Summary

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Del curso dictado por Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Introduction to Forensic Science

399 calificaciones

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Introduction to Forensic Science

399 calificaciones

We have all seen forensic scientists in TV shows, but how do they really work? What is the science behind their work? The course aims to explain the scientific principles and techniques behind the work of forensic scientists and will be illustrated with numerous case studies from Singapore and around the world. Some questions which we will attempt to address include: How did forensics come about? What is the role of forensics in police work? Can these methods be used in non-criminal areas? Blood. What is it? How can traces of blood be found and used in evidence? Is DNA chemistry really so powerful? What happens (biologically and chemically) if someone tries to poison me? What happens if I try to poison myself? How can we tell how long someone has been dead? What if they have been dead for a really long time? Can a little piece of a carpet fluff, or a single hair, convict someone? Was Emperor Napoleon murdered by the perfidious British, or killed by his wallpaper? *For Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students, please be noted that this course will no longer be eligible for credit transfer.

De la lección

Time of Death; Blood

Week 3A - 1 Recent Deaths10:39

Week 3A - 2 Decomposing Bodies I (Putrefaction)6:13

Week 3A - 3 Decomposing Bodies II (Forensic Entomology)11:50

Week 3A - 4 Analysis of Skeletal Remains I8:29

Week 3A - 5 Analysis of Skeletal Remains II11:37

Week 3A - 6 Ötzi Case; Summary3:36

Week 3B - 1 Blood13:02

Week 3B - 2 Tests for Blood6:54

Week 3B - 3 Precipitin Technology3:53

Week 3B - 4 Blood Spatter Analysis8:17

Week 3B - 5 Lord Lucan Case; Summary7:04

Conoce a los instructores

Roderick Bates
Associate Professor
Division of Chemistry & Biological Chemistry | School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences

[MUSIC]

Let's take a look at

the case of Lord Lucan.

This is actually a quite complicated case,

but we're going to look at some of the blood

evidence to try and work out what might have happened.

Now, Lord Lucan had been a banker, but he

changed his career and he'd become a professional gambler.

This turned out to be not such a good

career move, because he was quite deeply in debt.

This of course resulted in some marital troubles,

and he was separated from his wife, Lady Lucan.

Now, what do we actually know that happened?

Well, at about 9:45 pm on the evening of November the 7th,

1974, Lady Lucan ran into a pub near where she lived.

She was bloodstained, and she cried out, "Help me,

help me, help me, I've just escaped from being murdered."

When police went to her home, they found that the children's nanny was dead.

Her body was in a sack, but

the children themselves were unharmed upstairs and asleep.

So, what do we have at the crime scene?

Well, the house has four upper floors and there's a ground floor.

Nothing apparently happened in the upper floors.

A bent, bloodstained lead pipe was found in the hallway, and there were bloodstains at

the top of the stairs. These stairs led down to a basement.

The door to the stairs and to the basement was open; in the breakfast

room downstairs in the basement, there was blood on the walls and the floor.

There was a pool of blood in which a man's footprint could be seen, and

it was down there that there was the bloodstained sack containing the nanny's body.

Well, what do we know about Lord Lucan on this day?

Well, what we know is at 11:30 that night, Lord

Lucan visited a friend who lived about 60 kilometres outside London.

When he was there, he wrote and posted some letters, and then he left.

His car was found down by the seaside three days later.

Since that visit to his friend, Lord Lucan has never been seen again.

But from what he wrote in the letters, we do

have his version of the events on that fateful evening,

and his story goes as follows.

He was walking past the house and he saw a struggle going on in the basement.

Now in this kind of house, the basement has windows which

you can see from the street, so this is quite reasonable.

So he went in because what he had seen, he

said, was that a man was attacking his wife, Lady Lucan.

So he went in to help Lady Lucan.

The man ran off but he was unable to follow the man,

to chase the man, because he'd slipped in the pool of blood.

Then, after Lady Lucan ran out of the house to get help from down at the pub,

he had fled, he had run away, because he

thought that he would be blamed for this crime.

Well, we do have a witness of course.

The witness is Lady Lucan.

So what is Lady Lucan's version of the story?

Well, she says that at 8:30 that evening, the nanny had put the children to bed.

This nanny, a lady called Sandra, happened to be about the same height and the same

weight as Lady Lucan, and normally, this day

would've been her night off, but she'd exchanged it.

After putting the children to bed, the nanny had gone down the basement to make

some tea, but had seemed to take a very long time to make the tea.

So about 9:15, Lady Lucan had gone to look for her.

She then says that she was attacked by her husband in the hallway,

and they fought, then when they stopped fighting, she was able to get away,

she escaped to the pub to get help.

So who's telling the truth?

Well, we have to look at the forensic evidence.

So let's look at some of the forensic blood evidence.

This is 1974, so it's long before all the DNA technology came along,

so we have to rely on blood type.

Now, Lady Lucan was type A,

the nanny was type B.

So what about the blood stains around the house?

What blood types were they?

Well, the blood at the top of the stairs was type A,

the blood in the basement was type B, whereas the bloodstains on the lead pipe,

some of them were type A and some of them were type B.

So, based on the blood evidence, where was Lady Lucan attacked?

Was it on the ground floor as she claimed,

or was it in the basement as Lord Lucan claimed?

And from the evidence presented, did Lord Lucan slip in the blood,

or did he step in the blood?

Well, as we know, Lord Lucan fled.

There have been no confirmed sightings of Lord Lucan since that night,

therefore he was never arrested and never charged and there was never a trial,

and now, he is legally presumed to be dead.

So in this lecture, we've looked at what is blood, what

is blood made of, and what components of blood are forensically useful.

We've looked at the scientific basis of blood types,

how blood type can be used, even though it is not individualized.

We have looked at some of the tests for blood, so

that we can determine whether a stain is blood or not.

And we've had a brief look at how we

can determine how the pattern of distribution of blood came about,

and how we can use blood spatter to reconstruct the crime.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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