you can zip everywhere through the air, attaching themselves to virtually everything that moves, and your composition is unique: Pollen often leave telltale traces, the help solve crimes. Only Recently, a forensic pollen analysis had delivered new evidence in the unsolved murder of Peggy.
The girl was 7. May 2001, disappeared, only 15 years later, mushroom hunters discovered her body in a forest (here you can read a chronology of the Case). Who killed the girl is still unclear. At the end of September, telltale pollen traces, however, led to the man who had buried the child’s body once.
A pollen bas discovered the Remains of the body microscopically small peat tracks and the Remains of micro-particles, which have been not involved to the location of the body fit, but to the property of a man who is already suspected for years, in the murder case. The Peat marks are, therefore, of the paving slabs in front of the house of the man, and the micro-particles to match to the color tracks were found at renovation garbage the 41-Year-old.
in the Meantime, he has confessed to the dead body of the child buried. The killing of Peggy, he denies. Read more about it here.
in The case of Peggy, a chronology, A girl disappears
The case shows that Pollen can also deliver after years of new findings in the so far unsolved murder cases. Martina Weber of the University of Vienna is one of the few Experts worldwide who have specialized in forensic pollen analysis. It also supports criminalists in the crime investigation.
The pollen analysis is time-consuming. First of all, the few hundredths of a Millimeter have to wash large pollen grains, in a concentrated and in an acid mixture to be cooked. “Acetolyse the procedure is,” says Weber. Left the pollen wall, which could be determined with a light microscope well.
Then it is counted: “In the case of 300 pollen grains, we usually hear and determine the proportions of the different pollen types,” explains Weber. The calculated pollen spectrum show, for example, if a Person walked Recently through a field of Flowers, or, rather, through a forest.
“This is not a coincidence could be convicted”
The rarer the found Pollen, the better: “With an extremely rare Mutation of a grass pollen was in new Zealand a perpetrator. The Mutation of body, the perpetrator and the crime scene was attached to, could be a coincidence,” says Weber.
Of particular interest to criminologists is the Pollen that is spread by organisms, and not from the Wind. Because this Pollen require direct contact with the Plant and can thus, prove that it must have stopped a suspect at a particular location. In the case of forensics, it is therefore extremely important to prevent the contamination with foreign pollen.
“textiles are excellent pollen catcher,” says Weber. “Even repeated Washing does not use all of the telltale pollen grains to get rid of.” But also from the respiratory tract of a body, the hair or your digestive tract Pollen can be ensured.
the Pollen clarified already murder case in the year 1959
Austria is a pioneer country in terms of forensic pollen analysis. Already in 1959 there was the first murder case was solved with the help of the method: at the Time, disappeared in Vienna, a man who the police suspect an acquaintance of the man to have him shot. Of the body, each track was missing.
the police found the clothes of the Suspect, however, fossil Pollen from the Hickory nut. And it was in Vienna only in a single place. The investigators suspected that the corpse of the Missing could be hiding. The new findings put the Suspect under such pressure that he admitted, to have the Missing shot with a Revolver. He later led the police to the place where he had the body buried.
With the pollen analysis of crime from the stone, you can even examine. Pollen in the glacier mummy Ötzi revealed, for example, which way the man from the ice back through the Alps, before him in front of well-5250 years took an arrow in the back. Also, the Season of the attack could be determined thanks to the Pollen: Ötzi died in late spring.
koe/dpa