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Page Updated December 26, 2008
U3A COSTA DEL SOL - FUENGIROLA
| I'll provide selected items for you to carry out your own investigations after each talk. Generally an internet search using Google & Wikipedia is a good starting point but I've also got access to an extensive library and when the course is finished I'll include a list of relevant material |
There are hundreds of books about crime in general, specific crimes and criminal detection. It's not possible to list them all, or even the ones that I've read, so the best thing is to search them out at an on-line store such as Amazon.
The following broadly cover the topics I've discussed and are aimed at the UK reader:
The New Murderers' Who's Who - Gaute & Odell 1989, Headline
The Encyclopedia of Forensic Science - Brain Lane 1992, Headline
Science & Criminal Detection - John Broad 1988, Macmillan Education
I'm not sure whether these books are still in print though you should be able to find copies
Crime Scene Investigation - Ian K. Pepper 2005, Open University Press
The following is the standard text book but is really aimed at professionals
Simpson's Forensic Medicine - Richard Shepherd 2003, Hodder Arnold
Forensic Psychology - Extensive site covering all aspects
Psychopathy - Wikipedia entry for Psychopathy including Hare's checklist with extensive references and links
Rachel Nickell - BBC News for December 19th 2008. Good starting point to explore this crime
Basics of DNA Fingerprinting - University of Washington Site
Colin Pitchfork et al - BBC News link with various links
Hanratty Judgment - Complete transcript of the Court of Appeal Judgment 2002
Wales Cold Case - Details of the Oldest Cold Case Review
National DNA Database - PDF Download
DNA Database European Ruling - BBC News item for December 4th by European Court of Human Rights
Charles Stielow - Information about the miscarriage of justice and firearms evidence in the Stielow case
The Development of Ballistics - Information on the development of ballistics in the UK and the PC Gutteridge case in particular
The Atlanta Child-Killings Case - Recent developments in the cae of Wayne Williams
Durranhill Murder - Historical account of the Durranhill murder and the use of footprint evidence
The Body in the Burning Car - Northamptonshire Police's Virtual Museum has a section on this case. I'll let you explore and find it.
Haigh - Acid Bath Murders - This site and the Wikipedia link are reasonable starting points for this crime. It's also extensively written about in numerous books
Ruxton Murders - This is a link to University of Glasgow Fornsic Archive dealing with this case and is worth a look.
Blood - The Wikipedia entry for blood provides more than enough information and links
University of Dundee - This is a link to the bloodspatter Powerpoint presentation with notes
Time of Death - If you happen to have a corpse on your hands and need to determine the time of death!
Maggots & Murder - PDF file (does exactly what it says on the tin)
Graham Backhouse - A short description of the Graham Backhouse case
Drug Testing - Wikipedia page with various links and a table illustrating why a urine test is better than a blood test
The best, possibly the only, book on the chemistry of poisonous elements is John Emlsey's The Elements of Murder - this is quite easy for the general reader. He's also written another book called Molecules Molecules of Murder which I haven't read yet. He's strong on chemistry but some of his dates are inaccurate.
There are a few books about the Charles Bravo case this one is fairly recent but I haven't read it yet.
The Wikipedia entry for Mary Bateman is quite brief but is a godd starting point as it has some useful links.
Similarly for Graham Young
The BBC Schools site has a good entry for Radioactivity and details on Litvinenko and the case can be traced from here. (This page was only posted on November 5th 2008)
The Georgi Markov case still features in the news. This BBC page from earlier this year has plenty of good links for you to pursue
Cyanide Poisoning - General info on cyanide poisoning
Cassava - Everything you never wanted to know about how to prepare this plant including information on its toxicity
Strychnine Poisoning - Also very useful for Scrabble, or possibly Countdown players. (It starts with 7 consonants)
William Palmer - A rather poorly designed website about Palmer
Set of papers about Life and Times of
Matthieu Orfila
How to recognize arsenic poisoning
Marie Besnard Film - The IMDB link to the TV film (this was shown on BBC4 in June and may be repeated, worth looking out for.)
Marie Besnard - A Time magazine article on the case
History of Fingerprinting - A useful summary from the South Wales Police
Fingerprint Project - An Interesting Science Project from a Canadian Schoolgirl
Biometrics - More information than you could possibly be interested in about biometrics.
Peter Griffiths Video - A link to the BBC news video of the Blackburn mass fingerprinting
Old Bailey Online This site provides transcripts of trials from 1674 - 1913
Adolf Beck Case The Wikipedia entry for the Adolf Beck Case
Adam, The Boy in the Thames Another Wikipedia entry. There are a number of press items on this so it's worth following the links.