Phantom of Heilbronn Revealed!

Posted by Osagie Obasogie April 1, 2009
Biopolitical Times
For 15 years, police across Germany, Austria, and France have been trying to track down a mysterious woman who commits heinous crimes with surgical precision, only to leave faint traces of her DNA at 40 crime scenes. She has been implicated in a number of robberies and murders across Europe, leading investigators to expend countless resources in trying to capture here. Chief Inspector Bruno Bosch in Germany said “I have travelled 60,000km (37,300 miles) across Europe, questioning witnesses.”

Turns out this was all a terrible -- and sloppy -- mistake.  The DNA linking “the woman without a face” to these crimes did not come from a diabolical criminal, but from a woman working for a German medical supply company that provides the swabs used by the police in their investigative work. At some point, she must have contaminated them, leading her DNA to be “found” at multiple crime scenes.

Understandably, the police officers involved in this investigation are quite embarrassed. But this case raises broader issues about the ways in which human error can create false leads that, when combined with the public perception of its infallibility, can lead to grave injustices. Fortunately, nothing was lost here except police time and institutional credibility. But it’s easy to imagine a scenario where the outcome could have been much worse.