'DNA bungle' haunts German police
By BBC,
BBC News
| 03. 28. 2009
Police in Germany have admitted that a woman they have been hunting for more than 15 years never in fact existed.
Dubbed the "phantom of Heilbronn", the woman was described by police as the country's most dangerous woman.
Investigators had connected her to six murders and an unsolved death based on DNA traces found at the scene.
Police now acknowledge swabs used to collect DNA samples were contaminated by an innocent woman working in a factory in Bavaria.
'Serial killer'
Police suspected the unnamed woman of being a serial killer who over 16 years carried out a string of six murders, including strangling a pensioner.
She was alternatively called the "woman without a face" and the "phantom of Heilbronn" after the city in southern Germany where she allegedly killed a policewoman.
Police suspicions were based on traces of identical female DNA they found at 40 crime scenes across southern Germany and Austria.
After finding her DNA at the scene of the murder of a 22-year policewoman from Heilbronn in 2007, police offered a 300,000 euro reward for information leading to...
Related Articles
By Yelena Biberman and Jonathan D. Moreno, Bioethics Forum | 04.16.2024
A quiet biological revolution in warfare is underway. The genome is emerging as a new domain of conflict. The level of destruction that only nuclear weapons could previously achieve is fast becoming as accessible as a cyberattack.
Now for the...
By Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan, CBC | 04.09.2024
A Canadian DNA laboratory knowingly delivered prenatal paternity test results that routinely identified the wrong biological fathers — ruling out the real dads — and left a trail of shattered lives around the globe, a CBC News investigation has found...
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can...
By Carey Gillan, UnSpun | 03.18.2024
A Mexican standoff with the United States turned into a Mexican smack-down this month with the release of Mexico’s formal rebuttal to US efforts to overturn limits Mexico has ordered on the use of genetically modified (GM) corn and the...