Today’s Defective Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Before the mid-1830’s, little could be done to link a particular weapon to a particular crime – unless of course the criminal was found at the scene clutching the still-smoking gun. In 1835, however, a policeman named Henry Goddard succeeded for the first time in tracing a bullet to the weapon that had fired it. Goddard had been a member of the Bow Street Runners, London’s first police force, which had been formed in the eighteenth century as a group of “professional thieftakers.” In those days, bullets were often still molded individually by the owner of the firearms. Goddard was called in to investigate a burglary in Southampton, and was told that the household’s butler had been shot at by the intruders. He found the bullet buried in the butler’s bed headboard and compared it carefully with the butler’s own pistol and bullet mold. He found a raised mark on the bullet that matched a defect in the mold, proving that the shot had been fired from the butler’s own weapon. Faced with the evidence, the butler admitted that it was he who had attempted to rob his employer, and that he had fired the shot in an attempt to divert suspicion from himself.
Culled from: Hidden Evidence: Forty True Crimes and How Forensic Science Helped Solve Them
