DEAD RECKONING The New Science of Catching Killers

Hardback. Forensic science used to be a specialised field virtually unknown to the general public. In recent years, news reports of crimes solved through the analysis of DNA evidence have given everyone a glimpse of this astonishing field. But behind the crime-scene tape and the doors of the morgue is a world never seen by the public. Now the author, a famed pathologist and medical examiner, takes the reader on a tour of sites otherwise closed to visitors. In his 40yr career, Dr. Baden conducted more than 20,000 autopsies and consulted on numerous high-profile cases, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Nicole Brown Sompson-Ron Goldman murders. The authors take readers into the laboratory, to the autopsy table, onto the witness stand and out in the field to show how advances in forensic science can solve the crucial questions in a criminal case, often with startling accuracy. The authors examine cases both famous and little-known to explain why the first hours at a crime scene are crucial. They reveal, for example, how a key clue to the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson was lost when her body was moved to the morgue, and why the JonBenet Ramsay case can never be solved. Even crimes that took place decades earlier can be re-examined, as in the case of Medgar Ever's assassination or the murders of the Romanovs in Russia. A fascinating look at how forensic science is changing forever the way we convict the guilty and free the innocent. Illus., Sources and Index. 288pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in F. dw.