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in 1991 this tranquil pond in rural connecticut was the scene of a horrific crime
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[Applause] two young boys were beaten thrown into the water and left for dead investigators had little evidence until
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they examined the pond itself and found thousands of clues invisible to the naked eye in a simple drop of water
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[Music] [Music] uh [Music] waterford a small connecticut town where the water table is so high homes are
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built around numerous small ponds and lakes in 1991 two boys we'll call stephen and bobby
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decided to spend their afternoon fishing at their favorite spot stenger's pond
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i told you sometime later they were approached by three older boys they didn't know
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without warning one pulled a knife the other two threw steven and bobby to the ground
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steven tried to fight back but was hit on the head with a baseball bat almost knocking him unconscious
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both boys had their hands and feet bound with duct tape and their mouths covered
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[Music] once out in the pond stephen was hit once again and held underwater so that
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he would drown bobby was next fortunately he saw the bat coming and ducked then pretended to be unconscious
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[Music] after throwing steven and bobby's fishing rods in the water they took the boy's bicycles and fled
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[Music] bobby was able to remove the duct tape from his hands mouth and feet he swam to
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stephen to try and save him [Music] by the time he got there stephen was unconscious
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bobby managed to get him to shore then carried him a quarter mile to the nearest home
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deborah chamberlain heard a frantic knocking at her door one had a serious head wound and was not
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very coherent and the other was just almost hysterical and so i knew that something awful had happened to the two
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boys and um and that would be something that we would sort out over the next couple of minutes but i think the the
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duct tape was really almost my first impression because i thought oh my god someone
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taped their wrists together [Music] stephen was rushed to the emergency room of lawrence and memorial hospital
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dr john urbanetti was stephen's doctor despite the number of people that i've
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seen with this kind of circumstance he came as close as i've ever seen anyone
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come to not surviving as stephen lay in intensive care doctors questioned whether he would live
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or die and waterford police had questions of their own who had tried to murder stephen and
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bobby and why [Music] waterford police detective donald mccarthy was assigned to investigate the
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assault and attempted murder of the two young boys at stenger's pond thirteen-year-old stephen was fighting
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for his life the victim not only of an attempted drowning but of massive head wounds
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one of the doctors had told one of my detectives at the time that it was the closest he had ever seen anybody come to
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drowning and not being dead he was very lucky the older child was unconscious had he not had his little
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friend with him he probably would have drowned i think steven's friend bobby had escaped
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serious injury i think the remarkable thing is he had the presence of mind to immediately go to his friend and pull
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his friend from the water there's no doubt in our minds if he did not remove that duct tape
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the older male would have died if he did not remove him from that body of water when he came to the door the little guy
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amazingly was quite a bit smaller than his friend was just literally supporting him
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completely police went to stinger's pond to collect evidence but they ran into a major
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obstacle the crime scene was a body of water the fishing poles the tackle box the
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suspects had tried to sanitize the crime scene by throwing those items in the water so
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that the police would not recover them making it difficult that the fact that they were submerged in water we would
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not normally not have fingerprints available to us the bat used as the weapon was found
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floating in a nearby sewer grate but there were no fingerprints and any other possible evidence such as
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hairs and fibers had apparently been washed into the water police talked to residents of the
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neighborhood closest to stinger's pond to see if they had seen anything unusual
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susan picardi came forward to say that earlier on the day of the attack a young teenager she had never seen
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before came to her door asking for help yeah i was walking down the street when i began to feel a little
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light-headed and hungry may i come in and get something to eat he said he wasn't feeling well he was a
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diabetic and was in need of something whether it was sugar or orange juice or a piece of chocolate or
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something i immediately felt bad for him and invited him in and have a seat and i'll get you some dirt juice thanks
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mrs picardi gave the young man a glass of orange juice a few minutes later he said he was
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feeling better thanked her and left because i can call a doctor no no i'm fine
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thanks later as mrs picardi was about to take a shower she saw something unusual in her
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bathroom mirror and i caught the image of what was going on in my backyard from upstairs and i
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saw two other youngsters in the corner of my yard teenagers 16-ish around there a redheaded boy and another
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afro-american young man and they were later joined by the young man who just left mrs picardi's home she
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gave me orange juice she treated me so nice the boys had a bright green baseball bat
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and what looked like rolls of duct tape i automatically panicked and knew whatever they had planned it was not
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going to happen at my house so i yelled out the window to them i think you better leave it's obvious
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that you're planning something or you're up to trouble or and i'm calling the
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police so if you know what's good for you then you better get going susan picardi was able to provide a
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detailed description of the boy who'd come to her door mr riccardi told us two
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things that that stood out one he was wearing eyeglasses and described those eyeglasses to us the other was he
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had an unusual shaped scar a u-shaped ray scar on his forearm since the perpetrators were apparently
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on foot police checked the neighborhoods nearest to stengers pond we put officers in that neighborhood and
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started doing neighborhood canvasses and that based on the description of the three suspects
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as a result we were able to identify the suspect immediately this suspect seventeen-year-old brian davis had the
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up raised scar described by susan picardi neighborhood informants identified the
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two friends davis spent the most time with one was 17 year old christopher greene
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the other was an african-american juvenile whom we'll call jason all three suspects fit the descriptions
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provided by susan picardi but denied they were involved in the assault in christopher green's house
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police found a knife like the one bobby had told them about in green's basement they found
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a pair of wet muddy sneakers we inquired of the suspect why are these things wet he was trying to tell us that
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it was as a result of walking through mud puddles and things like that as soon as he said that we started working on a
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theory that how do we attack this he's coming up with a defense this is how my
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clothes got wet i was playing in mud puddles and things like this was the mud on green sneakers from
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stenger's pond and if so how could scientists prove it but the answer is police turned to a new
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type of forensic science one that had never before been used in a criminal case anywhere in the world
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[Music] thirteen-year-old stephen the oldest of the two boys who were assaulted and left
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for dead in stenger's pond was in intensive care for a week his condition gradually improved he was
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extremely fortunate doctors found no evidence of permanent injury fortunately he'd had an episode that was
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short enough so that he suffered no permanent injury to his brain but during the time of recovery he
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needed a fair amount of intensive care support police had three suspects in custody
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brian davis christopher greene and the juvenile we'll call jason all denied any involvement in the
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attacks brian davis and jason had no prior brushes with the law but christopher greene had a long
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history of petty offenses and small time violence police took the sneakers from green's
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basement but no one was sure if the mud on the soles could be used as evidence we had the shoes
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how do we find out now find someone who's going to tell us what to do with this
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you understand exactly what it is we're trying to do waterford police spent weeks calling
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around the country looking for someone who might be able to help the fbi told them of a scientist at
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nearby connecticut college here we are going all over the united states connecticut colleges three
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minutes or five minutes from our police station the scientist was dr peter siver a
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forensic limnologist an expert on microscopic life in freshwater environments dr siver was asked to find out
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if the mud on green sneakers came from stenger's pond he took the mud from the sneakers and
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added a mixture of sulfuric acid and potassium dichromate which removed the dirt
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leaving behind only the life forms that may have existed in the water it's a world invisible to the naked eye
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inside that small drop of water exists literally hundreds of different organisms they
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come in all different arrays all different shapes all different colors and it's an entirely different world
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underneath that one drop of water and what dr siver found were diatoms microscopic single cell organisms a form
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of algae each diatom is housed in an incredibly complex structure made up of silica or
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glass i would say that diatoms are pieces of art they're pieces of art because
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each diatom can make exactly the same pattern each time it makes a new cell and these patterns are very ornate
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they're highly artistic in their look while diatoms may be art they can also be
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pieces of evidence any body of water has hundreds if not thousands of species of diatoms
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the types of diatoms and how many exist of the various species is unique to that
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body of water in any given water body you can essentially examine the microscopic organisms and in
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effect create a fingerprint for that water body on the sneakers dr cyber found large numbers of one type
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of diatom known as unosha shown here unosha are characterized by the crescent shapes of their glass
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shells there were three species of unosha on the suspect's sneakers and they were
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there in unusually high concentrations and dr siver found one more clue he found what's known as a scaled
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chrysophyte scaled crisophytes are related to diatoms but unlike diatoms they can swim
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there was only one species of chrysophyte in the mud malamona's codeita shown here magnified two thousand times
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when dr cyber analyzed the water samples from stenger's pond he found the same high concentrations of
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unosha and the same species of scaled chrysophyte the fingerprint of the water at
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stenger's pond was the same as the sample on the sneakers of christopher greene
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this was the break police had been counting on one thing that we found is there's
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always a scientist out there as off the wall as as it may sound or what you're trying to accomplish we have
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found is always somebody out there that will listen to you christopher green brian davis and jason were arrested and
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charged with assault and attempted murder but the question now turned to motive why did they attack the two young boys
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and was there another intended victim that day forensic scientists found a way to prove
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that one of the suspect sneakers had been in the water at stengers pond where the two young boys had been assaulted
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and left for dead i think the physical evidence in this case was just overwhelming
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and and uh the diatoms and the pond evidence or the aquatic evidence whatever way you want to use it was just
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devastating and i think that defense attorneys realize that the forensic analysis showed that when
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christopher greene went into the water to strike his victims he got mud on his shoes mud that contained the microscopic
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fingerprint of the water in stenger's pond the diatoms in that mud clearly tied him
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to the crime scene for me i thought it was unique and unusual because it's something that you
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normally don't read about in textbooks even though stephen and bobby's bicycles
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were stolen after the assault police and prosecutors do not believe robbery was the motive
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these three kids i am totally convinced we're on a mission that day as a result of interviewing the the
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three after their arrest they went out to that day to look to kill somebody there's no doubt in my
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mind can i help you yeah police believe that susan picardi was originally the intended victim
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brian davis did not have diabetes as he claimed but only used it as an excuse to
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gain entry to her home and i'll get you some great juice thanks when he rejoined his accomplices in
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susan's backyard they may have been planning how to get into the house the real alarm bells went off when i
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went upstairs and i saw two boys in the corner of my yard then i sort of all put it together and then i started
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feeling like i was just set up fortunately susan picardi saw them in her bathroom mirror and called the
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police she looks back to that day and often wonders how close she was to danger a great way to describe it as a sixth
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sense the mirror was in the right place the kids were in the right place it was meant to be for me to see them and to
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just by their body language understand that something is not right here police determined that christopher
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greene the only one of the defendants with a history of violence had instigated the attacks
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christopher greene was probably the ring leader for the other two he was the one that brought the bat
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he was the one that brought the duct tape he was the one that did the striking on our victims he's the one that
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basically directed the other two brian davis and christopher greene were both tried as adults and were sentenced
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to a minimum of 18 years in prison their 16 year old accomplice jason was only two weeks shy of his 17th birthday
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when he committed the crime as a result he was tried and convicted as a juvenile
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and was sentenced to spend time in the facility for young offenders he has since been released
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[Music] the microscopic diatom evidence on christopher green sneakers so simple in purpose
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so magnificent in design and so potent as evidence for waterford police and for law
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enforcement around the world the case set a precedent it's a landmark case it was the first
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time that this evidence or evidence of an aquatic environment meaning the diatoms
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were used to place a suspect at a crime scene we found that it had never been used
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before but was nice about it is they were willing to to take it on and try it and that was the key for us
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shortly after this case law enforcement in switzerland solved the murder of a young boy using diatom evidence the boy
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had drowned and the species of diatoms in the victim's lungs matched the species of diatoms found on the gas
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pedal of the suspect's automobile both cases were solved because a group of connecticut
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detectives had a hunch that some mud on the bottom of a shoe might tie a suspect to a crime
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i would never say give up being the old-fashioned hard beat in the road cop but you've got to be aware of the
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sciences that are there to help you if you don't you're beating yourself
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a lot of the thoughts that lieutenant mccarthy came up with we always thought were unusual but nine
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out of ten times he was right i have to say 99.8 percent of the time he was right
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[Music] [Music] [Applause] you