Keith_Skinner

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Keith Skinner

TV work

TV work includes 1998 research for The Hunt a series of six 50 minute documentaries of BBC, dealing with the greatest advances of techniques in criminal detection:

Fingerprinting: the 1901 exploits of Argentinian police officer Juan Vucetich, who caught Francesca Rojas of Buenos Aires from her bloody thumb print. William Herschel, Henry Faulds, Sir Francis Galton and Sir Edward Henry all contribute to the development of the new science. Chicago gangsters try to remove skin from their fingers, and the Sir Harry Oakes case in the Bahamas challenges the integrity of "lifted" prints. The 1948 case of Peter Griffiths was famous for mass fingerprinting.
Ballistics: The 1924 case of the murder of Sir Lee Stack in Egypt is solved by the scientific examination conducted by Sydney Smith, followed in London by the case of Browne & Kennedy. The St Valentine's Day Massacre investigation featured evidence by Calvin Goddard.
Serology and DNA: The 1900 case of Ludwig Tessow; the 1928 Japanese case of Yoshiki Hirai; the Enderby murders, using DNA for the first time.
Toxicology: Dr Crippen, the 1937 Kenneth Barlow case where insulin was detected; Tamego Igii detected for using cyanide disguised as medicine; the Georgy Markov ricin pellet case on Waterloo Bridge.
Forensic Pathology: The pioneering work of Edmund Locard; the detection of the true cause of the 1925 death of Charles Henry Schwartz; the case of Dr Marcel Petiot in Paris, and the multiple murders of Fred and Rose West in Gloucester.
Offender profiling: The first "lie machine" and the "criminal type" developed by Cesare Lombroso in 1905; why J Edgar Hoover pronounced lie detector tests as unreliable after the Paul Altheide case; the Mad Bomber of New York, George Metesky ; the problems of Russia's hunt for child murderer Andrei Chikatilo and the 1996 Unabomber case in America.

Books:

The Jack the Ripper A to Z - with Paul Begg

The Peasenhall Murder - with Martin Fido

The Scotland Yard Files - with Paul Begg

The Official Encyclopedia of Scotland Yard - with Martin Fido

Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell - with Stewart Evans

The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook - An Illustrated Encyclopedia - with Stewart Evans

Ripper Diary - The Inside Story - with Seth Linder and Caroline Morris

The Scotland Yard Files - with Alan Moss

Visit Keith Skinner's website at http://www.metpoliceresearch.co.uk