[MUSIC] Possibly the most famous case involving a re-enactment is the so-called "Woodchipper Murder" case, involving Richard and Helle Crafts. So Helle was a stewardess for an airline, and Richard was a pilot. They met in 1969, and after a while, they got married. Now Richard was an airline pilot and he earned a good living, so he could indulge himself in all sorts of hobbies. He collected guns, he collected machinery, he travelled a lot, and he was even a volunteer police officer in his town and equipped his own police car. Maybe because of all this, the family was having trouble with money. So Helle was also becoming suspicious of her husband, and she hired a private detective to check up on him, and the private detective turns out to be very important in this story. Well, let's go to November the 18th, 1986. This was a very snowy day, they lived in Connecticut where you could get a lot of snow, and Helle was dropped off at her home after work, and there was already five inches of snow on the ground. The next day, when anyone called the Crafts' house, only Richard would ever answer the phone, Helle didn't answer the phone that day. And on the early morning of November the 19th, Richard took their children and the children's nanny to his sister's house, and then he went back to their home. Now, by December the 1st, nearly two weeks later, Helle's private detective is starting to get worried because he hasn't heard from her for some time and he contacts the police and gets them to investigate the case. Now, when the police came to talk to Richard Crafts, who of course is someone they know very well because he's been a volunteer in their department, Richard claims that his wife has disappeared, she's run off somewhere. And they even get Richard to take a polygraph, a lie detector test, which he passes. On searching the house, they find some carpet fragments, but they don't find any blood on them. But they do find that Richard has been making some rather strange purchases recently. For instance, he rented a chainsaw, he bought a brand new freezer, and he had also rented a woodchipper machine. And when the police go around making their inquiries in the neighbourhood, a witness says that he saw a woodchipper being used down by the local lake, Lake Zoar. Now remember this is November, there's five inches of snow on the ground. Who would be out doing woodchipping in that kind of weather? Well, the investigation came to a climax on Christmas Day, when the police searched Richard Crafts' house. And on the mattress, they found bloodstains, and when the blood type of those stains was taken, it matched Helle's blood type, which is O positive. This led them to think that some violent event had overcome Helle Crafts, and so the search became more serious. Now they had the witness placing the woodchipper down at Lake Zoar, so they searched the river bank around the lake, and they found some human hair, they found some letters, and then they decided to search the lake. Now, this is not a real lake, it's a reservoir with a dam. So the people who managed the dam arranged it so that the lake level was lowered and the thing could be searched more easily. Now, what did they find in the lake? They found a chainsaw. In the chainsaw, there were traces of human tissue, human hair, and also blue clothing fibres. They were able to get the serial number off the chainsaw, and it turns out that this chainsaw had been the one used by Richard Crafts. In the lake they also found 2660 strands of bleached human hair which matches Helle's hair colour. They found 69 slivers of human bone, and they could get a blood type from that bone, and again, that was O positive. They found some blood, they found two teeth, one of which they could confirm was Helle's. They found a piece of human skull, they found three ounces of human tissue, and the largest piece they found was part of a finger, shown here on the right hand side. They also found a fingernail and part of a toe nail. So at this point, they had enough material found in the lake to conclude that Helle Crafts had been murdered. In January, Richard Crafts was arrested, and bail was posted at the very large sum of $750,000. The police then set about reconstructing how Richard Crafts killed his wife. Now, remember that drops of blood had been found in the bedroom, so they suggested that she'd been beaten to death in the bedroom during the early morning of November the 19th. Now the police then suggested that Crafts had put his wife's body in the freezer to preserve it while he prepared for its disposal. Now, he had made up a story about some electricity problem, and he used this as an excuse to take the children and the nanny to his sister's house, which is in Westport down the road. So he dropped the children and nanny off at Westport, and then he'd returned to his own home back in Newtown. Now of course, he was alone in the house, and he could do whatever he wanted. It's believed that he took Helle's frozen body to a secluded property that he had outside Newtown, and he used a chainsaw to cut up the body into smaller parcels. Then later, under the cover of darkness, it's believed that Crafts took the parts of the body down to Lake Zoar, where he used the woodchipper to cut them up even smaller. Now, what needs to be re-enacted? What part of the story is beyond our normal experience? And it's a very simple question. What is the effect of a woodchipper on a human body? So in order to investigate this, the police decided to use a reconstruction. Now obviously they can't call for volunteers, and what they used was the carcass of a pig. So they used the same chainsaw, and they put the pig carcass through a woodchipper machine, and here's the results. On the left there's the woodchipper, and on the right you can see what's left of the pig. And in the centre of the picture you can see the very distinguished forensic scientist, Henry Lee, who was called in on this case. So you can see from this picture here, very clearly, that the kind of material, the kind of human material that they found in the lake is consistent with the effects of a woodchipper. So if we look at all this evidence, and there's a network of evidence. We can see that Helle is linked to the chainsaw by the hair and the tissue and the fibres. Richard is linked to the chainsaw by the rental records after reading the serial number. Helle is linked to the woodchipper by hair and tissue, Richard is linked to the woodchipper by the rental. Helle is linked to the lake by the body parts and tooth found in the lake, and of course, the witness places the woodchipper at the lake. So, the result was that Richard Crafts was convicted of murder. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison, and he is still in prison today. So, in this first Introduction lecture, we've covered a lot of material. We've seen some of the different types of forensic work, and some of these we'll go into in more detail in later lectures. You've seen this idea of Comparison and Association, and you've seen some examples of Reconstruction and Re-enactment. But, from this Introduction lecture, if you only take home one message, that message should be Locard's Principle that "Every contact leaves a trace". [BLANK_AUDIO]
