Well as my career progressed, probably the last sort of 13/14 years, I have specifically
focussed on cold cases. So that’s really looking at historic cases
for new opportunities, so these can be brand new fresh opportunities using advanced tools
such as DNA, or it can be that the police have had some new information about a case
and you need to test whether or not that information could be applied or whether it’s appropriate,
so you’re looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes looking for new opportunities.
Out of all those types of cases I’ve looked at a number of high profile homicides, so
some of the big names which have come back to be looked at.
Something else that I’ve also been heavily involved with is local and national projects
looking at large-scale sex offence projects, so this is where police forces have decided
to leave no stone unturned, they start methodically looking at historic sex offences, and what
materials there might be retained, whether or not there might be DNA opportunities.
It’s very often the case that there’s very limited paperwork left, because nobody
had the crystal ball back in those days, nobody knew what DNA might be able to do.
So we’re very much relying on some of these by-products of the original examination.
So for example if in certain cases we maybe will create a microscope slide of some staining,
and that will be uniquely labelled and sealed and it’s stayed in the archive ever since,
not because we knew what was coming but I think just because we were scientists and
we didn’t want to throw anything away. And that’s been absolutely brilliant so
we’ve been able to go back to a lot of that type of material and re-examine it, and we’re
able to get DNA profiles. I chose Bradford University because of the
course really, I wanted a course that gave me the chance to do a year out in industry,
I wanted it to be science based, but particularly human biology, and no plants, I didn’t want
to do anything with plants, but human biology with the option of a year out which meant
that I could just explore options for careers in the future.
I was also at that point really interested in forensic science even though nobody really
at school had heard of it and it wasn’t as well known as it is today. So Bradford
really had that opportunity for me. I also knew one of my friends had gone to
Bradford University and done the same course. It was a new course, I think our year was
something like the fourth or fifth year intake so it was only just about to have its first
graduates, and it all sounded really exciting so yeah, Bradford was for me.
The opportunities at the university were great because I was actually, as well as the course
itself I was really very very quiet, very very shy when I started at university.
I came from a small seaside town in Devon. It wasn’t just about the academic side,
I had plenty of support with the tutors, and I remember my dissertation in my final year
was a real, it did feel like a real slog at the time, but it was a real achievement at
the end of that, but all through that time as well as the tutor side of things it was
the learning about life, and learning how to.. just growing up a bit, gaining some confidence,
making new friends, joining societies and clubs, having the courage to do something
you’ve never done before. My four years in Bradford really helped with
my career, not just in terms of the placement which was clearly invaluable to me in understanding
what being a forensic scientist was all about, but also the background knowledge, the actual
science, the core science information, it was a biology based degree so that background
knowledge really helped. And the process of writing reports, and writing
dissertations, and being able to articulate things, we had to do a number of presentations
and of course that’s a key thing in being a forensic scientist, you have to be able
to explain things to a jury, so that they understand it, so all of those different aspects
of my course were really useful for me in my career.