Phantoom moordenares na 16 jaar gevonden

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

De Duitse politi heeft na 15 jaar een van moord verdachte vrouw gevonden.
Ze bleek in de fabriek te werken, waar de wattenstaafjes die gebruikt
werden voor DNA onderzoek, gemaakt werden.

Het blijkt ook geen eis te zijn dat nieuwe staafjes vrij zijn van DNA-sporen!

Voer voor Duitse advokaten ;)

Groet / Cees

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7966641.stm
 'DNA bungle' haunts German police

Police in Germany have admitted that a woman they have been hunting for
more than 15 years never in fact existed.

Dubbed the "phantom of Heilbronn", the woman was described by police as
the country's most dangerous woman.

Investigators had connected her to six murders and an unsolved death based
on DNA traces found at the scene.

Police now acknowledge swabs used to collect DNA samples were contaminated
by an innocent woman working in a factory in Bavaria.

'Serial killer'

Police suspected the unnamed woman of being a serial killer who over 16
years carried out a string of six murders, including strangling a
pensioner.

She was alternatively called the "woman without a face" and the "phantom
of Heilbronn" after the city in southern Germany where she allegedly
killed a policewoman.

Police suspicions were based on traces of identical female DNA they found
at 40 crime scenes across southern Germany and Austria.

After finding her DNA at the scene of the murder of a 22-year policewoman
from Heilbronn in 2007, police offered a 300,000 euro reward for
information leading to her arrest.

However, police did not come any closer to identifying their most-sought
suspect.

According to prosecutors in the south-western town of Saarbruecken, doubts
about the existence of the "phantom killer" were raised when her DNA
appeared on documents belonging to a person who had died in a fire.

When police first tried to identify the victim, they found the phantom's
DNA on the dead person's ID. But in a subsequent test, no trace of the
phantom's DNA could be found on the document.

That was the point at which alarm bells started ringing and investigators
began to suspect that the test material itself may have been contaminated
with DNA, prosecutors say.

Now it has been determined that the cotton swabs used to collect DNA had
been contaminated accidently by a woman working at an unidentified factory
in Bavaria.

"The puzzle of the phantom killer has been solved," said Volker Link, a
prosecutor in Heilbronn.

One company making swabs said they were not intended for analytical, but
only medical use, while another said that there had been no requirement
for the swabs to be free of DNA.

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