Planting Clues
How plants solve crimes
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Discover the extraordinary role of plants in modern forensics, from their use as evidence in the trials of high profile murderers such as Ted Bundy to high value botanical trafficking and poaching.
We are all familliar with the role of blood spatters or fingerprints in solving crimes, from stories in the media of DNA testing or other biological evidence being used as the clinching evidence to incriminate a killer. This book lifts the lid on the equally important evidence from plants at a crime scene, from the incriminating presence of freshwater plants in the lungs of a drowning victim, to rare botanical poisons in the evening gin and tonic, to exotic trafficked flowers and drugs.
In Planting Clues, David Gibson explores how plants can help to solve crimes, as well as how plant crimes are themselves solved. He discusses the botanical evidence that proved important in bringing a number of high-profile murderers such as Ian Huntley (the 2002 Shoham Murders), and Bruno Hauptman (the 1932 Baby Lindbergh kidnapping) to trial, from leaf fragments and wood anatomy to pollen and spores. Throughout he traces the evolution of forensic botany, and shares the fascinating stories that advanced its progress.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biologist Gibson (Grasslands and Climate Change) investigates the role plants and fungi can play in criminal justice in this dry account. "In many countries, forensic science labs don't have botanists on staff, CSIs are untrained in botany, and botanical evidence is contracted out to private investigators or university faculties," where botany departments are disappearing. But plants have provided "important forensic evidence" to great effect in a wealth of cases, Gibson writes. Wood samples helped solve the Lindbergh kidnapping, leaves helped to convict Ted Bundy, berries found in a suspected murder victim's hair led investigators to establish the cause as suicide, and the salad bar contents of a victim's stomach helped establish a time of death. As well, Gibson describes how DNA can help convict plant traffickers who deal in illicit drugs, and how "body farms," or "specialized decomposition facilities where human cadavers are studied," can help scientists better understand the decomposition process. Gibson's case studies aren't for the faint of heart, and he leans academic in style with a tendency to get lost in the weeds, sacrificing flow in service of granular details about plant biology. Armchair criminologists, though, will find plenty to like.
