So, a confession: ‘I love biometrics’ because they make my life simpler. I can buy a coffee from my phone by verifying my identity with a fingerprint, I can pass through electronic gates at airports with my biometric passport, and in Scotland I can even jump on a bus for free with my over 60 photographic bus pass.

But of course, biometrics can also be taken from people because of arrest, and biometric data can also be retrieved from crime scenes, and today I am going to talk about the value of biometrics in helping to solve seemingly impossible crimes. But firstly, a bit about my role in Scotland.

I have been Commissioner in Scotland for 3 year and my role is to support & promote the adoption of lawful, effective and ethical practices in relation to biometric data and technologies for policing and criminal justice purposes.

My functions in Scotland extend to 3 bodies. Police Scotland our national police service, the SPA – who provide our national forensic services, and the PIRC who also have powers of investigation and arrest.

The term ‘biometric data’ means slightly different things in different UK legislation, but under the SBC Act 2020 it covers DNA, fingerprints, photographs, images, recordings, and any source sample from which biometric data can arise – for example a DNA mouth swab. Other regulators also operate in the biometrics space in the UK (Biometrics & Surveillance Camera Commissioner for England and Wales, the ICO and the Forensic Science Regulator for England and Wales.

We are a small team of 4 at SBC, and I am supported by Cheryl, Joanna and Diego, and we will soon be joined for 2 years by DCI Ross MacDonald from Police Scotland. You can learn more about what we do by visiting our website.

The two most important purposes that biometrics serve in policing are verification and identification.

Verification asks: Is this person who they claim to be? An example of biometric verification being the live fingerprint identification used in custody suites as part of criminal justice processing which is extremely accurate.

Identification asks: Who is this person? An example being a DNA profile being created from biological materials recovered at a crime scene then matched to the offender through investigation.

In Scotland, when DNA is recovered at a crime scene the match rate to an existing criminal justice profile is over 60%. However, it is important to remember that most crimes reported to the police do not have a forensic component.

First generation biometrics like photographs and fingerprints have been around in policing for more than 100 years, & DNA for about 35 years. However, second generation biometrics are evolving constantly.

I want to take readers on a quick biometric journey through time from ancient Greece to 1977 Edinburgh, to 2005 Alaska, then back to modern Greece in 2021. The objective is to reflect very briefly on 3 impossible crimes that could not have been solved without the crucial insights provided by biometric or forensic data.

The starting point for our journey is this 3000-year-old mosaic from the Hellenic Museum in Rhodes. It depicts the mythical Greek hero Bellerophon. Bellerophon was the slayer of monsters that Homer writes about in his book the Iliad. As you can see, he is riding Pegasus and, in this scene, he is slaying the Chimera which is a strange mixture of a lion, a goat and a snake. Now all of this is mythology, but if it were real, then its probably fair to assume that there would be some very complicated DNA going on.

The 3 quick case studies involve a pub in 1977 Edinburgh, a prison in 2005 Alaska, and fitness watches in Athens in 2021.

These crimes were all very different but have 2 things in common.

Firstly, they all involve femicide or extreme violence by men towards women and its always important to remember that adult male offenders make up more than 70% of biometrics held by the police.

Secondly, each of these crimes appeared impossible to solve until biometrics and forensics made the seemingly impossible – possible.

Case Study 1 (the pub) will be familiar to many in the room and relates to a notorious double murder in Edinburgh in 1977. It involved two 17-year-old victims Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, who were last seen alive at the World’s End Pub which is about 200 meters from where we are right now. It became known as the World’s End Murders after the bodies of Helen and Christine were found at separate locations in East Lothian, about 20 miles from Edinburgh. Both had been bound, raped, and strangled.

In 1977, DNA was unknown to policing, CCTV was rare, and even with a blood sample the size of a 50p you could only tell the blood group. The double murder haunted Edinburgh for decades. It frustrated the police and remained unsolved for 37 years. To put that in context, I joined the police in 1978 and retired in 2013. When I joined L & B the murders were unsolved and when I retired from Police Scotland 35 years later, they were still unsolved.

However, with advances in DNA, forensic scientists were able to demonstrate that the prime suspect, who was a notorious serial killer, (Angus Sinclair) and his brother in-law were present at the crime scenes leading to a successful conviction in 2014.

In this first case DNA unlocked a 37-year-old time capsule and gave closure and redress to relatives who had long since given up any hope of justice.

Case study 2 (the prison) relates to a rape in Alaska in 2005. During the forensic investigation, semen was recovered from the crime scene from which there was a full match to a male previously arrested in the USA.

Importantly, conventional wisdom at the time was that except for identical twins, no two humans on the planet should have identical DNA. That is what the police in Alaska believed and that is what the police everywhere else in the world believed at that time. Accordingly, it looked like an open and shut case except there was a problem. Because the Alaska State Troopers discovered that the person to whom the DNA fully matched was already in prison at the time of the offence.

After establishing that he had not been outside of prison, did not match the description given by the victim, and was not an identical twin, the crime looked impossible to solve. However, on checking medical records, detectives discovered that the man in prison had donated bone marrow. The police then traced the recipient and medical tests established that he was in fact chimeric. In other words, he carried both his own DNA and the DNA of the donor. Therefore, when the bone marrow recipient raped the victim, his semen contained the DNA from the innocent donor.

That case changed forensic science and was highlighted by Sue Black in a Xmas lecture. So, it turns out that our fried Bellerophon from Greek mythology was right after all. Chimeras really do exist!

Case study 3 (fitness watches) The final case study relates to a murder in Athens in 2021. In this case a 20-year-old British national Caroline Crouch was murdered in her Athens home. Her 33-year-old Greek husband Babis Anagnostopoulos, who was a helicopter pilot had told the police that a gang of Albanians had broken into the house as part of a robbery, had knocked him unconscious and that when he woke up his wife and dog had been killed. Caroline had been strangled.

The story gripped Athens for weeks as Babis stuck to his story and played the grieving widower, even attending identity parades. However, the police became increasingly suspicious as there was no evidence whatsoever to support his account of events. He had claimed that a gang of men had been in the house but there was no DNA, no fingerprints, and no hair or fibres suggesting the presence of any third party.

Then the police conducted a digital forensics examination on the deceased’s fitness watch and from her cardiovascular readings could determine the exact time of death, which was much earlier than the account of the husband. They had also seized his electronic devices which suggested that he had been active at the time he claimed to have been unconscious. He later confessed to the murder. His intention had been to claim insurance to pay off a drugs debt. In this final case study, biometric data in the form of cardiovascular readings recovered through digital forensics were crucial to establishing guilt.

So having concluded our quick journey through time we can see that biometrics and forensic data sometimes give detectives the opportunity to solve crimes that otherwise looked impossible.

In our journey from ancient Greece, we have also learned that Chimeras do exist. It is possible in rare circumstances for one person to carry two different sets of DNA.
We have also seen that the possibilities of biometric and forensic data are constantly evolving and what might not be possible today, will almost certainly be possible tomorrow.

So, I am going to stop there as some examples of our publications come up on screen.
There will be an opportunity for questions at the end of this session of 3 speakers, but please feel free to visit our website to learn more about what we do, just type Scottish Biometrics Commissioner into your browser and you will find us.

Thank you.