Expert Witness

Original version

Simulcast of BBC One Scotland in high definition. From 14/01/2013

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Documentaries

Factual: Crime & Justice

Factual: Crime & Justice: True Crime

True crime series revealing how some of the UK’s most serious cases were solved.

How some of the UK’s most serious and complex cases were solved by the expertise of a band of unsung heroes – the expert witnesses. Gripping true crime stories.

Series 2

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Simulcast of network BBC One in high definition. From 03/11/2010

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Ashley John-Baptiste

Bridget Fallon

Emma Barker

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Screenchannel Television

Expert Witness: Series 2: Murder in the Suburbs and Search for a Serial Killer

Murder in the Suburbs and Search for a Serial Killer

BBC One - Expert Witness, Series 2, Murder in the Suburbs and Search for a Serial Killer

Fibre analysts help solve a murder, and a look back at a serial killer case 40 years ago.

A fibre analyst helps convict the killer of grandmother Maureen Cosgrove, and how forensic evidence was used in the case of serial child killer Robert Black 40 years ago.

In our first story, a community reels in total shock when a doting grandmother is found murdered in her home. Detectives search for the killer and suspect it may be someone close to her. The suspect’s DNA is found all over the crime scene, but that is easily explained because he lived until recently in the same house. So the police try another route. They approach Kelly Sheridan, an expert witness in fibre evidence, who uncovers a trail of fibres, unravelling the mystery and putting the killer in jail.

More than 40 years ago, fibre analysis was still a relatively new forensic discipline. Despite this, police hoped it could help solve a string of child murders in the 1980s and 90s, but in the end it took old-fashioned detective work to close the case of killer Robert Black. Looking back, the case shows how this area of forensic science has been transformed over just four decades. Jim Fraser was the lead scientist in the Black investigation, and his experience shows that scientific progress is achieved through failure as well as success.

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Expert Witness

Series 2

Murder in the Suburbs and Search for a Serial Killer

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