The apple Magpie Tales#30

The apple lay in the shadowed corner of the room and would have gone unnoticed if DC Allan hadn’t dropped his pen and bent down to pick it up. He called to the DI and he carefully picked it up and placed it into an evidence bag. Turning the apple over in the bag he could see that it had had a bite taken out of it.

‘It might be the murderer’s.’ the DI said and so a useful piece of evidence. The dead girl had been found earlier in the empty house.

Back at the police laboratory, technicians were already making a cast of the teeth marks on the apple. Certain characteristics of the bite marks were giving the technicians significant clues of how the teeth would have looked.

The bite showed that the eyeteeth were prominent and that the bottom left incisor was broken. The teeth belonged to someone with large top incisors and uneven bottom teeth. Over the period of weeks a jaw and full set of front teeth were being built up just from the cast of the bite out of the apple. The size of the jaw gave the investigators an indication of how big the head of the man  was and then how tall he was. Slowly but surely a picture was being put together to identify him. Photos of known criminals were scrutinized by DC Allen and several were picked out as possible murderers. John Oddy was a definite possible and his movements were tagged.

He was apprehended one night on the Thames embankment trying to chat up a girl who was probably listed in his mind as his next victim. Casts taken of his teeth identified him as the person who had left that discarded apple and John Oddy was charged a week later with the murder. It was with great satisfaction that DC Allan saw him found guilty and given a life sentence for the brutal killing of Alice White.

The clever forensic work of the hard working behind the scenes police making the cast of the apple, were the vital clues and evidence in bringing him to justice.