A New Look at Bloodstains Is Changing Forensics
The rolling pin is traditionally seen as a woman's tool. She can use it to roll out dough -- or to smash her husband's skull.
The latter tends to be rather bloody, so it's no surprise that the seemingly harmless kitchen utensil is part of the equipment at Germany's only institute specializing in bloodstain pattern analysis, where it's stored between blood-splattered pieces of paper.
The lab uses very little high-tech and modern equipment. Inside the old barn in Usingen, a town in the western German state of Hesse, the creative chaos of a workshop prevails. Much of the equipment seems to have come directly from a hardware store.
Dr. Silke Brodbeck, the director of the institute, turns out not to be a morbid forensic scientist but a tidy and introspective woman. Brodbeck regularly assembles medical experts and criminologists in the barn for demonstrations in the art of interpreting bloodstains and blood...