Here it is:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2010/02/09/12809011-cp.html
I, too, have been wondering why, with all the reporters assigned to this case, nothing is known about RW prior to 1987.
Meanwhile, a few details have leaked out about his wife. She is 50 years old, both parents deceased. She had a cat. She and RW had an old cat that died recently. Cat hair sticks to clothing, and floats in the air. Perhaps this is something that has been found in other unsolved attacks. Scroll down for the Canadian case of Snowball the cat:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/forensics.shtml
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_(cat):
Snowball (cat)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Snowball, a domestic cat from Prince Edward Island, Canada, has the unique distinction of being at the centre of a milestone in forensic history.
In 1994, Shirley Duguay of Prince Edward Island went missing and was later found in a shallow grave. Among the most compelling pieces of evidence in the case was a leather jacket covered in plots blood and over two dozen white feline hairs.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators recalled that during a previous interview with the estranged husband, Douglas Beamish, that he had a white cat named Snowball. The detectives confiscated the cat and drew blood in which they intended to use DNA fingerprinting to compare it to the DNA found in the white hairs from the jacket, but they found that no one in the world had done this before.
After contacting the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, a laboratory specialising not in forensics, but in the study of genetic diseases, detectives and scientists were able to develop a method in which to test the feline DNA. The test included a fail-safe method of randomly testing 20 other cats from the isolated Prince Edward Island, in order to establish the degree of genetic diversity among cats in the area, to rule out the possibility that the hairs found in the jacket came from a close relative of Snowball, or if all the cats on the island had a common ancestor, rendering the DNA test useless.
The tests revealed that the hairs did come from the cat; Beamish was subsequently convicted for the murder of his wife.
The forensic science of testing cat and dog hairs has been firmly established and studied, but it was an unknown science until the Snowball case.
[edit] References
* Marilyn A. Menotti-Raymond, Victor A. David & Stephen J. O'Brien (1997-04-24). "Pet cat hair implicates murder suspect" (PDF, subscription required). Nature 386 (774): 774. doi:10.1038/386774a0"
So, is there cat hair from two possible cats in the homes of victims who did not have cats? Has the cat DNA been tested?
