Post trial interview with Professor Safa Al-Sarraj
........looked at her brain, he says it was clear something was not right.
“I think if it had not been kept and had been disposed of, nobody would have been able to find out what happened, but this was the only objective thing in the case where we had a platform to start looking at a different cause of death."
Al-Sarraj, 63, who works on about 100 criminal cases a year with the police, had never worked on anything like it: "This is very unusual.
I cannot recall a case similar to this where it was solved after the brain was donated to medical science."
Examining her brain he discovered that the damage was likely to have occurred over a period of 35 minutes to an hour before death, meaning it was
not consistent with a fatal epileptic fit, where people
die much more suddenly.
He said: "Epilepsy can cause alterations in the heart rhythm so you expect the death to be quick.
“You don't expect the death to be later on. I remember saying to the police I don't think this is straightforward epilepsy.
“Then they told me that she hadn't had epilepsy for 18 years and I said: 'Well, this is now extremely unusual. I don't believe this is right.'"
Detective Superintendent Jerome Kent, of Hertfordshire police, who led the investigation in both cases, encouraged other officers to search for similar evidence.
He said: "
I know no other case where police have gone back to recover material that has been left for medical research and subsequently found the evidence.
“I'd certainly be encouraging other police officers to think about samples that might have been taken by the coroner and during those initial pathology examinations and just seeing if they still exist.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-murder-victims-brain-helped-26219194
Just noting, again, how strange it was that this trial received such little coverage despite being so unusual in terms of how the evidence was obtained.
