Michigan’s Foran’s laboratory has devised methods to
extract and isolate mitochondrial DNA. His laboratory specializes in ancient
and forensic DNA evidence, often working with human remains that are thousands of
years old. The nearly 100–year–old microscope slide, sent to Michigan State
from the Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum, is the same one the
pathologist Bernard Spilsbury used to help hang Crippen in 1910. At that time
forensic medicine/ pathology was more primitive; Spilsbury’s testimony,
identifying what he claimed was an abdominal scar consistent with Cora’s
medical history, convinced the jury that these were Cora’s remains. Crippen
went to the gallows insisting he was innocent. The present–day challenge:
getting past the pine sap that sealed the slide and the formaldehyde used to
preserve the tissue in order to examine the mitochondrial DNA that could
identify Cora Crippen based on the genetic history of her maternal relatives.
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