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Edmond Locard and Alec Jeffreys: Pioneers of Forensic Science.
One of Edmond Locard's first solved cases involved a woman by the name of Marie Lataille, who was found dead by strangulation. Marie's boyfriend, Emile Gourbin, was considered a suspect. However, he had an airtight alibi. Gourbin's friends confirmed that at midnight (the estimated time of the murder), he was with them playing a game of cards. "The location of the game was some distance from the crime scene and they had been occupied until 1:00 A.M., at which time Gourbin had gone to bed. Either the time of death was in error or he was not his girlfriend's killer"" (Ramsland, 2012, para.10). .
In spite of Gourbin's alibi, the police were certain that he was involved in Marie Latrelle's murder, but they couldn't prove it. This case was then presented to Edmond Locard in hopes that he would be able to help solve it. Upon examining the victim's body, he discovered scratches on her neck. He concluded that the scratches were deep enough to have left some of Marie's skin under the killer's fingernails. Locard visited Emile Gourbin in jail and took some scraping samples from under his fingernails. "Under the microscope, Locard noted in the normal debris several specks of blood and some flakes of skin that bore a pink tint. When he chemically tested them, he found ingredients common to cosmetics. " (Ramsland, 2012, para.11). .
After getting a hold of Marie's face powder, he discovered that it was made out of the same substance that he found under Gourbin's fingernails. After Locard confronted Gourbin with this evidence, he confessed to the murder of Marie Latelle. He claimed that "He had advanced the clock at his friends' house to dupe them into saying he had been there with them at the very time he was killing Marie. His friends had actually gone to bed around midnight, not 1:00 A.M., and he'd then gone out to meet Marie. When she had refused to marry him once more, he strangled her" (Ramsland, 2012, para.
